that's mrs. mediocrity to you

Shadows play on the walls of my living room as I sit here, tired after spending the day painting one small section of my house, autumn’s golden light playing games with me, telling me I also need to trim the rose bush that has grown across the window.

i know, i know.

Life is very needy just now, whining and begging for this and for that, most of all for my attention. Attention that I had placed elsewhere, here, perhaps, or in my heart, attention that I don’t have to give to house cleaning and house painting and trimming bushes and the multitude of other chores that appear while I’m not looking.

i know, i know.

I’ve gotten better at ignoring the needy parts of life, better at focusing my tunnel vision on the spot I want to live in. But sometimes you just have to stop and tend the things that need tending. Mend the things that need mending. Sometimes, even though there is just way too much to do, it all still needs to get done.

i know, i know.

Sleep does not come easily these days, crazy dreams, bad ones, violent ones, insane couldn’t possibly be happening ones. For a while, I blamed the cold medicine for that, and for the insomnia, lying there until one a.m., two a.m., three. The sleep, when it does come, just as my husband gets up to start his day, is filled with images and motion and offers no solace, no rest, no reprieve.

i know, i know.

When i get up in the morning, I look at sunlight and rain with exactly the same expression. When I move through the first hour of the afternoon, my thoughts lie like ripples on the surface of the evening. I see them there, proof of some liquid sentience, but I cannot pick them up, use them for anything, they slip through my fingers. When I go to bed at night I fill my pillows with decisions.

i know, i know.

I sound like a broken record these days, this too-busy time with its long to-do list dancing through my days like these shadows on the wall, not here for long, nothing to worry about, really. Just something to distract me from everything I’m doing.

i know, i know.

It mocks me, this list, taunting and teasing, growing exponentially while I sleep.

Much of this list I wrote myself, although there are things on it not added by me, things like a house that needs painting, a faucet that needs fixing, a dog that needs a bath.

Others things are self-imposed, opening an etsy shop for my images, making jewelry for two shows in November, losing ten pounds, cleaning up my garden. All projects I chose to start, all now inscribed on my list of things to do.

And I’ve had this crazy cold for over a week now, it has not kept me in bed, but rather half-functioning, feeling like my head is underwater, making me cranky and sleepy all day long, and I think it’s feeding on my words.

I sit here in my studio while outside the sun is shining, just outside my window the monkshood are blooming, one of my favorite flowers mainly because they bloom in autumn, but also because they are purple, the truest most beautiful purple. Just now they are surrounded by pink and white anemones, all backed by the golden tones of an autumn hydrangea.

I feel like this photo, just now. A bit hazy and out of focus, a riot of thoughts and ideas, with quite a few things that need weeding out.

There is too much to do, always, and I wonder if it is me, if I am too much a workaholic, too much the over-achiever. It doesn’t feel that way, it feels like it’s all necessary, this scrambling to make a living as an artist, this life I love that I lead.

For there is beauty in my life, there are flowers and love and many blessings. There is joy and passion, art and writing, and all this living, full and round and bursting at the seams.

And there is this list that mocks me.

But it is just a list, a flimsy piece of paper filled with words of my own design. It threatens to overwhelm me, this list, beat me down with its jabbering demands. Some days its wins, a little.

Other days, it cowers in the corner.

Because it knows, this list, that when all is said and done,

it might very well be bigger than me,

but I can still take it.