Entering 2024.
I am over 6,000 miles and a year and a month away from my last blog post.
I have plenty of stories to tell but It’s best to just pick a few keys point today.
I last wrote in November of 2022 , from Japan.
In November 2022:
I’d lived in Japan, just outside Tokyo, for 21 years.
I worked as a full-time teacher for 21 years.
I’d been performing as a soloist for 20 years.
I’d taught dance weekly for 12 years, anywhere from two to ten classes a week.
On April 15th, 2023 I moved back to America.
On December 30th, 2023 I sit down to write this blog entry.
I am 48 years old.
I’m back in my homeland, in my home town, in my childhood home.
I’m not in Japan. I’m not working as a teacher. I’ve performed once since the move. I’m not teaching dance .
I am writing you from this maker’s nook I’ve created in my mother’s home where I live.
This not where I thought I’d be at this point in my life.
I spent a significant proportion of September feeling like my sense of self was missing. The building blocks of my core identity had shifted to drastically as had my surroundings.
And then, on October 26th,my father died.
I was there for his last breath alongside my two step-brothers and my step-mother, JoAnne, who’d been a wonderful wife to him for 40 years.
Much of what had been making me sad fell away. I didn’t have the extra tears. I had to set aside grief about my life to mourn a larger loss.
Now, December 2023, I sit down to write my first blog in over a year.
Me, December 2023
I’m ok.
I’m writing
Writing helps me absorb and process the roughest moments of my life. When I’m writing regularly I’m more emotionally balanced and happy. Writing has always been a way I connect with people.
Not every aspect of my identity has been challenged.
I’m an artist. That hasn’t ever gone away or been left behind.
I make things all the time.
I can’t remember a time in my life where I didn’t make time to create.
I’m always thinking about how physical objects can be changed, manipulated and expressed. I’m constantly working with my hands and fingers.
To create is a compulsion and a source of joy for me.
It’s what drives me. It brings me highs and helps me absorb and process the roughest moments of my life.
I love to share my creative knowledge with others, exposing and explaining my process in case it helps them feel the joy I do in making things.
Not only does creating art bring me great joy, I’m also very good at it. I’m technically and aesthetically skiled. I’m also good at sharing it and explaining the process of creating.
Part of why I moved back here was to dedicate myself more to my art. I wanted time, security and space to try to see if I can grow my artistic skills in a way that helps financially support me in a significant way. That means being in my mother’s home for now.
Writing this post is part of how I’m trying to make more art happen.
I’ve set myself some clear, obtainable, goals.
In the next three months, starting cleanly on December 31st, I aim to:
1) Set up a homepage (that can eventually contain/run an online shop ) featuring my what I make.
2) Restart my blog on that page and document my creations and creative process (along with other stuff).
3) For three months create one custom doll and post three blog entries per week.
No new stock dolls are to be purchased. I have to start with a stock doll I already have and try to limit myself to what other supplies (hair, tools, clothing, fabric) I own within reason.
That’s not all I hope to accomplish in the next three months, these are simply thre specific areas to concentrate on while trying to make art and writing a larger aspect of my life.
2023 is ending.
I am over 6,000 miles and a year and a month away from my last blog post.
I’m ready to share what I’m making and doing once more.
I’ve made a lot of stuff and some of it is silly and some impresses even me.
I’ll let you decide which one is which.
I have plenty of stories to tell you.
So many.
I’m excited and I hope you are too.
