circle, as in coming full

I finished this drawing a year ago but only just documented it last week. My days have felt very frenetic and busy, which is for the most part good but sometimes also make my brain feel like exploding.

I've been trying to figure out how to be more intentional and efficient with my time, a strategy which would optimally include time to be intentionally inefficient. Apparently that sort of time is pretty important. When I have a crazy day at work I come home and really don't want to do much of anything except maybe have people take care of me.... but! Sometimes, but only sometimes, if I build in some time to just totally veg out for about an hour I can get it back and actually make something of my evening.

I remember feeling a little bit like this last year this same time in 2011. I felt settled, but not in an entirely stable place. This was a very nervous feeling and recollecting that I felt this way a year again just makes me feel even more nervous. The beginning of a new year has a tendency to foster comparison with previous incarnations of self-- a sort of laughable comparison. Here's what I know: I am a year older than I was last year.

New Patterns

It's 2012 today and suitably a time to start some things and stop some others. Like restarting this blog and stopping consumption of caffeinated diet soda. And using the internet to apply to residencies but not using Facebook quite so much. I think it'd be interesting to build a long list of anonymous resolutions and then comb through it for patterns and likenesses. I imagine that the things people want to change about themselves probably aren't actually all that original.

So some things have changed in my life since April-- I left San Francisco in a hurry and drove to Ithaca with all my things for a residency with the Saltonstall Foundation, where I was for May and half of June. Then I lived with my parents for all of a week before deciding to move to Northampton, MA for awhile to see if I could find a job and a community I liked there. I did neither of these things but I did go on a lot of dates. Towards the end of July I felt ready to move back to Ithaca and then miraculously, after moving into an apartment with my highschool buddy Lauretta, I got offered a job working at Ithaca College as the assistant director of the college art gallery. Then I adopted a little lady dog named Henry (Henrietta Rhubarb Baldwin) who is the love of my life.

I've been keeping myself busy with work, the occasional book, new drawings in my studio, making new friends, all sorts of new-ness. I'd like to accomplish some things in 2012, which include: 1) getting into a residency for the summer 2) getting full-time employment for the fall at Ithaca College at the gallery or teaching 3)continuing the unending quest for posse 4) networking with galleries and artists in Philadelphia 5) traveling to Portland to visit old friends 6) cooking and baking new and wonderful things 7)reading more books 8)writing more on this blog (for practice) and 9)writing more, period.