It’s raining again as it has off and on for the last few days and many other days for this entire month. A wind ruffles the new leaves of the apple tree outside my living room window. Pink and white flower buds cover the tree, a few tentatively opening their petals despite the lack of sunlight and warmth the last few weeks. After finally giving up on trying to climb in my lap and displace my iPad and keyboard, Bede has managed to squeeze himself onto the little bit of remaining footstool so that he can sleep curled up against my feet.

In this perfectly peaceful and idealic setting, I am grappling with the limits of time. I am not old, but I am getting older, and as different things in my body begin to show signs of age and wear, I have taken stock of what I want to be doing with my time and how I’m not doing it yet. I want to be an artist. No, I AM an artist. But I am an artist who is currently producing very little art. I envision a future full of writing, sewing, sketching, printing. For years I’ve dreamed of creating a space where not only can I be doing those things, but I can invite others in to do those things as well. A place full of deep conversation, meaningful creativity, and energetic community. But I’ve only ever taken the very first few steps towards that goal before life circumstances seem to get in the way.

I spend a lot of time these days frustrated with both the circumstances of my life that leave me with very little resources of time, energy, or money to use towards my larger goals and with myself for not using what little bit I do have in a way that would indicate that I actually value art and creativity. Creativity for me seems to take quite a bit of tenacity and intentionality. It does not happen spontaneously in the in-between spaces of my busy days no matter how much I might expect it to.

It was Springtime when I started this blog as you can tell from the intro. As I sat pondering all this and attempting to reflect it all in writing, John came home and we ended up discussing all of this. We are both in similar mental spaces, grateful for so much of what our current life offers us and yet still desiring to live more fully into the artistic life. While our discussion didn’t immediately answer all of our questions, it did lead to identifying one simple step we can take towards an intentional plan to use what little resources we do have (including using my PTO very intentionally) to try to coordinate more of our free hours so that we can together devote time

for creativity and community building. Knowing that summer is crazy we set our plan to start in September once everyone was back at school. That time is now almost upon us. As I go through this incredibly busy couple of weeks moving boys out of the house and into dorms (Seth back to boarding school, Will to college), seeing Dietrich off to his first day of 7th grade, and planning and carrying out professional development days for the staff at work; I am also counting down the days to the first of these intentional afternoons we’ve set aside devoted to creativity. I know it isn’t much, but it is something that I’ve clung to, determined to keep this promise to myself. Even though I cannot yet see the path to the future I envision, I can see this one intentional step I can take to bring at least a little bit of that future into my present.