A certain malaise has entered my days as the remaining bits of Pont-Aven novelty reveal themselves as known, predictable and repetitive. A small town is a small town wherever it’s located on the globe and as this hamlet’s “silent citizen”, I have experienced its limits.

Unfortunately, I’ve let the cultural and geographic boundaries of this town create a parallel sense of limitation within myself. I look at the calendar in disbelief and scramble to find the evidence in my studio of the spent time and the lived points of the cycled seasons. They are there, but seem formed in fits and starts existing on a surface unbroken by a commitment of focused time and skirting that next revelatory level a rigorous excavation could unearth.

I do acknowledge the reality of my administrative position and its seeming unlimited capacity to expand and fill any remaining energy or time I may have, but there is another reality I must face:

I’ve become lazy.

Soft.

Casual in my convictions and dismissive of my passions.

Ouch.

Rented movies on iTunes have replaced reading and studio time.

The conceptual concerns and creative challenges of the students have conveniently given me a decoy sense of engagement and accomplishment.

Exterior, facile concerns have muffled the interior wonder, peripheral discoveries, troubling surprises and deep solace a generous, caring embrace of self can elicit.

Add in the false promise of too much red wine and the vibrant spark of the dance becomes a dull hum, barely audible above the din.

But,

I had a fabulous 6 hours in the studio yesterday and felt the insulating funk slowly start to unravel.

I know this. I know what it takes.

I know what my studio deprivation does to me and how to prevent this numbing chasm from appearing between work sessions:

SIMPLY DO THE WORK

An hour here, two hours there and suddenly that momentum fuels a necessity to further dip into the recesses and echoes of my head and heart and revel in the unique ways that only I have to make sense of the world.

It is simple.

So coupled with my new physical regime, there will be a more gentle set of creative calisthenics to re-awaken a dormant sense of wonder, exploration, commitment and joy.

All of these resolutions and it’s not even the New Year!