Housebound, 41

Have you heard of Nella Last and the Mass Observation project? The project recruited 500 volunteers (observers) to keep diaries recording daily life in Britain during the Second World War but actually ran until the mid 60s. Nella’s first entry was headed Housewife, 49, which was her age at the time. You might remember a TV version starring the late Victoria Wood from about ten years ago.

Back in 2009 I began to dip my toe in to blogging. We all chatted away like the internet was our living room. We looked through each other’s book shelves, saw what everyone else was having for tea. We exchanged knitting patterns and ideas for journalling. I remember my first blogging friend. I think she lived locally and we used to talk about our lives, our attempts at growing vegetables, what we were reading. We were going to meet up but it never happened. I don’t know what she is up to now but my interactions with people (I refuse to call it content) from that period contain a wistfulness for something more, I don’t think our lives felt that big. Maybe that’s why we were writing. The intimacy of social media was still novel. I had yet to experience the jealousy that comes when you catch a glimpse of a stranger’s life and immediately covet their Farrow and Balled dining room, Doc Marten boots or Kilim rug. Blogging was for connection not for the highlight reel. The goal was friendship, not to sell a lifestyle.

Now imagine if you fell asleep in 2009 and woke up today. A global pandemic, a massive civil rights movement, the resurgence of feminism and the climate crisis. TikTok for God’s sake. Seismic shifts in the world at large and the way we interact with each other. No one is wearing low rise jeans anymore and your flip phone is so obsolete it may as well be whittled from a piece of bog oak.

Everything feels big now doesn’t it?

I miss talking about small things. I have dozens of saved posts that I’ve never hit publish on. When I meander on to my various platforms, I feel like I should stand at a mic and address my followers on what I think about today’s news as if I have influence. As if i’m not preaching to the converted in the majority of cases. And I don’t want to think of them as platforms, they are my sofas, my tables laid with nibbles, wine and candles. A cake if I’ve managed to get to the supermarket.

I keep thinking that if I just talk about art or creativity, align my focus so intensely with my professional self, it will be easier. But that feels narrow and constricting. Really I just want to be Nella Last, sending pencil written missives out into the ether, sometimes downhearted, sometimes joyous, involved in my community and getting on with life. Last had no idea of the impact her diaries would have or that they would offer a valuable glimpse in to women’s lives at a time of great social and economic change. Her story unfolded quietly against a backdrop of air raids and rationing, ours are unfolding in face masks and latex gloves whilst we wrestle our personal narratives into consumable brands. I’m tired of wrestling so i’m going to stop. Make yourselves comfy, i’ll put the kettle on.

Stumbling and Flailing

I actually signed up for a Squarespace website nearly year ago and i have been tinkering with it at intermittent intervals since then. This space is by no means finished. It feels like inviting people people in to your home when you only have a cheap Ikea table and a beanbag. But, as a recovering perfectionist, sending an unfinished, very simple website live is good practice. It’s the content that counts right? Over the next few months I will be adding more images of my work and more blog posts about my creative journey over the past few years. But i'm not promising anything! There is more major surgery to come in July because this endometriosis thing is just never ending and I will be putting rest and recovery first.

One if the hardest aspects of this process has little to do with action and doing but the question of which of my old posts to leave live. It’s very obvious that I became caught up in the Creative White Woman blogging surge in mid-noughties. There is a lot of over-sharing here, both about physical and mental illness and, as I will be primarily using this as a site to showcase my work, I spent a lot of time wondering if I should remove those posts. But the thing is, it’s all intrinsically linked. I can’t separate my creativity from who I am and I wouldn’t want to. Beneath all of the posts here on this website is the story of a woman finding her feet as a painter and learning to embody her life, even if it was messy and uncomfortable at the time. And if you decide to scroll through the old posts you will also find a lot of Awkward Art. Artists do not emerge fully formed wearing perfectly ripped skinny jeans and knackered converse trainers, portfolio and personal narrative firmly established. We usually spend years flailing about in a sea of failed paintings and grandiose ideas (BTW, i’m still there). I think it’s important that if you are new at the creativity thing and you’ve landed here on this page, that you see the stumbling process behind the Good Stuff. I hope you’ll join me for the next leg of the journey!

The Quiet Rebellion

I can remember it as if it where yesterday and not 12 years ago. I am 25 and sat in my bedroom in the house where I grew up. The carpet is a deep forest green and the walls are purple, orange and yellow, a patchwork history of sudden teenage impulses to redecorate with whatever paint was handy in the garage. I am back in my hometown after graduating with a degree in Fine Art from Hull and the inertia and boredom has been creeping in slowly over the past few years. So has the fear that I am somehow missing out. I have a social life, sure. Mainly centred around my job as a bookseller in our local branch of Ottakars. We go out for drinks and curries and bicker over who gets to look after the fiction section. We talk about books and music. I am always home at a decent hour and the rest of my free time is spent studiously revising for more exams having decided to launch myself through another degree, this one in English Literature.

I can see myself very clearly. I am sat in front of an old white laminate dressing table with ornate golden handles. In the second drawer down I have hidden a small pouch of Golden Virginia rolling tobacco, some papers and a pack of menthol filter tips. I am contemplating a cigarette but 1) I don't want one and 2) I have no clue how to roll one. Not for the first time in my life, I realise I have no idea what the fuck I am doing. This is my ten-years-too-late attempt at being a teenage rebel only no one really gives a shit and my brother will only raise a quizzical eyebrow when, four months later, I hand over my still unused stash.

"This tobacco has gone dry" he says, mooching off.

I was about to write that I can think of other occasions where I have made some abortive attempt at behaving outrageously but, in truth, I am short of anecdotes. I have never lost a shoe on a night out. I find one night stands to be unsatisfying- a bit like reading the blurb of a novel without being able to start chapter one. I need acres of time on my own and I am always the first person to leave the party. Being a typical rebel is not my forte. I am usually the one helping people into taxis at the end of the night. If I'm not already in bed, obviously.

The funny thing is, over the last few years something new is occurring. I am now getting the concerned looks and the tuts. Only, not because I'm on Facebook falling over drunkenly in high heels, or rocking up to family gatherings hung over and three hours late. It appears to be because I remain single, childless, unmarried and decidedly not unhinged and frantic by my situation. I lay in bed on Sunday mornings eating chocolate, reading books and thinking (Sunday morning is my thinking time), sometimes I eat cornflakes for dinner and sometimes I spend two hours preparing an elaborate feast for myself. I have actually attempted to make most of the meals on my Pinterest food board. What I haven't done is spend my thirties travelling extensively and devoting my time to humanitarian causes, something the culture has deemed an acceptable alternative to child bearing, as if by selflessly dedicating my time to caring for others I can keep my feminine nurturing responsibilities topped up to an acceptable level and avoid the whispered judgement of selfish. Instead, I have used my time creatively and quietly. That this appears to be an act of non-conformity on a par with running away to join the circus, living in a tent in the woods or eating roadkill seems to suggest that feminism still has some way to go.

Of course there are times when I wish I was happily coupled up and mortgaged to the hilt. Usually when it's time to change the duvet cover or attend another wedding of quaint table settings and sympathetic glances. But mostly I remember that I had that once and it nearly broke my spirit.

Anyway, this life seems to suit me quite well and I am considerably more at ease spending my Saturday nights in than I ever was holding a cigarette.

The places we heal

The first thing that hits you is the wall of green. The change between the English landscape of Shropshire and that of Wales is marked and it is usually just beyond Welshpool that I finally breathe all the way out. There is suddenly more air and more space. The hills and mountains immediately rise to meet you and homesteads of any kind are few and far between.

The first time I visited Machynlleth was in 2009. I had moved back in with my parents only a few short months earlier. Dad's fishing trip to Wales was an annual affair and in recent years my mum had started going with him. They were staying in a little cottage on the river Dulas and, reluctant to leave me on my own after a shattering break up, had convinced me that an airbed on the living room floor of a tiny spider infested cottage was preferable to moping around an empty suburban semi, obsessively checking my phone.

The thing about despair is that it often throws in to sharp relief life's simple joys when you start to recover; the first time you actually taste the food you are eating, the feeling of the sun on your back, the smell of parched grass and that intoxicating sip of wine at the exact moment you want it.
My first visit to Mach was like that. My dad is similar to me in that he can be quiet for long periods of time and seems to draw nourishment from the country's wild places; rivers, seas, forests and woods. He panics in busy crowds and hates excessive noise. His mission during that first holiday was to take his daughter around his favourite hidden spots. The silent glassy pool where the trout jump in the gloaming, the dilapidated barn and its resident owl, occasionally gliding out over the fields, hunting at dusk. The constant musky smell of foxes. There was soul medicine everywhere.

Letting go is not a single act but a constant process of reminding yourself to put down the things that do not belong to you. I have discarded, buried and torched pieces of my past all over that landscape. Sometimes repeatedly.

I have returned every year since and each year has bought me closer to myself and closer to the person I want to be. Each year, in exchange for my offerings, I arrive home with a bag full of truth however inconvenient and cumbersome it might feel at the time. This year I returned feeling freer and more excited about the future than I have in a long time.

On knowing when not to push

As I type this I have four small pieces of unfinished work waiting to be completed in order for them to be hung as part of an exhibition at the end of this week. The reasons they are unfinished are myriad and typical. Due to some major deadlines looming at work work (as opposed to home work) I won't be able to take any time away from the day job to complete them. Just one of the many joys of trying to run two careers simultaneously.

So the situation asks the following of me: do I pull a few all-nighters and get the work complete or do I bow down to circumstance and concede defeat in this case?

A complicated enough question to be sure but have I mentioned that I am a high functioning, controlling perfectionist?

I feel like I have been here many times before. It's the queasy feeling of being at the bottom of a steep hill and knowing that, before you can relax, there is a hike in front of you. I have this feeling when I wake up on a Monday and realise that alongside the day job, there are three classes to teach, two social engagements and an extra evening to work at the gallery for a preview. It's the feeling of being in a sorry mess entirely of my own making because I have said yes to too many things. And I say yes from the best possible hopeful excited place. A place that wants to cherish my friends, exhibit my work, support other artists and generally just have a lovely time. The thing is, these days there is always a hill and there is always a hike. I don't think it should be like that.

So, how am I supposed to intuitively know when to push and when to let go?

Because to me letting go feels like failing. It feels like flaking out. It feels like sorry and I'm not good enough. It feels like letting someone down. It feels like letting me down.

I think the answer to this might be in how I've phrased the first question- maybe it's not about bowing down to circumstances and conceding defeat. Maybe it's about committing to taking care of your self in spite of everything life throws at you and the stuff you throw at yourself.

What if instead letting go felt like the most glorious white space of nothing? What if it felt like honouring the body and its shouty protests and resting? What if I don't need to complete four new pieces of work because, hang on! I have plenty of work I can hang instead?! It doesn't have to be shiny, new and brilliant all the time.

What if instead it feels like Rach, it's okay because this isn't your only chance.

Because here is the thing: in the past, every time I pushed to achieve something it's because I believed that the opportunity to do so wouldn't come around again. And that maybe it had been a mistake for me to get even this opportunity in the first place so I had better grab it and make it count before they find out.

I believed that I was on some kind of trajectory and that if I paused, even for a second, I would simply drop out of orbit and find myself back to where I was five years ago. On my sofa, two stone heavier, pizza in one hand, wine in the other.

Todays' exercise in rewriting my (skewed, neurotic, scarcity complex addled) belief system is one of the first steps in learning to trust myself. To trust that I have my back and I can rely on my own internal HR department to let me know when I need to ease up and book some holiday. And getting to the weekend with a gigantic caffeine hangover because I pushed myself to finish some paintings is the quickest way to undermine that and prove otherwise.

So I am going to throw a little white space in to my week. Eat something delicious for dinner. Hang out at my desk and see if I can maybe complete one painting whilst watching Harry Potter. Wrap some old work ready to dispatch and have an early night, simply because I'm tired and I feel like it. And I trust myself.

Blackbird singing

Out of the office window I can see the canal boats drift past and the café tables begin to fill with people. Not people enjoying post work drinks as it's a bit too early, but coffee drinkers, the retired with their papers and their halves of bitter. The young men who come out of the woodwork when the English weather turns sunny. It's barely 17° but the smell of sweat is lingering and there are pints of lager and any minute now someone will remove an item of clothing.

Because I've had an extended weekend, I have returned to hundreds of emails. I quickly feel anxious and overwhelmed and then I remember my mantra for when the day job fills me with feelings of less than and not enough. I am just a woman doing things on her job description. I have many variations of this mantra, for use in times of stress, when a panic attack begins to prickle at the back of my neck I am just a woman walking across a car park, I am just a woman buying milk, I am just a woman sending an email. I find reducing my circumstances to the most basic of descriptions infinitely soothing.

Upstairs in one of the conference rooms a local singing quartet rehearse. The songs filter through to my office and though I can't quite make out the words I know them anyway:

Blackbird singing in the dead of night
Take these broken wings and learn to fly
All your life
You were only waiting for this moment to arise

I am thinking about the half bottle of yellow, resiny wine left in my fridge. Tonight I will chop vegetables and make stew. After that I might write for a while. I will finish a painting. I will use my voice even though to do so feels fraught with a hundred unseen evils as well as those I feel familiar with; disappointment, failure, judgement. I will do it anyway. I am just a woman writing a blog. I am just a blackbird singing.

Writing it out loud

The last month of 2014 and the first two of 2015 have bought me to my knees.
I am a heart on my sleeve kind of person, melancholy and introspective and, like a lot of people, I always find Januarys and Februarys tough. They are tough.

I don't talk about my experience of anxiety and depression here because I am a control freak. I like to keep things in their little boxes. This blog is for art and joy and looking forwards. But I want to be whole and in order to be whole the bad must be embraced along with the good. And the bad very often moves us forwards and allows us to grow in ways we never would have anticipated and I'm afraid that if I don't talk about this my voice will continue to fade.

So this is a post dedicated to the blip, the bit-of-a-wobble, the feeling-a-bit-down, the black dog and the blues. And here are some things about me and my experiences of late...

I am incredibly sensitive but recently I feel like everyone else got handed armour to see them through life and that, not only did I not get that armour, I am missing a layer of skin as well. I am a bundle of exposed nerve endings. I cry, like, a lot. Over anything. Something on the news, a line in a book, it doesn't take much to set me off. I cry when I am angry, I cry when I am tired. I cry when I am stressed. I cry when I feel vulnerable and unsafe and also when I am joyful and moved. Sometimes it feels like a superpower, to be so in tune with everything around me. Sometimes I would just like to be able to get through an episode of Paul O'Grady's For The Love Of Dogs.

I suffer from anxiety. I think I always have. Over the last few years it has got quite bad. This is because of big, good life shifts. And some other not so nice stuff too. My brain has wired itself a certain way. Actually- I have wired it a certain way, and now I am trying to unwire it. CBT, mindfulness, meditation. I'm chucking everything at it. Some of it is actually sticking.

Sometimes I can convince myself that not only will everyone I love die horribly but that it's happening right this second. I can get to the weekend and have grieved my loved ones several times over. I will have written countless mental eulogies. It's exhausting. I call them panic attacks but really they are more like grief attacks. Terminology aside, it's pretty much the same thing that's happening- cortisol and adrenaline flood my system and then my body struggles to right itself.

The results of this are long weeks when all I want to do is sleep. I can't seem to finish the page of a book. That's usually when I begin to realise that something is very wrong. Not when I am sat in bath crying and hyperventilating but when I lose the ability to read. When I get in from work I put on my pyjamas and get in to bed. I get around 10 hours sleep a night.

My body has lots of strange reactions to the hormones flooding my system. I get a horrible rash on my legs. I have psoriasis behind my left ear. Despite teenage levels of bed rest, put quite simply, I look like hell. I self isolate. Friends email or text me are you okay? I haven't heard from you in a while...

So yeah. January was a lot of fun this year. But some things have helped and continue to help...

I rewrite the internal monologue that berates me for being in this place again simply because it's not the same place. Or rather, it is but the view is slightly different. I feel that each twist into darkness brings with it the possibility of finding out something new and valuable, then my moods begin to drift upwards and the sun shines again only this time I know something deeply important about myself. Some new layer has been revealed. I worry that I romanticise these journeys into the shadow self because I make it sound indulgent because it's not all golden and we don't all have a flowery vocabulary to hang on this experience and God, some people are really struggling out there and don't have access to my Neals' Yard sponsored therapy centre with its aromatherapy diffusers and Buddha cards. Who the fuck am I to talk about anxiety, I don't even know what it's like to have real problems. Sometimes my internal monologue adopts the tone of a right wing Daily Mail reader. All this aside, these days there is a lot less self judgement and more self noticing. A little more kindness and a lot more humour because, frankly, the shit my brain comes up with? It's so absurd it has to be funny.

I take a long look at my eating habits. Sugar, caffeine and alcohol all exacerbate my symptoms and I am quick to abuse them when I'm feeling delicate. I try to be gentle with myself. I notice that the times I reach for the sugar correspond with the times happily coupled up folks would usually be getting a hug. Coming home from work, in bed on Saturday and Sunday mornings. I am replacing physical affection with food. My instinct is to berate myself for this but instead I try talking to myself as I would a friend, Rach, you have been single for years. Of course you want some affection. If chocolate helps, have the fucking chocolate. But maybe get the really good quality dark stuff so you're not sending your blood sugar levels loopy.

I reach out if I can. And if I can't reach I shuffle closer to the people I need to be around until I can eventually tap their arm. My mum. My doctor. Sometimes reaching isn't a grand gesture but a series of tiny movements. Last year I tried anti depressants for the first time having been offered them six times before. I don't know what to say other than that they worked. Very quickly in fact. I remember lying in bed one morning and thinking I might plant a herb garden and then I actually got up and planted a herb garden. I didn't agonise over where to by soil from, how I was going to get it home, whether I would accidentally kill everything, what I would wear to the garden centre etc etc. I had parsley and thyme and rosemary all summer. Taking anti depressants is a very personal choice for people and, for many many reasons, I didn't stay on them too long. I am very high functioning and I say this without any pride at all because I struggle on even when it injures me further to do so. But I do feel that as long as I am getting out of bed and still finding joy I will be okay. And I know that if I need them there is a doctor on hand to walk me through it.

I want to end this long ramble by saying that I am really okay. During the last month I have felt my heart swell a bit with each new day and this weekend I feel good, actually really good. I am reading proper books again. Big ones with weighty themes. I bake cakes, last weekend I even made hot cross buns. I feel lighter than I have in months. Also, I've just seen the trailer for Pitch Perfect 2. So really, things are looking up.

The Jam Factory- Oxford

 

 

 

 

 

 

After most of last year was spent either ill or healing I decided that the end of 2014 was going to be spectacular. I had a big exhibition of my work and then threw myself a birthday party in December- something I have not done since the age of 7. As I've probably said before, I'm a classic introvert so the thought of having a party in my honour and inviting lots of people initially caused me to break out in hives. And then I remembered promising that I would try and inch my way out of my comfort zone and that I do actually like my friends and family. Of course I then had to spend a week alone not talking to anyone, listening to Radiohead and reading quietly, by myself. 

 

One of the amazing things that came out of the show at The Mill was that I got offered a chance to exhibit at The Jam Factory in Oxford, a venue I like enormously for it's wonderful food, homemade cakes, Blood Orange San Pellegrino and diverse exhibition programme. It's up until the 6th of April so if you're in the area pop in! I'm exhibiting with another wonderful local artist, Tina Burnett. I wish I had some images of her work but it seems I was too self obsessed to take any on the day. It's lovely though, I promise.

 

 

There's so much I want to tell you all about the last two months, so much about the last year in fact, which has been hard in ways I could never have imagined but also revealing and celebratory and cleansing. I don't feel like a new person but I do feel like a pared down and distilled version of the old me. More potent, more heady. Less watered down communion wine, more garden shed, throat stripping homebrew.

 

 

Slipping into autumn

I usually love this time of year. I love the colours and smells of autumn. The rainy weekends spent lying in bed reading. The flat full of lit candles smelling of amber, sandalwood and frankincense. Endless homemade soup. Butternut squash fatigue (this is actually a thing).

This year's autumn has bought with it an unexpectedly bitter after taste. A sense of melancholy and the pressing weight of things not yet achieved. The quiet and niggling (and completely false, fear-based) worry that since I haven't spent the last five years creating a family I should have achieved something amazing in its place. Yes, I have a bad dose of the shoulds. Symptoms include lethargy, ingratitude, endless compare and despair and, in my case, the panic buying of kimonos. Because if I'm a single creatrix, a woman about town, I should be more bohemian and should possess more bohemian clothes. Linen smocks for example. Alas H and M don't sell those.

Luckily the shoulds are treatable with warm baths, getting outside, the last of the year's flowers, painting and nice socks. I'm prescribing myself a lifetime's supply of treatment.

Soft in September

"Soft" was one of the last August break prompts and I really wanted to write a post based around this simple word. I knew what I wanted to talk about and the image I wanted to capture: my belly.
My belly has been through many many things this last couple of years. It has been squishy, slightly floppy, taught with exercise and now it is soft and peppered with what look like tiny shrapnel wounds. Seven of them after two rounds of surgery to remove endometriosis.

Every now and then i will catch my breath and think gosh, what a year.
It has been a year of awkward consultations with gynaecologists who still can't say the word vagina and refer to it as "down there".
It has been a year of imagining my body furring up like an old kettle, endometriosis as lady limescale.
A year of shedding and removing and forcibly excising that which does not belong. Tumours and cysts. Shame. Trauma. The way an old abusive relationship can lodge itself in the body and spoil every piece of attention from the opposite sex. Every cross roomed glance. Every attempt at somehow making life bigger.
A year of internal shifts.
Literally. (My uterus and left ovary pulling itself towards my hip joint, not the onset of arthritis as I had feared).
And figuratively. (My capacity to give a shit greatly reduced, the habit of needlessly apologising disappearing like smoke, my voice returning, shaky but still there. My new Fuck It attitude).
A year of slowing down and lowering expectations. Of realising they were already pretty low and then the sudden impatience to be better! Now!
A year that involved nearly 7 hours of surgery altogether. And my mum crying as they wheeled me back from theatre because no one could tell her where I was and what had taken so long. And me. Off-my-face delirious.
Of itchy compression stockings. Of drips and morphine. Of anaesthetic and the terrible things it does to your hair. Of Pinterest. Thank the moon and stars for Pinterest.
Of researchers standing at your bedside the day after surgery to thank you for taking part in a trial because they had never had so many samples from one person ("we had to keep running downstairs to get more dishes!")
Of crying in the middle of Aberystwyth town centre because the tiredness has taken over again and making it from the bench to Costa is too much of an ask. And, God, it's been 5 weeks since surgery shouldn't I be feeling better by now? (Yes, I really thought that)
A year of my belly changing shape almost continuously depending on the time of the month, bloated one minute, flat as a pancake the next. Post surgery weight loss as the workouts stopped and internal healing began to kick in. It's something they don't tell you- that kind of healing? It burns a shitload of calories.
And now the belly is pale and soft and benign. Calm like the moon. And I am making a conscious effort to rewrite the years' script as summer chills into autumn.

The first time I weeded the garden and didn't collapse into exhaustion.
The mild online flirtation I was brave enough to indulge in at the beginning of the year even though it didn't come to anything. It didn't matter. I said yes.
The family with their cakes and small, sticky affectionate toddlers.
The tribe and the Glastonbury trip in a few weeks. There will be crystals and incense and whole foods.
The way my body has mended and with that, the not minding that it's changed shape at all. Not minding that it's rounder in places. That it has scars. Its recovery a small miracle to me.
The sunshine and the seaside and the water. Sitting on the sand like Barbara Hershey in Beaches. Only in Aberdovey. With Ice cream.
The healing. All of it. Messy though it is.

Confessions of a straight lace

This is my 2013 vision board.
Owing to various circumstances I didn't finish it until last week.
I've had the images stashed away for ages, the words rolling around my head. I know how I want this year to feel.
The thing is this: I'm worried about that word Wild. I don't think I am capable of being Wild. Not really.
That woman up there, on that board, she is so intimidating to me right now.
I was teaching my watercolour class yesterday. We were painting images of rambling gardens. Lovely English cottage gardens. Lupins, poppies, alliums. Little stone benches. Willow trees bowing in a light June breeze and little gateways hidden behind over grown foliage. I had one of those rare moments where you actually recognise your own contentment at the time you are feeling it. I had found a little patch of sunlight to sit in. There was the sound of paintbrushes in water and I think I might have heard a cookoo in the distance.
On Monday I will pop over to Hornton, the village my mum comes from. A lot of my family still live there and there will be proper Mayday celebrations. There will be a Maypole. Homemade cake and cider in the pub garden.
I don't know how to be that woman; wild, unapologetic, natural and brave, in these quaint settings. That little word. It just popped into my head without me giving it a huge amount of thought as to what it meant to me. And, of course, in my woefully naive way, I have become worried that it might mean going out when I don't want to, drinking when I don't want to, talking to people when I don't want to, talking to men when I don't want to. I'm worried it might mean accidentally becoming something I'm not. Which I have accidentally done before.

___

Ok. It's three hours later. I very often write blog posts that I don't publish, mainly because they are a bit open ended.
I have decided to define what this word means to me.
Wild.
It means being slightly more audacious.
It means apologising less.
It means tending to my own needs before everyone else's.
It means listening to my body more.
It means calling people out on their bullshit. Quietly and politely. And then probably running away and hiding.
It means, actually, just doing what I bloody well want to do. Without reference to any of the dozens of people I nod at and say hello to as I walk from one end of this small town to the other.

Is the sun shining yet?

Today I am blogging from my sick bed. I seem to have spent a large part of this year feeling distinctly under the weather until last week when I well and truly hit the wall and under the weather became 'flu. Like proper grown up 'flu. If I wasn't feeling so ill I would be quite impressed at my body's ability to completely floor me in this unexpected way. I started January in such high spirits but the last few months have seen me forced to slow down a bit. Like everyone else, I am blaming the weather. Has there been a winter quite like this in recent memory?

 

I am feeling a bit better today and just wanted to post some images of the work students did on my Handmade Art Journals workshop a few weekends ago. The weather was freezing but everyone made it in and we had such a fun weekend playing with paints, inks, fabric scraps and found imagery.

One of the very best things about teaching these workshops is how inspiring I find them. For me teaching isn't about me imparting information and students copying what I do; it's more like an exchange of ideas. They take the techniques I show them in whole new directions, they filter them through their own unique skill set and come up with things I would never have thought of. I always leave these workshops completely amazed at the beauty of the work that's produced as well as buzzing with new ideas of my own. It highlights one of the things I have always believed: that creativity doesn't exist in a vacuum, it needs feeding and watering regularly and teaching does that for me.

 

Small, brave things

I started writing a post the other day only to realise I was beginning to write about a recent dentist appointment. I paused and thought to myself what's going on here? What am I not talking about?
I have a habit of disappearing from this space when life gets a bit crazy and I don't know how to process it. I don't like to come here and complain.

The thing is half of the people I work with are being made redundant. This is the direct result of a massive funding cut and the process behind it has been rumbling on for about two years now. To say it has begun to take its toll is an understatement. The people leaving have been my mentors and friends for the last seven years of my life. The resulting atmosphere in my place of employment is shocking. It's bad. There are arguments. Tears. We are all tired. The staff that are left are facing a massive restructure.

And all this means that i'm circling my life, questioning things, wondering what i'm doing. It is not comfortable. It is hard. Things have been the same for a long time. In July I will have been in my flat for three years. The flowers I planted in my garden are spreading, the delphiniums and poppies growing taller with each passing year. In happy moments I would say that it's been three years of healing and creating and unearthing myself from beneath layers and layers of crap. In these happy moments I would say I've been building a life. A real life. One where I don't need to make myself small. One where I can be myself. In bleaker moments I would say I have built a fortress. With armoured guards and a high city wall. I would say I have been hiding. Hiding from people. Hiding from the world. Hiding from my potential. I know this voice in my head is not to be trusted, it's the small, scared part of me trying to keep me safe.

These thoughts have been rolling around my head since before Christmas and my first response was a typically dramatic one: I need to quit my job! I need to move somewhere new! I need to get out of this small town!

But of course the problem isn't where I live or what I do. It's how I approach my life. I'm sick of being someone that things happen to. I want to feel like i'm creating the life I want. I want to be awake.

So, being someone naturally inclined to making plans and taking practical measures to fix things, I have drawn up a list. It is called Rachel's Awesome List Of Small, Brave Things To Do In 2013 None Of Which Involve Massive Lifestyle Changes Or The Dramatic Quitting Of Ones Job. I wrote it down three weeks ago and here it is, unedited, exactly as my brain spewed it out.

1) Get the tattoo. Seriously woman, stop procrastinating and just do it.
2) Go to a retreat, specifically this one in October.
3) Travel somewhere by myself, even if it's just to Birmingham shopping.
4) Take an e-course. One for me. So, not Manual Handling, Safe Use of Display Screen Equipment or Health and Safety in the Office. I have taken all of those e-courses this year and they don't count.
5) Blog more often. Once a week. Don't censor yourself.
6) Find the most amazing vintage leather jacket.
7) Read more. Which ironically means I have to give up the book club.
8) Eat fruit and veg that's in season.
9) Flirt Goddammit.
10) Paint the living room white.
11) During the summer, when it's hot, take blankets outside in the evening. Eat outside. Light candles.
12) Invite people over for dinner more often.
13) Stop freaking out about friending people on Facebook. It's no biggie.
14) Start plotting out the novel. Do it my own way. This can include images, maps, poems. The linear way clearly isn't working.
15) Dream and write it down.
16) Buy some really cool jewellery from Etsy.

So there we have. My manifesto for this year. I've started researching number one. Number two is booked. I will do number three on Thursday. I have a week off work and plans to buy a tin of paint and I am beginning to lower the drawbridge.

Lessons in abundance courtesy of Wilkins Micawber

"Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen pounds nineteen and six, result: happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result: misery"

Wilkins Micawber in David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

I've had this quote rolling around my head for a couple of weeks. I have been thinking a lot about abundance. It's a word that's thrown around sections of the blogging community with what seems like wild abandon. And I'm not really sure I know what it means. Or at least what it means to me. I'm pretty sure that when I'm vision boarding or asking the universe for stuff that I'm supposed to be requesting abundance. Along with the perfect pair of skinny jeans. And the perfect vintage leather jacket. And a never ending supply of Cadbury's mini eggs.

When my relationship imploded four years ago I had to move back home to my parents, finding my own place to live was an impossibility since I was at my over draft limit and my credit card was... well. Let's just say it wasn't good. It feels quite hard to admit that. I think a dysfunctional relationship with money is quite a modern problem and the shame surrounding it is something we don't discuss very often.

Anyway, I lived with mum and dad for a year and saved my arse off. I eventually found myself a fantastic flat as well as financially solvent and sensible. But it is reaaaaally hard at the moment. I have a full time job and I also teach five hours a week. The classes take about ten to fifteen hours of my own time to plan. I am also trying to justify calling myself an artist. If it gets to the end of the month and I have £20 left in my account it feels like an Olympic games sized victory. If I'm £20 overdrawn I feel irresponsible, frivolous and lacking in all areas. The shoulds start to crowd in.

I Should have a better paid job by now
I Should have a fabulous boyfriend to help me out with all this stuff
Should I even still be renting at my age?
I should be able to manage my finances so that my mum isn't gifting me care packages of Persil and Cilit Bang at the end of the month

Oh, it's really fun in my head right now.

The thing is, the difference between victory and failure is roughly £40. A mere forty quid. That's quite a small margin. And it's the same with the my perception of time and how much I have for my own work. I've been thinking over the last couple of weeks that if I could just claw back my Thursday evenings for painting that would make a massive difference. That's three hours. Just three hours. When I have to get up for work my alarm is set for 7.30am. It's a Herculean effort to schlep my way across cold Victorian tiles to the shower. I'm grumpy most of the morning and tend to take it out on the Tesco's self service machine ("Please take your items" "Yes! I know! Give me a fucking chance!"). On a day off I naturally sleep until about 8am and it feels like the biggest luxury in the world. So the difference between swearing in supermarkets and approaching the day with a zen-like attitude of calm and acceptance comes down to thirty minutes. Thirty minutes people.

I'm not sure if it makes me feel frustrated or hopeful that I'm dealing with such small margins. Apparently abundance isn't about a luxury cruises, although it can be I suppose. I just need to find thirty minutes extra sleep a day, £40 a month and three hours a week. And that's it. It's about having enough. And a little bit left over. And it's about being hopeful too. As Micawber himself says something will turn up.

Scenes from a Sunday

This weekend saw me forced to slow down because of the weather. I cancelled and rescheduled a workshop. I painted feathers and ivy covered trees. I stared out of the window. I made stew and risotto (I love making risotto, the act of stirring something for 30 minutes makes me feel very zen). I lolled on the sofa and watched copious amounts of Sherlock and Jonathan Creek (please don't judge me, I love Jonathan Creek). I stared out of the window some more. I ran out of chocolate and had to shuffle 200 yards 'round the corner to Tescos. It was an effort. I planned my first tattoo. I shopped for bracelets on Etsy. I started reading a book that I can tell, even only 50 pages in, I am going to love. I blogged. I paid attention. It was all good. What did you do? Did anyone build a snowman?

The free-range artist

Christmas is over and I'm finally working on a few paintings. Today I finished one that has been languishing for well over six months. I also started another. That felt good. I did all this fuelled by double chocolate and raspberry brownies. I decided a couple of days ago that January would be the month I cut down on sugar. That lasted then.

I don't think I ever really liked the idea of having a pristine white studio space, shared with other hipsterish artists, seriously working away whilst we talked about gallery representation and listened to Autechre. I think I do much better working out of my living room, on my own, glass of cava just out of shot, Boromir getting shot by orcs on the TV in the background (and then dying beautifully) for what seems like the fifth time this Christmas. (Note to self, must find new box sets to watch whilst painting).

Across these two tables (one on loan from my brother, one from Ikea £14) are the collection of random and useful objects helping me work at the moment.

Candles, always.
Pile of Moleskine notebooks for journalling, notes, poetry etc
Pile of handmade paper.
Yellow A5 Finsbury Filofax (Xmas prezzie from mum and dad)
Nourishing reading matter.
Crime novel (January is all about crime fiction)
Brushes, paints etc
Feathers
Bright pink poster paint
Karma bubble bath bar from Lush (it smells amazing and every now and then I catch a whiff of it and just think mmmmm)
Knitted owl gloves made by mum. Slightly too small. They limit my hand movements somewhat but i am determined to break them in.
A little stuffed and stitched handmade mouse. Gifted to me by one of the tutors at work late last year when I was in the middle of a stress related meltdown.
Sharpie markers
Washi tape (a growing addiction)
Dirty paint water
Earphones
Course file for my classes
Pile of magazines inc County Living (even though I live in the middle of a large town) and The Simple Things. Both are essential for decent vision boarding and daydreaming about cosy fires, woodland walks, suppers that include all manner of rare and lovely foodstuffs and rugged yet sensitive blokes in fairisle jumpers.
Broken glass lampshade (cracked side facing the wall)

There. You can keep your sparsely furnished converted warehouses. This is all I need.

So, I'd say it's been a pretty normal sort of week...

This is the view from my office window. I took this photograph in late October, the tang of wood smoke in the air, the leaves beginning to fall. There were about four days in a row like this and I remember thinking that I must try and take a picture before the weather breaks. It's very picturesque where I work and despite a workload that's teetering on impossible, I still spend quite a bit of time starting out of my window. Dogs on canal boats are one the happiest sights in mid-summer; some of them are so panicked and confused, pacing up and down, whining, others are like "yeah, I do this all the time, I'm totally cool with this moving on water thing, in fact I'm just off to find a gastro pub, do you like my jaunty red scarf?".
Anyway, moving on.
This was the sight last Thursday. Not quite so picturesque.

 For the second time in five years I found myself wading around in flood water, trying to save furniture, artwork, booze and paperwork. A dozen or so people consisting of management committee members, Mill staff, district and county council staff and the fire service all stood around in seven inches of canal and river water eating tiny tubs of rapidly defrosting ice cream is an image that will stay with me for a while.
Thanks to the extremely quick reaction of everybody we are reopening on Tuesday. But it has been an odd week. Core staff were moved to an Oxfordshire County Council building in town to undertake the massive admin that such a situation generates. It was so clean and shiny and new. We all stood there on Monday staring at the dishwasher in their staff room like savages discovering fire for the first time. Or my parents looking at my mobile phone ("yes, that's what happens when you touch the screen. What? Who have you accidentally friended?").
Quite aside from all this, I caught a cold. A really bad cold. Unsurprising given that I spent quite a lot of last weekend feeling damp and chilly. So it's a been a weekend of homemade chorizo, red pepper and lentil soup, chocolate, Lemsip, blankets and epic amounts of snot. I have also been making lots and lots of nice things- more on that when I can take some pictures in daylight.

Seed heads workshop

 

A happy day spent painting with a group of enthusiastic students. When I'm teaching I do tend to sit there sometimes and think "I can't believe I get paid to do this".

This kind of painting, the kind that pays tribute to the change in seasons, that asks you to respond the world around you, puts me right back in to the moment. After three months of drifting in and out of my life I have slipped quietly into autumn and, as the natural world winds down and prepares to sleep, I feel awake at last.

I had planned to spend the evening tidying the flat, exercising and making food in preparation for a colleague's leaving do tomorrow. However, I've paid a visit to my mum instead. She has wine. And homemade chicken soup.



The long road back from nowhere

I'm not really sure where I have been the last few months. I feel like I've been asleep for the majority of the summer; I drifted off somewhere around the end of June and woke up in late September. I have spent the last few weeks pulling myself together and trying to work out exactly what caused me to suddenly beat a retreat from the world. Things had been bad at work and I remember suddenly waking up in July feeling wretched and exhausted. And then it's all a bit of a blank. I took a lot of baths. Finished a few paintings. Grew some tomatoes. And finally came to the conclusion that I had put myself through a bit of a battle this past year.

My plan for 2012 was this: keep exercising (at least four times a week), carry on with writing the book, keep eating healthily, take on a bit more teaching to help with the bills, find true love, paint my living room, be more sociable, be prettier, be better at everything, sell lots of work etc etc. Add to this meditating regularly, visualising regularly and taming my relentless negative inner monologue and suddenly the sensible part of my brain (the one synapse not exercised and self-helped into a state of inertia) went

"Er, 'scuse me? This isn't a lot of fun. Is this how you wanted 2012 to go?"

And the rest of me (particularly my knackered shins) went "No, not especially". And so I took to my bed like a Victorian invalid. Only not really because I still had a full time job. Needless to say it turns out I had Some Issues To Process which I have been doing just like a healthy, modern, balanced woman should do. I'm sure it's all been very useful. The only thing with all this navel gazing is that you forget to pay attention to anything else. I can't remember when the first autumn leaf fell. I don't remember what I was doing during that late summer heat wave we had. I vaguely remember sketching Mevagissey harbour (see images). I'm pretty sure it rained in August but the rest...well. Who knows? And then I was reading through last summer's blog posts and everything about that time came back in a rush and I thought "this is why I do this! This is why I blog- it's my way of paying attention". So I have a new plan for the rest of 2012. Stay awake. Look. Smile. Write it down.

Collograph printmaking, part one

The first one was printed using intaglio inks and running it through the press, the other three were relief printed with block printing ink. More to come soon!