The whole of 2020 was an exercise in persistence, patience, and perseverance.  It’s the year that was supposed to make up for 2019, for me at least, as 2019 was a hot mess, trash burning dumpster fire. Instead, 2020 ended up being the snot-nosed bully older brother of 2019 that showed up determined to be a continual pain in my ass.  Allie went out on spring break from school and never went back. While a definite challenge we were thankfully able to finish out the year online and Allie did a great job with her work - I probably complained more about it than she did.  With work and trying to basically homeschool my child most of the stuff I do on the side went out the window, especially when I was working from home part-time. We worked two days at home one week and three days at home the next week with your opposite days being in the office so you never really got a good routine for working at home and you never could get caught up at the office with what you were doing.  Add on making sure that my phone was able to hook up to the zoom calls for Allie, monitoring/helping her with her school work, and then scanning it in and sending it to the teacher at the end of the day the last thing I wanted to do was look at a computer or do anything that remotely challenged my brain.  I read a LOT of webtoon comics, to be honest.  (Lore Olympus, Edith, True Beauty, and Sprit Fingers I’m looking at you.) I watched a lot of YouTube.  I contemplated why anyone in their right mind would purposefully make the decision to home school their children, it is soooo much work.  Hats off to you mommas that do that on the regular and make it work.  

In June things started to turn around. The virus cases went down enough that Allie was able to go to daycare and I was able to have at least one hour a day to spend working on something or just simply reading.  Again, I read entirely too many comics, my college coping mechanism was back in full force.  Also, I took a deep dive into K-Pop.  So.  Much.  BTS. But while my head was not together enough to write and sound remotely coherent I decided to work on something that I had told myself I would work on back in January and that was drawing.  Spending that lunch hour in front of a window at my favorite coffee shop simply concentrating on making lines on a page was probably the best thing for me right then.  It also jumpstarted my creativity when it came to more traditional art in general.  A very good decision for me most assuredly.  I haven’t drawn much since before Thanksgiving and probably won’t until after the first of the year probably as I’m back to work full force this week.  The drive is still there though. My fingers itch to dive back into my sketchbook and I can’t wait to hopefully work on some new finished pieces this coming year. 

It hasn’t all be doom and gloom either.  While we never went on our yearly family vacation I was able to take off the whole week of Thanksgiving and Christmas which has not happened in literal years.  I got a new horse for my birthday and I was accepted into an online gallery show for the month of January.  Click HERE to be taken to the show website also made the decision to start a new book to hopefully be published this coming year but I’ll talk about that in a separate blog post.  I also started reading some more challenging books again and not just trash or fluff to ignore the world while it burned around our ears.  I finished Demian by Hermann Hesse and The Stranger by Albert Camus and started 1984 by George Orwell.  (I don’t know if that last one was a good choice as it mirrors reality just a little too much right now, but maybe I can chalk it up to research for the dystopian society we seem to be headed towards at an alarming pace.) I also cooked (so much cooking) and started some sewing projects.

I just wanted to take a moment to check-in as this new year starts and tell you how much all of you that read my blog means to me.  I haven’t been as active in the last two years but hopefully, 2021 will be that year when I can finally get my motor back running again.  The past two years have been rough, but there’s always tomorrow to dust yourself off and get back running again.  I wish you all the best my lovelies.  Happy New Year and know that someone in a little part of Mississippi loves and cares for you.  

Talk to you again soon my lovelies.