The upending of life
Not very long ago I felt like I wasn’t coping with the things life was dishing out to me. I thought I was losing my ability to be optimistic about the present and what the future might hold. My resilience muscle had been worn down to bare sinew and I wasn’t able to bounce back from disappointments as easily as I had done in the past.
When I look back over the last couple of years, I mostly see roadblocks, that now, after much reflection, came from my way of thinking about myself and where I fit in this world. Last year was particularly difficult with my health from long covid, shingles and in October I started having neck and back pain and have subsequently found out that my spine is in a bit of a mess. I have had pain daily since then with tingling in my arms, fingers, legs and toes.
As far back as I can remember, I have done physical and at times back breaking work. I picked and packed fruit when I was a kid on a friends orchard. When I was a teenager I worked in the produce department of my local supermarket lugging 20kg bags of carrots and potatoes around. I have laid floors, painted ceilings, hung plaster, dug garden beds, chainsawed trees and the list goes on. In-between all this I made jewellery, which can be very taxing on the body too.
I am working on managing my pain and becoming stronger through exercise and rest and although I am in constant pain, something within me has changed. It is like I pressed a big old reset button and said to myself “I am ready to live my life differently”. My little jewellery business was everything to me for over 20 years, but now since I am unable to work I have realised that it really wasn’t the most important thing in my life, my health and those I love are far more important. I also figured something else out, that I don’t need to make a living from my creativity. I have, for so long, tried to run a full-time practice, to support myself from what I love to do. But, I think that when you need to make money from something that is truly part of who you are, you lose a part of yourself.
When I manage to get this pain under control and get back to a ‘normal’ working life, it won’t involve sitting at the jewellers bench each and every day. I want to save the creative side of myself for me for a while. I won’t be giving up the making of things, I still have so many ideas that I want to work through and put out into the world, but I don’t want to worry that if something isn’t well received or doesn’t sell that my bills won’t be paid. I will still share my goings on in the tiny studio I have created for myself, but I will do so because when we share art and creativity it inspires others to see the beauty in life and hopefully do the same. Without art, Nature, poetry, literature, theatre and the like, the world is a dark and miserable place.
It has taken me ages to write this journal post, but it has been extremely cathartic. Sending my thoughts out into the ether has felt like a tonne of bricks have fallen from my aching shoulders.
The image above is a small collection of porcelain pots and jewellery I made early last year, “I belong to a world that blossoms and flowers”. I think we all belong to such a world and my hope is to share the beauty of Nature and the human condition through a visual arts language that connects with its audience.