today was to be my Art Day...i crammed all my Chore-type things into yesterday...made husband do the laundry...and then woke up today with that focused, stillness that said YES to my artistic bones. but first but first but first. then it was 1 o'clock before i rolled out the canvas-y fabric that was to be the background to the backing of a quilt for G. i stared at it. and felt that old familiar lack of enthusiasm feeling...not for this project, because it is fabulous and she is fabulous...just a feeling of blechh, as they used to say in MAD magazine. i could just go nap for the rest of the day till it's time for bed. i have been chasing myself around for months now and don't understand the lack of ease in my own skin, or own Self. i feel challenged by my own art...a chip on the shoulder type of challenge. last night, as i dozed on the couch with the last flicker of firelight dancing in the fireplace, my eyes closed, and with a quick smell of woodsmoke i thought, "i hope the wind doesn't blow embers onto the roof," because my half-awake mind is not to be trusted. and i asked my sleepy self how i would feel if my studio were to be gone ...by fire or whatever means. and in that half awake/half asleep nether place, i thought "relieved." which probably accounts for my chasing a dancing muse on roller skates, as cheryl ann costa says. i feel out of sorts and somewhat unSelf-like..not depressed...just, well: BLECHH. it's as if the delicate balance was tipped when i gave over 2 more days to the Big Girl Job. when i was a news anchor, we had a girl that worked 4 hours a week as a reporter, and the rest of the time she was a waitress at a local restaurant. but when you asked her what she did for a living, she'd always say she was a reporter. newsrooms being the cold, heart-ripping, backstabbing, sabotaging places they are, we'd say that hour-for-hour she was a waitress who worked as a reporter part-time. but see now i understand better. i "AM" an artist....it's WHO i am. i now only have 1-ish days to work at it but i am no less an artist. i just hate to be in the middle of the flow of it all and have to stop to get my school clothes ready for monday and the bus. i may have to quit the big girl thing. but for now, i've probably sucked any life that you may have had right out, so i'll go be a dark cloud elsewhere. sorry. it's just those plates shifting beneath the crust. L.