This is number 2 in my series of unfinished, un-posted posts. This was supposed to be a New Year Eve's post, and it doesn't quite make sense here in the middle of the year. In fact, it IS finished and I don't know why I didn't post it - just forgot, I guess. I am posting it anyway, because I am crawling through a depression right now and I need that positive viewpoint, i.e., things are far better than they have been. Hope it works. 

Just before the last decade started, I became motherless and fatherless, in August 1999 and November 1999, respectively. At least the first half of the last decade was spent in a search for who I am without their expectations.

Just before the last decade started, I found out I couldn’t have children, I was too old and it was too late. I started back to school in fiber arts instead of having kids. It was a conscious choice. 

In 2000, I started menopause, my constant companion since. I could say that was my decade of change and mean it in all contexts. 

In 2000 I moved to Atlanta, away from Asheville, to make it easier for my husband to travel for his work. In other words, I sublimated my needs for my husband’s. That’s a sacrifice I still ponder. 

In 2000 I started a four-year working relationship with a non-profit that reminded me that having a job may give you a secure income, but it doesn’t necessarily give you peace. That was the hardest job I’ve ever done, for the least amount of money. 

In 2004, I left that secure but stressful job to finally achieve my lifelong goal of being a full-time artist, while I destroyed my lifelong commitment never to be supported by a man. I made that bargain with myself with misgivings. I told myself that very little art can be made without patronage, and my husband continues to be my number one patron.  This despite the fact that I’ve never made him anything. His choice.

In 2004 I started the gypsy life of a music festival vendor, got an RV and pretended that it was still the 60s and time travel worked under certain circumstances. Except it wasn’t, it didn’t, and travel in general was tiring me out. Plus, I was doing it alone, a portent that I didn’t see in time. 

In 2006 my husband left me and I was left with art. That wasn’t the intent when I chose it, but it was all I had left.

I found OS in 2007, in the midst of a limbo called Tampa, Florida. 

In 2008 I moved back to Asheville to reclaim and re-dedicate myself as an artist.

In 2009, I started to feel like I belonged somewhere again. 

In 2010 I am myself. 

2011...