One of my kids struggles with addiction—has done since they were diagnosed with anorexia days before our youngest was born, fourteen years ago.
Both those offspring have birthdays this week and next, and the ongoing saga of relapse and struggle, when added to the pandemic, and the serious struggle of a nation to turn and examine its soul, is an exceptional time of pain.
I have a sweet post prepared for you—a beautiful inked map I drew for you of Emily Dickinson’s garden, with an audio tour you can call—and the more I try to post it, week by week, the more out of touch and irrelevant it seems, except there is peace to be had in returning to the garden.
One thing I will say: through all these years of wrangled struggle and real difficulty, at times I have felt guilty for pursuing art, writing, the real release in sketching and nature, and other analog joys like typewriter collecting.
But I have come to see it as not the indulgence I feared, but the lifesaver, the sanity protector, I needed. Not a waste of time at all.
If you are at your wit’s end and wonder where to turn, or if you have wished and hoped and longed for more time (you may have that on your hands now) or more talent and guts to try and draw, can I encourage you to take the plunge and start?
“[Art is] not the indulgence I feared, but the lifesaver, the sanity protector, I needed.”
Art Before Breakfast?
If it’s drawing you’re after and you feel you failed in the past to get even beginner level concepts, can I encourage you to try one of Danny Gregory’s resources, either Art Before Breakfast, or the recent book or course, How to Draw Without Talent?
This week I heard from two more friends who in the past I urged to try Gregory’s resources. One said, “Soooo awesome that you reached out because I have been thinking of you …. and DOING ART BEFORE BREAKFAST!!!!!”
My friend thought she was not talented enough. Not any more. She describes the experience as transformative. That made my day!
Click on either cover for the book at Amazon.
“Soooo awesome that you reached out because I have been thinking of you …. and DOING ART BEFORE BREAKFAST!!!!!”
A Book or a Course—or both
Click on the book cover, check out the video, or try as an online course at Sketchbook Skool.
There is always a reason to put off the dream, whatever your longed for creative pursuit.
Trying Times but Hold On
In what is for all of us some form of unprecedented trying time, cultivate the square you’re on.
Hold on to hope that it makes a difference—no matter the chaos ensuing around you.
And check back in a few days for your own copy of an ‘irrelevant but relevant’ trip to a peaceful garden and ‘an hour with Emily’ because I’m going to keep going and post it anyway.