Reading it makes me sad, but happy that I’ve come as far as I have.

Still Life with Wine

Spanish Rice
1 cup rice
2 cups water or chicken broth
onions
garlic
green chilies
tomatoes (optional)
salt, to taste

When I add onions to the skillet the room becomes a different place. It's suddenly home. It doesn't matter what's waiting for me on the other side of the doorframe, inside the tiny kitchen I have a personal space created for me by the aromas of my hands' work. I don't grow onions, but I do buy them, peal them and then chop them finely before putting them into the pan. My favorite way to use onions is to put them in the skillet first, with just a tablespoon of oil, heated until it makes a ring around the outer three-quarters of the surface, with a dot in the center. That's how I know it's ready, that ring that the oil creates when it's just about to be too hot to use successfully. So before a visible cloud of smoke lets the rest of the household know that I've been lax, I add the onions and keep the oil too busy to make smoke. An invisible cloud forms, instead. An odiferous cloud that marks where my space begins. It's sacred, this space.

There's nobody waiting for me anywhere in the house at the moment. I have the place to myself. I could dance naked in the living room, and I have known myself to do it. I have put the stereo speakers in the window and danced salsa outside on the deck without a shirt on. By myself I can lounge and read, I can sing, I can paint or play the piano. With nobody around to question what I'm doing I'm free to do what I want. The problem is that I don't paint or play the piano enough. I don’t long to do those things until somebody's around me criticizing me for doing them.

I will have company before too long, and tonight I want to have dinner ready and waiting. Not that I'm one of those abused spouses that gets slapped against the wall if dinner's not waiting for the man as soon as he walks in the door. I just want that things go smoothly tonight. He has to work late and it always makes him so tired. He's not abusive, just quiet and sulky. I feel like a burden to him, sometimes.

We're staying at my place tonight, which is a surprise. We rarely stay here. I don't know why I still have a place of my own, except that he hasn't invited me to live with him. I suppose that he still enjoys having the only set of keys to his home, and a place to go to if he's too angry to be with me. It's funny, but I'm not allowed to retreat here if I'm just too upset or tired to deal with his miserably immaculate house. I have never, for one minute, felt comfortable there. And I've never cooked there, or seen him cook. He's heated frozen dinners, but that's the extent of his culinary ambition, which is fine because he would only have to spend the next week cleaning the kitchen if he actually used that lonely stove. Over there, I drink instant coffee in the morning.

I have my music playing on the stereo. I don't have to worry about him turning it off and turning on the television for at least another hour. Music makes my food turn out better. I don't know why I don't date somebody with the same musical taste that I have. It would be easier that way. I wouldn't have to wait until I was alone to enjoy the Caribbean rhythms and soulful voices.

Fortunately, my house is such that the stereo is on the other side of the living room and I can still hear it perfectly. It's only about six steps away. My kitchen and bathroom, which together make up about a 5'X10' space, are the only things in the house that qualify as rooms aside from the studio area, which houses my papasan sofa and my piano, my dining room table and my bed. There is no actual door between the kitchen and the dining area of the long room, which is my house. There is a door that folds sideways between the kitchen and the bathroom and right above the stove is a big window, which is always open.

The onions have now long since sautéed and I have added the green chilies and tomatoes and garlic to the mixture. Rice browns separately and as soon as it's ready I'll put the sautéed vegetation and two cups of chicken stock, which I froze last time I cooked chicken. Chicken backs and necks are good for making stock that I freeze and use later, with the few scraps of meat that come off of those pieces.

By the time he gets here the rice will be ready and still hot, the beans have been cooking all day, so they're ready, and I have just to put one more pan in the oven to melt the cheese inside the enchiladas. Then dinner will be ready.

Cheese enchiladas
corn tortillas
cheddar cheese
flour
chili powder
beef bouillon (optional)
3 cups water

While the rice simmers I soften the tortillas in hot oil. I'm not making that many enchiladas this time, so I don't have to add more oil. If we were going to be having others over I'd have to put more oil in two or three times and let it heat before continuing. I love having people in my home and I love cooking for people. But there are only a couple of my friends that he will tolerate. He's careful never to openly criticize my friends, so that I don't have any ammunition against him. He just uses the passive/aggressive tactics that he has learned very well to make sure that he's never around when they are. Plus, he gets very cranky if I have friends visit while he's at work. It's amazing that I have any friends left at all. The ones that he does like don't particularly care for him. They never say this, but I can tell in their demeanor. They are far more polite than they would otherwise be. My friends don't tend to be incredibly refined. I don't hang around ruffians, but we love to laugh and have a good time.

Now I go to shred the cheese. I shudder at the thought of his seeing me do this. Why didn't I have the cheese already shredded, he'd want to know. Everything I do makes him tired. It makes me tired that he's never happy with anything I do. I struggle to think of the last time that he smiled, so that I could believe it, anyway. I roll the cheese inside the softened tortillas and place them in a glass baking pan.

I discard all but about a tablespoon of the oil. In this I brown flour and make a roux. In that I briefly brown the chili powder and then add the water and beef bouillon. When it comes to a boil I turn down the heat and simmer until the sauce thickens. When it's thick I pour it over the rolled tortillas and set the pan aside to wait for him to get here. Just before I put them in the preheated oven I sprinkle more shredded cheese on top.

He's not cranky that I still have to heat the enchiladas. I've waited for him to get here before I heat those, so that they'll be fresh out of the oven when we sit down to eat. The griddle is hot, so the tortillas will also be freshly heated. When we do sit we don't face each other because there are only two chairs at the table that sit up straight. It's fine to sit across the table from my chair; one just has to accept that they'll be tilted. The floor is cracked down the center of the room, and few spots resemble level in this room. I've propped the table with wads of paper, so it's about as level as I am.

My music is now turned off and we eat to the sound of the news—no conversation. The television is on the station that perpetually broadcasts news. That is the station that I would watch were I to turn on the set, but I never do. And, even now, I look at my plate and at the table, anything to avert my eyes from the hypnotizing spell that the television has over my brain. I can't hide from the voices, though, and my enchiladas and flour tortillas are flavored with the stock market at the moment. In a while the beans will be seasoned with a plane crash, the same plane crash that they've reported twice, now, since he's arrived.

I drink my tea—wine and beer are frowned upon these days—and look at the ring that the glass is leaving on my Formica tabletop. From the benefit of the slanted room a ring once formed that looked as if a penis had been lying on the table and the water had dried underneath it. I liked that little piece of art that fate left for me as a gift, but he "accidentally" wiped it off when I wasn't looking.

Cheese and red wine
Cut sharp cheddar cheese into small cubes. Enjoy with a glass of red wine.

It's a new day. I'm not working today and I sit basking in the sun on the deck outside my house. The space between my garage apartment and the main house has brick laid on the ground. It's a living deck that we mow every week. I sit in a lawn chair and drink a glass of red wine. I have cheese cut into cubes inside, but I wanted to be outside in the sun for a few minutes. There is no music playing and this, my first glass of wine in months, burns my tongue. The sharp cheddar cheese compliments it perfectly. The sun isn't doing what I'd hoped it would … bring feeling back into my numbed body. I still don't get up and go inside. I sit back in the lawn chair wondering if the owner of the house is going to come home, and, if he does, whether he'll come around the back to go inside. The entire length of my room is inside the back yard, so I have a lot of privacy, if not space. The garage part of the building, which hasn't seen a car in it in years, is outside the yard, on the other side of the tall wooden fence. I contemplate turning the music on. That's all; I just contemplate it. Just like I contemplate getting more cheese from the dining room table. If I sit still enough it's like I have no feeling in my body at all.

The vine is growing up the brick wall of the main, two-story house. Even though the owner persists in tearing it down, the vine comes back, always, just like the grass grows between the bricks of the deck no matter how much we pull it and mow it. It's determined. The grass is almost thicker here on the deck than it is in the rest of the yard, which lies in the shade of the tall trees. Tall shrubs line the fence on the other side of the yard, so there's no worry that anybody will see me, or notice me. Not that I'm doing anything. I couldn't do anything if I wanted to; there's no music playing, there's no cheese in my hand and he won't ever be coming back here again. It's a good thing.

I didn't like it when he was here and I didn't like being at his house. He didn't like either of those things any more than I did, so why did it take so many months to make this break? And why do I feel the desperate need to call him and beg him to come, or let me come over, just like we did to each other seemingly endlessly over the past few months?

Have you ever been tired? I mean tired from the inside out. It could be your body, your mind, your spirit? Or maybe it’s only a headache and you just can’t tell the difference any more? Maybe you’re just whining, or maybe you can’t feel your face.

I’ve been this level of tired before. Twice, actually. I’d push forward every day, but it just seemed like the current was too strong against me. Both times I found myself crawling out of bed in the morning, asking God for strength to get through the day, and getting dressed. Until I crawled into bed again that evening. Or, somewhere closer to 7:30PM.

A few people from my job were in a mental recovery facility at different times, which should have been a red flag for me. We were far too familiar with the name of that place. I gotta say, though, the facility seemed really appealing to me for a while.

About that same time, I had a friend who was having addition issues. I didn’t know about them, or I didn’t know their extent, anyway. He had apparently been on a downhill path, picking up speed for a few years and I didn’t catch on until the crash. I visited him at the mental facility he had checked into, a facility for substance abuse recovery. The place was way out in the country, and it was lovely—with trees and paths, and food prepared by a chef was served daily.

I was so very bitter.

I’ll be the first to admit that my dream of being confined to a mental facility is not the ideal mindset of a successful person. And I have recovered from the near-desperate need for it. But the dream is still alive.

An epiphany is a visceral understanding of something you already know. –Jen Sincero

I have heard that there is an alternative called a “Vacation”.

I don’t know, though. It doesn’t feel the same if I’m not exhausted from working. It would be like sitting down at a nice restaurant with a steak in front of you, but still being full from the cheap fast-food burger you just had.

I’ve done some soul searching these past few years. I tried to break free from the bondage of employment a couple of times, and crawled right back in. It’s so comfortable here, and they bring me a paycheck. But when I look out the window at the big, beautiful life that’s out there, I can’t help but think I’m missing something while I sit at somebody else’s desk, punching keys. Like, maybe it’s time to rethink and try again.

So, this year I’m changing my personal goals from:

• Winning the lottery.

• Having the AC unit fall through the ceiling onto my head, meaning that I’d be set for life with the damages I’d collect from my employer.

• Losing my personal freedoms and allowing myself to be put into a drugged state of submission in a mental facility.

To the positive goals of:

• Establishing one new stream of income using my God-given creativity.

• Building that business and growing a following—while I still have my day job.

• Taking a much-needed vacation to someplace extraordinary where somebody else washes my sheets and I can have food brought to me at a table along with a cocktail.

• Hiking in state park—the beginning of a plan to visit all of the state parks in Texas.

I don’t know. This just feels better.

What are your thoughts?

I woke up one morning to my partner explaining that he had been on his morning walk and had found a kitten in box. She was clearly abandoned and probably was too young to live if left on her own. Suddenly, it seemed, we had a new kitten.

Cleopatra was named for the markings that looked like eye makeup. (We called her Cleo for short.) There wasn’t much of a transition issue for her. She settled in; she ate, understood the litter box. She was a kitten with kitten energy and eyes that were in a constant state of wide-open, like she was always surprised.

Cleo dearly loved Barry’s cat, Ms. Polly, who was far too old to want to have anything to do with kittens or cuddling or mothering. No matter how much Cleo walked up to her, droopy-eyed in half-sleep snuggle mode, it wasn’t never well-received. When our cat population expanded by six cats (a friend passed and we took her cats in) Cleo more or less kept to herself. if she couldn’t have Ms. Polly, she didn’t want anybody.

By and by, Cleo took to sitting by the storm door, looking out at the back yard. We would step over her while coming into an out of the house, so she had plenty of time to dart outside if that had been what she wanted. (She also had time to move out of the damn way, but wasn’t interested in that, either.) Barry and I decided that she remembered having been outside alone and abandoned as a kitten, and had no desire to relive that experience. So, she just watched the world happen from her safe place of shelter, food and water.

The change in her mindset about the outdoors was very gradual. I suspect that she saw the strays who had taken up residence in the back yard. She watched them lounge in the sun AND get fed. Her cat brain began to question the truths she had accepted. She realized that the love and care that we showed her inside was available to cats outside as well. Hmm…

She snuck outside a few times. Barry was very unimpressed with me when this happened. He’d run late to work because he’d insist on crawling under the house to get her out from under there and bring her inside again. She went under the house because almost as soon as she had managed to get outside, she became a little spooked—no longer sure why she had wanted to be out there in the first place. Dreams of warm sunbeams forgotten because she was too busy thinking about the fact that there were only a few precious minutes before the man who lived inside the house and brought her food (Barry) would come out and chase her back inside. So she panicked and ran under the house to hide.

A few years went by like this. Then one day a confident new hunky cat named Tomcat began to strut around the backyard. Cleo mostly watched him with the same detachment as she did with the other cats and possums. As winter set in, though, and it began to get cold outside, Tomcat began coming inside at night, and was allowed back out during the day.

This was the last straw.

Not only did the cats outside enjoy food and fresh air and sunbeams, they were allowed into the house as well, and then back outside whenever they pleased? That was too much.

She rediscovered youth in her desire to be outside. The storm door doesn’t slam; it has a pneumatic closer that catches it and lets it come to a slow, quiet close. This gave Cleo ample time to allow us to walk outside and then charge from two rooms away through the door before it completely closed her in. She got better at making sure we were either out of sight, or that she engaged her cat stealth as she ran by so that we didn’t notice her.

She no longer wasted any time being frightened and confused under the house. She’d lie in the grass, soaking up the sun. Or curl up under an esperanza bush. She could alternately sleep and watch the world around her for hours before standing on the back step, announcing that she’d like to come inside again please.

She didn’t interact with the cats outside much more than she had with the ones inside, and she also didn’t care who was around. Most cats won’t walk through a door or around a corner if another cat is standing nearby. There is a code in cat life that states, in no uncertain terms, that if another animal walks across your path you must swat it. It could be another cat, a human, or a dog, it didn’t matter. It had to be swatted, and it might need to be chased, depending on the circumstance. (Possible exceptions are possums. It is unclear why, but possums can get away with all kinds of nonsense that other cats are not allowed.)

But Cleo didn’t care about all that. She was a big girl (almost 20 lbs.) and she knew her strength. More to the point, she didn’t care about those other cats. She had places to be and she proceeded, regardless of how many cats were on the back step or nearby. She walked right by them, or jumped over them. To her, they were mere objects in her path. She knew that time was somewhat limited. She may be a badass cat, but she knew that the man with the food would be around sooner or later to scold her and chase her inside, so she wasted no time.

I, myself, long to learn this lesson. Not only learn it by watching Cleo chase her dreams, but I want to really feel it in my bones. To KNOW what I want, why I want it and to make no excuses about not going after it. If the door is closing, who says you can’t reach it from two rooms away before it locks you in? If other cats want to play by their rules, that’s their business, but I have things to accomplish and work to do.

I want to go at life with the conviction of a cat who has decided to be outside. Nothing can stop a heart on a mission. Cleo showed me that.

Move over. The door is closing now; I don’t have time for nonsense.

All of you who hurt quietly. Who wonder what’s wrong with you, who feel like you have everything going for you, but then it all seems to fall apart.

To those of you who are paralyzed, like a deer in headlights, when you hear what sounds like a raised voice, even if it’s only somebody talking loudly. To those who don’t know how to make people understand what’s going on, because you don’t understand it either.

To you, I say, I understand. I understand, even if you haven’t realized that there’s anything specifically wrong yet, if you just get into these moods sometimes and need some time alone. If you don’t want to watch psychological thrillers, because the sound of screaming victims puts you in a bad mood.

And You. I understand. When you try to tell people that there might have been something a little strange about your upbringing and they assure you that every family has one member like that.

When you choose not to go to crowded outdoor festivals or parties, and your friend laughs and says that they don’t care for crowds either, that they’ll probably just go for a little while, to make an appearance. When you know that once they’re there they will stay.

And they tell you about a boat party at the lake with loud music and drinks and everybody having a good time, so many people on such a beautiful day, and then they tell you that they understand, because they don’t really care for noisy places either. Just every once in a while.

And you think, ‘No. I don’t think that’s the same as what I feel’.

And you feel bad because they are inviting you to have fun, and you really don’t want to go, but you think you probably should. Get to know more people. Get out more.

And to those who think that fireworks are not as much fun as other people seem to think. Who get a headache even from thinking about it. And leading up to the time to go, you find yourself struggling to breathe regularly.

And people tell you that you’re in a mood.

Again.

You get in these moods. Why don’t you go do something about that?

And why can’t you hold a job?

Why do you sleep so much. You’ve gone to bed at 8 o’clock every evening. Do you really need that much sleep?

I understand why you sleep so much. I do.

Because when your friends and the people who love you have had it, and they ask you why are you like this all of a sudden, and you don’t know. You don’t know why.

You think that being a nomad might be a better lifestyle for you, moving from town to town, working odd jobs and sleeping where you can find a place. Or you dream of a small house far away from the nearest town.

If you wonder whether or not the loud voices that startle you have anything to do with excessive sleep, they probably do. They’re likely related. That and much more.

Every family does have that one person who sticks out, but I’m here to tell you that this does not make your situation normal. Even if, when you heard that explanation, you took it at face value, you knew that this wasn’t the same thing. But you convinced yourself that they were right. If you’re having second thoughts about that now, it means something. It does.

And I understand.

When nobody seems to know what’s going on, least of all you. When you try to explain and they tell you that we all have stress, we’re all dealing with things. If it makes you feel small, try not to let it.

And forgive the people who can’t understand. Not everybody knows that there’s even anything to understand. If they don’t know what it’s like when you hear two people fighting, then they don’t know.

But I do.

And you’re not wrong. You might be crazy, but you’re not mistaken. There is something wrong.

And I understand.

“If you want a life you’ve never had before, you’ll have to do things you’ve never done before.” Jen Sincero, You Are a Badass.

So, you’ve decided that you want to change. Maybe you want to rediscover a passion that you left behind when being a responsible adult got in the way. You’ve decided that you’re not going to give up on your music again, or your art, or writing. Or whatever it is that makes you talk so much and so fast your friends look at you funny.

That’s great. Now, get ready to do some things that you’ve never done before, or at least not in a while. And a lot of those things will be just different enough to be uncomfortable. Make the decision right now; decide that you will not give up. Remind yourself every day that you are not giving up.

Consuming to motivational materials is an effective way to help us keep momentum when the doubts attack.

Personally, I need to hear encouragement regularly to reinforce a decision I made a few years ago. I’ve made the effort to get in front of myself by reading and listening to Jen Sincero, Anthony Robbins, Wallace Waddles, Twyla Tharp and many others. They help me keep doubt at bay so I can investigate my thoughts with a clear head.

I decided to be a writer. I usually allow myself to be talked out of my ideas, even when nobody is trying to discourage me. I just give up on myself, almost out of habit. “It’s too much work”, or “I’m not as talented as real writers”, or “they’ll just look at me as if I’m cute for trying.” Or, “I don’t have a degree” is always a good insecurity to fall back on.

At the end of the day, those are just reasons to let yourself fail, to give up, or not to try.

The more uncomfortable you are, the more creativity you’ll bring to it.

Last year my partner challenged me, himself and another friend of ours to have 5 paintings (each) done by mid-December for an exhibition in his studio. Not a problem, I thought as I penciled in time on my calendar. We’d already been painting with each other for over a year and we were in the flow.

There is a difference between dreaming and doing, and it is inside the chasm of this difference that most people give up. I want you to dream big. Huge. Then get to work. When you have an idea that’s so brilliant it makes you tremble, watch out for your worst enemy: You.

I had an idea for the paintings that I was really excited about. I knew it had potential and I couldn’t wait to see the series up and in person. Before that, though, I’d have to paint it.

Some time after having a great idea, the reality of its being possible becomes frightening. Especially if you’ve spent a large part of your life backing down, talking yourself out of growing. Reasoning with yourself.

This, though, is not the time for reasoning. This is the time to go. To do it. The more uncomfortable you are, the more creativity you’ll bring to it.

I just give up on myself, almost out of habit.

When I began on the challenge, I first had to have coffee. Then, I needed a nap. I was thinking about my wonderful ideas and how I would execute them. Which made me terrified. Like, I-couldn’t-get-out-of-bed terrified. I lay there, paralyzed by my reaction to my own enthusiasm.

I pushed myself a little. I told myself that I would start sketching and let that lead me. Just sketch, just to get the blood flowing. For now, it was just going to be me working in peaceful solitude, with my own music playing and cats keeping me company. So, I breathed and got out of bed.

And keep the inevitable mood swings to yourself as much as you can.

First I was angry at everybody. Then I had to find a reason to be angry at them. Why did they stack stuff on top of my canvas? Now it’s all warped. Who took my ruler! How am I supposed to draw a straight line without a ruler? And my paint brushes; where are they!? Doesn’t anybody around here respect my stuff?! I’m never painting in this studio again. I will find someplace to paint by myself. WHY DOES EVERYBODY HATE ME? I’M NEVER TALKING TO ANYBODY EVER AGAIN EVER!

After inspecting , I learned that the canvas could be fixed by getting it wet; it tightened up again. And the paint brushes were standing neatly in a container designed specifically to hold paint brushes.

Breathe. Get back to work.

Beware that getting started doesn’t mean that your subconscious has given up. It’s just lying in wait.

I approached the canvas. This was really, really frightening. I had been slapping paint on things pretty regularly for over a year, but this… this was an idea that I love and that I thought had true potential. If I messed this up I’d be messing up my dream. I thought about taking another nap right at this point. Tomorrow is a good day to start painting.

Breathe.

Lean on your team

I worked for a while, sketching and getting into a creative flow. Partner came in at some point and aimed a light at my canvas, which helped immensely. He could see what I was so clearly struggling with, and it took him two seconds to redirect the light. (Please don’t tell him about my fit earlier.) But seriously, this is why we need coaches in our lives. And editors, and people with outside perspectives.

Take a break

Make some quiet time for yourself. Do some Zentangle. Have a cup of tea. Sit on the porch and watch birds. Do your best to think of nothing.

After sketching for a while and writing for a while, I did need a nap. I was on the bed with my cats and after a short time I got a nudge from somewhere inside my mind saying that I didn’t have to stay 100% faithful to the reference picture. I lay still. The feeling inside me said I could move the angles of a couple of straight lines in order to make the perspective more dramatic. That ended up making a huge difference in the painting.

Taking a break is different than ‘lying in a fetal position in fear’, by the way.

Work, rest. Work, rest. Meditate. Breathe. Clear your mind, and then work again.

Giving up is not an option. If that thought comes up, work through it. We make a habit of quitting, as if life were a video game. When I began working on those paintings, nothing was even that difficult yet I was ready to quit, before I had even started. This is, if I’m not mistaken, when I usually give up. I have a great idea, I begin to put it together, get overwhelmed and stop. I might tell myself I need more research, or I need to learn a new skill first or something. But for the most part the project is abandoned.

Are you stronger than you believe?

If you take some time to look at your life, you’ll probably find some instances in which you demonstrated tenacity, even if it didn’t impress you all that much. Maybe you took a second job and worked seventy hours a week for an extended period of time. Or found rent money moments before being evicted. And it’s possible (likely) that you don’t give yourself credit for these things, but don’t sell yourself short.

Despite that I’ve always thought of myself as a loser, there have been times when I have persevered. When I decided that I would accomplish a goal, I accomplished it. In my early 20’s—in the middle of a depression that I couldn’t understand or control—I learned Spanish. I did it in spite of all sorts of discouragement being thrown in my way. My family was highly irritated with me. Some Spanish speakers made fun of me. Or got angry at me. And, I was just really, really bad at speaking and understanding Spanish. I was clumsy. I gave up several times.

But before I could even properly quit, I found myself listening to Spanish music again, trying to make out the lyrics. I couldn’t let it go.

This just shows that I CAN do these things; I just have to WANT to do them, and DECIDE to do them.

You can do your things. You just have to WANT to do them, and then DECIDE.

Maybe you’ve been exploring and came across this website. You find yourself researching something you’d like to do some day, and to your own dismay you feel that you are trying to talk yourself out of it. This is a good time to learn to be still, to be quiet and to meditate. There are more resources online about meditation than I could list, but don’t dismiss the idea of art.

Me, I find comfort in art. Even if drawing isn’t your thing, you should give it a try from time to time. I encourage you to pick up a pen and paper. Don’t think about anybody seeing it; just make doodles, repeat patterns. Let your hand wander, and focus on the act of moving the pen across the paper. Circles, half-circles, squares, arcs repeating themselves. Your inner champion is trying to talk to you. Get used to making quiet time for yourself. Hold your dreams in your mind when you begin and see what your inner champion whispers to you. Be still and listen.

Then get ready to work.

Zentangle, an art of meditation

According the American Psychological Association, one third of Americans suffer from extreme stress, while almost half report increased stress compared to five years ago. That study was well before COVID-19 became a part of our lives; they warn that there has been an increase since the beginning of the pandemic.

There are many ways of dealing with stress, and I’d like to talk today about one that I have found particularly useful: Zentangle.

This topic may seem trendy—and a trend that passed a few years ago even—but it is worth considering. I came upon it just as the trend was fading, making way for adult coloring books. I’ll touch on coloring books in a future post, but for now let’s focus on drawing simple lines, repeating those lines to create patterns.

Where did Zentangle Come From?

Zentangle was started by a couple, Rick and Maria. Maria was a botanical illustrator and a calligrapher; Rick had been practicing meditation for years. One fateful day as Maria was working on a large letter, adding a pattern to the background, Rick asked her something. I believe he had to ask her a couple of times in order to get her attention. She was in the zone. As she described it to Rick, she felt “selflessness, timelessness and effortlessness”. He immediately recognized that as meditation.

What is Zentangle?

Zentangle is an art form in which you repeat basic line shapes to create patterns. In the classic style, it is done on 3.5-inch square ‘tiles’ which are a high quality, almost cardstock paper. You begin by making a light frame around the edge of the tile in pencil; this is the space you work in. You then use the pencil to draw lines to divide the space into three or four sections. After that you use a quality, fine-point drawing pen, such as Micron #1, and in each space you create one of the basic patterns by repeating strokes and lines.

Why do we need Zentangle?

Kylie Fuller wrote an interesting article regarding a link between stress and dementia/Alzheimer’s disease. There have been countless studies done relating stress to high blood pressure and heart disease, both of which can shorten a person’s life span, not to mention the diminished quality of life when the person is overwhelmed with it. Add to that the prospect of stress bringing on dementia prematurely and it is clear that there is a need for something to aid in stress management.

Zentangle is a good answer to that because it is readily available. You can find books on how to do it, or you can go directly to the source at the Zentangle web page. Supplies are also easy to get. If you don’t have the tiles and nice pens, you can use any writing instrument (hopefully one with a fine point) and any piece of paper. The main part is the practice of repeating the lines “one stroke a time”.

There have been many scholarly articles written about the connection between Zentangle and mental health. In every one that I’ve looked at the answer comes out the same in at least one aspect: Zentangle helps.

How does Zentangle work?

When you follow the established instructions, you begin and end each session with appreciation. You hold the paper at the beginning, touch the surface and feel the quality. You hold the pen and consider the quality of the instrument you are using. Basically, you are putting yourself into a state of gratitude, which puts you in the flow with Source Energy, which some call by the name of God.

You decide which pattern to draw in each of the sections. You begin by drawing the first line, then continuing, usually drawing the same sort of line, using the same stroke. You do not rush. You focus, not on the overall picture, but on the one stroke you are drawing. You make deliberate lines. Focus on beginning and ending the line, rather than just sketching them out as you might do when writing. This is where the meditation happens. As each pattern is abstract—there is no up or down, so you are constantly rotating the tile.

One of the most important things to remember: There are no mistakes.

Let me say that again. There are no mistakes. This is a practice, not an exhibition. If something is drawn not as planned, you either move on, or you incorporate it into your design. Dismiss the urge to curse, or erase, or to be upset in any way.

Furthermore, do not get upset with yourself if you do become irritated. As with anything you practice, you will improve over time. That means your lines will become better, your mind will become more calm and you will more easily allow unintended strokes to become a part of the process, rather than a source of irritation.

What are the results of studies?

In studies that I have read, people were asked to grade themselves on their stress levels before and after a Zentangle session. In charts, the stress levels visibly decrease.

One interesting point is the question of participants’ attention to mental health. For the most part, people are aware of the importance of mental health on their lives. And, for the most part, people do try to take time regularly to address it. The ones who rated themselves the highest on the stress level tended to state that they did not take time to work on mental health.

Feedback included comments regarding the community aspect of it. Working with others and looking at the work others did helped to reduce the anxiety that would naturally creep in when doing something labeled as “Art”.

Myself, I’ve done it both ways. The majority of the time I’ve spent tangling has been alone, with music playing. For me that has had the greater effect on my stress level. I’ve been an artist for years, so perhaps I’ve become accustomed to the anxiety that a blank page causes. However, I have worked with a creative group, and had good results, beyond just stress-relief. Working together, we have grown and pushed ourselves to take on bigger projects, with a good amount of success.

More traditional meditation—sitting quietly, focusing on your breath, relieving your mind of any thoughts—is helpful to your life overall and you will never hear me say anything against meditation. It is also a practice, and one that can be difficult to master. From my perspective Zentangle is more accessible. Either as a community or alone, drawing lines on a piece of paper is a lot more natural than trying to have no thoughts for five to twenty minutes at a time.

Most people struggle with stress to some extent, and we can all use some time to slow down, pay attention to, and take care of, our minds. I came to Zentangle with debilitating anxiety—more urgency than anything I’ve ever felt before. I wonder how things would have played out had I begun earlier to take care of my mental health. I could have kept things from getting out of control.

A person must have the presence of mind to realize that their stress needs to be addressed, so it’s a good idea to do calming exercises regularly. Be it with Zentangle, mandalas, meditation, or anything else you can find, you will benefit from time you spend taking care of your mental health.

Thank you for reading.

References:

Stress a Major Health Problem in The U.S., 2007, American Psychological Association, Viewed 08 October 2020, https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2007/10/stress

Stress in America ™, 2020, 2020, American Psychological Association, Viewed 08 October 2020, https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/stress/2020/report

Immel, R 2020, Zentangles for Mental Health Awareness, viewed 9 August 2020, https://scholarworks.bgsu.edu/honorsprojects/491

July 17, 2020

About six years ago I decided that my partner and I were going to go to New Orleans. I was going to go even if I had to go by myself, but, following my sister’s recommendation, I informed him that we were going. I made all of the plans, waving away his suggestions to pare it down, to involve work somehow in order to justify it. This was a big deal for me. I had been wanting to visit NOLA for years and I wasn’t going to put off a vacation again. It never seemed to happen, and it was never going to happen if I didn’t do something about it. So, I did something that was completely out of my normal behavior: I made the decision to go.

This was pretty radical for me, and I feel like it had great potential to lead to a positive change in my life, if I hadn’t lost momentum.

As I read and study, trying to improve myself, there seems to be a debate regarding something called the subconscious. Some more scholarly people simply say that it is what operates outside of the consciousness. Popular culture, as I was growing up, showed the subconscious not only as an underlying part of our mind that we’re mostly not aware of, but that it has an effect on our decisions. For the most part, we don’t realize the extent of its influence. I have also been raised to be skeptical about this approach, relating it to a bunch of self-help nonsense.

When I look at myself, though, it kind of fits. I quit college and I no longer remember why, or even what reason I gave myself at the time. My brother once told me that I was likely afraid of success. But why? Why would anybody be afraid of success?

Well, my father was raised in poverty, and poverty is about all he knew. I was raised in the same environment, but a little closer to another world. My older half brothers and sisters had a father who, from what I can tell, was financially successful. I don’t know much about him, and I won’t presume to know what it was like growing up with him. But there is the fact that they were raised up in a world that knew wealth; it was a part of their lives. For me, it wasn’t even an idea. It didn’t register, not even as something I should think about. To say that it didn’t exist for me implies that this was what I thought, and I didn’t have that level of self-awareness. My situation, this was life.

I was going to paint. I was going to create a new image for myself. I was going to start my life over, painting, selling art, hanging around successful artists.

What can that mean for other people, anybody who might be reading this? You did not have my experience growing up, but that doesn’t mean it won’t apply to your own life. Is there something you want, or want to do, but you don’t? If you step back, is it logical? Really logical? “I have children; I can’t go traipsing around Europe.” “I have a family to support; I can’t just drop everything and become a singer.” These are all very good and responsible things to say. But, are they the truth?

After my trip to New Orleans I was really psyched. I had taken a whole week off, and we were only there for about four days. That meant that I had the rest of the week to plan my new life. I was going to paint. I was going to create a new image for myself. I was going to start my life over, painting, selling art, hanging around successful artists. By the end of the week, I began to realize how implausible that was. I had rent to pay and I needed my job to be able to do it. Building a following as an artist takes time, and working forty to fifty hours a week didn’t leave me much time to accomplish that. It was a nice dream, though.

I look back and wonder about myself. Was this the poverty mentality? Was it fear? There was a lot to be afraid of, that’s for sure. It was a practical decision based on where I was in my life.

Where I was in my life… that’s an interesting phrase. My life. I have one life; we ALL have one life. And, I don’t even have children. I had decided that in my one and only life, I was stuck in my situation and there was nothing I could do about it because I didn’t graduate college and because I had (have) a disease that is expensive to control. Being practical is admirable, but I’m kidding myself if I really believe that there was nothing I could do. I either didn’t want to, didn’t have the nerve, or didn’t believe in myself. Like before, the idea seemed foreign to me. But at least this time it was an idea that registered, something I could work with.

I have spent the past few years battling this subconscious belief about reality. I recently took a leap. I quit my job and took a different one. I looked for, and found, a job that, though it paid much less, I could show up, leave at the end of my shift and have much more time and energy for myself. I could use this time and energy to focus on my own goals. Since then my resolve has waxed and waned. I have gone back and forth from looking at my job as my lifeline, to trying to find a way to be at home, to work from home and to use my creativity to create wealth.

Even as I write this I demonstrate to myself where I’m at in this journey. I began last night. I thought about what I wanted to accomplish; I came up with a vague idea, but a good one. I let it bounce around in my head, then I decided to go to bed and look at it again in the morning. Like I always do.

Sleep is my favorite way of getting out of doing something that will make me successful. A wave of sleep comes over me and sometimes I can barely make it to the bed. This generally happens after I’ve had a good idea and just when I’m about to execute it. I love sleep and this is some of the best sleep ever. Sometimes I go to bed at eight in the evening. The next day I will have come to my senses and understand how impractical the idea is that I would ever support myself with my writing. Or art. But, even though it can’t be a job, it is a nice hobby, and I enjoy touching people who read my blog posts and can relate.

Or maybe…

I made a decision last night to stay up. I decided to make myself un-sleepy, to sit my ass down and write an outline. It truly was late and I really did need sleep, but I wasn’t going to lose momentum. With me it’s been one step forward and three steps back. I’m working toward making it two steps forward and one step back. That seems, perhaps, insufficient if I want to really grow, but I’m battling a lot of subconscious beliefs and if I expect to completely change my life overnight, I will likely fail and go back to where I was. But, I can make incremental steps. I can push myself a little more each time, and I have to start by getting in my own way. I have to stop myself from talking me out of it. I could NOT let myself get sleepy as a way to sabotage myself and keep myself in my comfortable reality.

I have to breathe, meditate, and focus my energy

And it is a struggle. Resignation to my lot in life jumps me when I’m not paying attention. Part of me knows that just breathing and meditating will help, but it is an absolute fight to the death to make myself believe it. It’s SO easy to become (and remain) angry, and to slip slowly and steadily back into being a victim. Kept in place by my circumstances. I don’t even have to think about it, it just naturally happens.

It’s my subconscious telling me to come home where it’s comfortable and safe. “You don’t really want to change do you? You have a good, comfortable life. Do you really think you can make money doing something you love instead of working for somebody else? Think about the security you have. Health insurance. You can retire when you’re 68 and then do what you want.” The subconscious distracts me when I look at my life passing by me, day after day, not living up to my potential.

And then, once again, I have to breathe, meditate, and focus my energy on changing my life. And keep watch for the next time I let my guard down, the next time I settle into my comfortable place. It is a good life, but I want more. I know I can do so much more. So, I focus my energy and start again. Having taken one step back, I start on my two steps forward.

And how about you, dear reader? Does this spark something in you? Rekindle a belief you had in yourself, one that has died out? Are you struggling to maintain a positive attitude about your potential? I’d love to hear from you. I’d love to discuss where you think I’m wrong, or right here. I’d love to hear your stories.

Thank you for taking the time to read.

What I’ve learned from staying home during the Pandemic.

The Pandemic has altered my life in ways that I hadn’t anticipated. While the disease itself is horrific, the effects I have seen in my personal life have been somewhat positive. I talk about that a bit here in a piece I wrote in response to a challenge. Being forced to stay home has taught me that I can actually enjoy it. I might be going off the deep end a little bit, but I enjoyed the ten days that I had to stay home from work so much that I want to work from home now. Not as using a VPN to log into the organization’s server, but as in, working for myself. There is a tendency to want to take huge leaps, and I’m all for it. But, there is also a tendency to not think about everything that comes along with that leap if you are successful. So, I’ll be contemplating it for a while.

In the meantime, I thought I’d share a few things that I have learned. Some of them will be obvious to some people, to the point of having been second nature and never even considering it, but for me they are novel ideas.

* * *

Working outside makes you feel better.

I enjoy trimming shrubs. I even enjoy loading the limbs etc. into the bed of the truck and taking them to the wood pile in the back. Now don’t get crazy; I don’t want to do this every day or every week even (though every week would be ideal for the maintenance of the yard), but I enjoy it.

I still don’t like TV. Staying at home has not changed that.

Working for small bits of time on different things is helpful. Write for thirty minutes, go put laundry in, fold the clothes. Write some more. Sit outside with the cat. Do dishes and clean kitchen. Take a learning tutorial. All in 30-minute chunks or so. You can even take naps; just don’t nap for longer than 30 minutes.

Lists are wonderful tools to keep me focused and help me get more done.

I don’t like mowing the yard. Okay, I knew this one, but it has been reinforced. While working outside has benefits, and I feel better for it, I don’t enjoy doing this particular one, and it would be one of the first things I’d outsource if I could. But I do, in fact, feel better after mowing.

A decluttered space really is more conducive to productivity.

My neighborhood is interesting. I do a lot of the work while sitting at the dining room table in front of windows, and I enjoy watching people, dogs, horses, John Deere tractors, and cars pass in front of the windows.

If you sit in a rocking chair with a cat, she will rub her face across the arms furiously. I do not know why, but this has been proven over and over by more than one cat and more than one rocking chair.

Drinking water is very fulfilling. Preferably with purchased ice, because the stuff made in home freezers tastes funny.

A clean kitchen makes me feel better.

I do not like wasps. I can live in harmony with honey bees, but wasps are aggressive and they prefer to live right by the doorways. They are evil and they must be destroyed. Plus, their tiny little waists make me feel bad about my life choices. I relate better to honey bees and their figures.

Rooms smell better if you clean the cat litter more than once in the morning and once in the evening.

The best ideas come in the shower and when driving. (I knew this already, but staying in place has really brought it home.) (So to speak.)

My cats respond well to me being around. I don’t have to be giving them attention 100% of the time; just being around make them happy.

Washing smaller loads of clothes and folding them straight out of the dryer makes an undesirable chore less undesirable.

If I don’t make time to read for pleasure, I will not read for pleasure Again, obvious, but I’ve done a lot of reading while sitting in coffee shops, which I cannot do at the moment. So, I have to carve out time at home to read, just as I would have carved out time to go to the coffee shop.

I am capable of being tidy.

I am capable of being productive.

I have always been a writer, in the sense that I have always written. I have yet, however, to be a writer who earns money with his craft.

When my office job was becoming more than I could handle, I searched (desperately) for a way to use my writing to earn money. (I'm still searching for that, by the way.) I wasn't an immediate success, clearly. It could be that I'm not serious enough about a writing career; it could be that I'm picky about what I write. I'm working on loosening up the strangle hold on topics because it seems like I could learn to grow as a writer by expanding what I write about, even improving my art in my preferred subjects. Also, it could help attract more readers. I understand that it's important to develop a niche, but there's much to learn out there.

Then, there are novels. Writers write novels, so I decided to write a novel. I thought about what I wanted from this experience and what I wanted to accomplish. I wanted to write, to earn money, and I wanted to enjoy the process. I love mysteries, so I decided that would be my genre. I had a character in mind, even before I began. I had lived with this guy in my mind for a couple of years, in fact, so sitting down to give him life felt natural, and other characters came easily.

… but the cats kept calling me

The actual plot was something else altogether. I researched ways to develop this. There are many good resources out there, free and otherwise. I didn't mind paying for one or two of them because if I want to make money writing I shouldn't be shy about paying other people for theirs. Also, you usually get what you pay for. Free is free. I found "The Story Toolkit", by Susan Bischoff to be the most helpful.

It was slow going. Writing about what you know and experience is one thing; creating worlds and generating plots and scenes is a different thing altogether. I tried just writing whatever came out—AKA pantsing, or flying by the seat of your pants. I got nowhere. I used the Story Toolkit to help me organize it all, but that meant I had to have a plot in mind, and what I had were a bunch of people talking to and about each other in my head. They weren’t interested focusing; they were content just hanging out, drinking wine, and gossiping.

Then cats.

I live with cats. At one point there were 15 here, and before you gag know that we have two acres and that they were all in their own little areas. There were five cats in the house at one point and that's far too many for my taste. But I wasn't going to just throw any of them outside because of a personal preference. When a close friend died over a decade ago, we swooped in and adopted her six cats, which is what led to the surfeit. If we had put any of those cats outside, our friend's ghost would have wreaked havoc on our lives.

I, myself, had three cats to call my own. I'd sit in my room watching them interact, and for the most part they didn't like each other. Raku, the youngest—and a ginormous bundle of cuddliness—loved the other two, but it wasn't reciprocated. There was bickering, the occasional hiss, and a lot of pretending that the other cats weren't there. I'd also watch some of the other cats interact, and stories just generated themselves in my mind. Cats have their own personalities and my mind began evolving those into human personalities. Complete with conversations. In English.

At the time I was taking a workshop where we would be given a prompt to start us off. Using that, we wrote for anywhere from five to twenty minutes. Then we'd critique each other's work. During one of these workshops I decided to write about some of my cats, jotting down a few paragraphs about them.

I took those paragraphs home and they sat in a drawer. I had to pick them up periodically and write more stories, because stories were running around in my head. Then I'd put them aside again, because I was working on my mystery novel. That is a real novel in a real genre, and it is something that one does when one is a writer. I wanted to put my attention on the mystery, but the cats kept calling me.

Most people that I worked with encouraged the mystery. But, eventually I found myself three quarters of the way through a legitimate novella about my cats. I made the decision to work on that project, let it loose in the world, and then I could work on the mystery while the cat novella did what it could do. (Hopefully generate some money around here.) While it wasn't necessarily what everybody advised, once I made the decision they were all on board.

So, I picked up the Story Toolkit and began plotting out a continuous storyline that would take me from beginning to end. I crafted characters, which was easy because: one, they are my cats, and two, their anthropomorphized personalities had already established themselves in my mind. I observed the very first cat I ever owned, Carmela, walk around, ignoring the other cats, distancing herself, exploring the outdoors and being a loner. Situations created themselves from what I saw my cats doing, things like going under the house and getting too spooked to come out, or lying on the sofa, looking out the glass door. Jumping on the bed, sitting in the window seat. I learned to stitch these things together as I drafted the outline of a narrative arc.

I worked with a writing coach. This was key. He was the same man who gave the workshop that I mentioned earlier. He’s spent his life as a writer, and though it was not necessarily fiction, he knows how storytelling works. He guided me as I struggled. I can tell a good 4k word story, but a novella—and later a novel—takes a different kind of skill. He didn't tell me what to write, not at all. But, as I wrote he let me know which parts were interesting and which parts were flat, and he suggested ways to make it better. One never enjoys hearing that any piece of their art is not good, but we won't grow any other way. Anybody who is outside of your own head will be able to give you insights into things that you don't see, but a professional writer can do so much more.

Holding in my hands my little novella, which I printed from my computer, felt good. It wasn't the exhilarating experience that one might expect; it was a quiet, calm feeling of knowing that I could do it. I took a project from beginning to end despite doubts, fears and a lifetime of creating excellent excuses for not succeeding.

And along the way I gained insight into the mystery novel, which I'm tackling again. What I enjoy most about that piece are the characters, the people. I'm the boring guy at the coffee shop who watches people. I enjoy having a good conversation, but I am more fond of watching others have them. Back in its heyday writers of mystery novels would focus on plot. It was a game with their readers, leading them to guess whodunit, and packing a surprise at the end. The writer succeeded if their readers did not guess, and if their ending was believable. I enjoy that, but it's probably not what people are looking for these days, not like they did in the early to mid-Twentieth Century. I'm adding it to my work, but less in the plot, and more in the development of the people populating my novels—their minds and the way they interact.

I've deepened my natural appreciation for characters. I've learned that it is a strength in my writing and one that I need to continue to develop. While I work on learning to create novel-length plots, narrative arcs and consistency in style, I'll focus on learning to have my characters drive the whole thing.

That's what I learned from writing about my cats.

P.S. The writing coach I worked with is Ron Seybold and you can find him at The Writer’s Workshop website.

Years ago, Barry was on his regular walk and found a small kitten in box. She weighed 3.5; she was tiny. And vulnerable.

Barry brought her into the house where she fell in love with his other cat, Ms. Polly. She looked toward her as a mother. Ms. Polly, on the other hand, was about 16 years old and generally not amused. This was the first time I noticed the affectionate half-closed eyes in cats. Cleo was sitting quiet in the same room as Ms. Polly, who was minding her own business. Cleo got up from where she was lying, walked over to Ms. Polly, her sleepy eyes half-closed, and nuzzled her, to which Ms. Polly hissed, swatted and jumped away, unamused as ever.

When she was awake, though, Cleo’s eyes were permanently wide open, as if in surprise. She would be lying on a table when we walked in, she’d look at us with her wide permanently-surprised eyes, whether or not anything interesting was happening. And if we looked at her for more than a second she would yawn. She had a black line of color extending from the outer corners of the eyes to the end of her face, like make-up. This make-up is where the name Cleopatra (Cleo, for short) came about.

Eventually some other cats moved in. They were isolated from the rest of the house at the beginning to avoid unpleasantness, and we weren’t sure how long they’d be here. We found homes for some of them, and three others remained with us. It was around that time that Ms. Polly, at the ripe old age of 17 had her last Christmas with us. So, the three cats from the new set were let out of their room to explore the rest of the house.

It was interesting that those three cats walked around, and Cleo walked around, and even if they were all in the same room, it was like having two sets of cats. There was little if any interaction between Cleo and the others. We were sitting watching TV one evening and the three cats all looked toward the bedroom in unison. Cleo continued as she was, unmoved by such things as ghosts walking by. We figured it must have been their mother’s ghost, and that’s why Cleo took no notice.

She loved us. She really did. We have scars from ‘playing’ with her. We had to teach her not to bite, but that never lasted long. She just loved to play that way; she’d hold your finger captive between her teeth, purring away. If you tried to jerk away, instinct kicked in and she held on harder. It was a bad habit, but it wasn’t malice or anger; that’s just how she played. We know this because there were other times she showed what she was made of, and what it looked like when Cleo was actually angry. Barry and I tried for thirty minutes once to give her a pill. The two of us together couldn’t make that happen and the only thing we accomplished was to make her angry and to leave us using alcohol on the many scratches on our arms.

For the most part Cleo was a bundle of self-sufficient contentedness. After Ms. Polly passed, she didn’t even try to associate with other cats, and she was only moderately needy for attention from Barry and me. She’d come to me on the sofa and want attention, but eventually she’d move and lie down a few inches away, purring. She’d sleep on the bed at night, but she didn’t want to touch us. Just being close was all that was needed.

At some point along the way she and I became buddies. She’d see me walking toward the office and RUN in front of me to sit in my chair first. Then she’d look up at me, like, “Whatta ya gonna do about it?” Usually when I arrived home after work she’d run to the bathroom (of all places!) and I’d have to sit on the tub and pet her. Or, I’d pick her up and talk to her for a while, walk around the house and let her sniff the artwork on the walls. Then she’d want down and she’d go on her way, sleeping on a decorative table or something along those mildly destructive lines.

For years Cleo would look outside and have no interest in going out there. She’d sit by the glass door looking out and wouldn’t budge when we walked in. (Really. She wouldn’t move. Not even to get out of the way. We had to step over her.) In the last couple of years, she began to enjoy visiting the back yard. There are cats out there as well, but she took no notice of them. She’d walk right past them, looking ahead at where she was going, and they didn’t so much as swat at her. She enjoyed lying in the grass, in the sun. Very quiet, just watching the world go by, looking at the field on the other side of the fence, smelling what the wind carried.

For the past six months I noticed that she wanted to be outside more. She wasn’t completely determined or demanding, but she’d sneak out given the chance. In addition to lying in the grass, she would lie on the patio, warming herself, with the sun and with the heat from the bricks. As spring began to heat up, she found a spot underneath an Esperanza bush, where the ground did not have grass. She could be in shade and the bare ground would cool her as well.

It’s not that she seemed unhappy, but my experience with cats began to nag at the back of my mind. She was wanting to spend more and more time outside, and she looked so peaceful there. It was getting hot, though, and Barry would bring her back inside to cool down. I wasn’t entirely surprised when she began to lose weight rapidly. She went from nearly twenty pounds to around six.

She enjoyed lying in the grass, in the sun. Very quiet, just watching the world go by, looking at the field on the other side of the fence, smelling what the wind carried.

Barry took her to the vet, which is a lonely experience in the time of pandemic. He parked outside and called; they came to pick Cleo up and take her inside. The vet who was available saw her alone. At first they diagnosed hypothyroidism and gave us medicine for the condition. It was administered in the outer ear, which is the only reason we considered giving it to her. Even in her weakened condition, we were both kind of afraid of her. But, I didn’t think she was acting like she had a thyroid issue. We have experience with that, and this was not the same.

We gave her the thyroid medication, and other one to increase her appetite. She “ate” moist food, which actually just consisted of her drinking the gravy that we made by mixing water to the canned food. Other cats came by the clean up the actual meat. She seemed to hold her weight though, so we continued to give her medicine in the ear and prepare her gravy for her. She continued to slip outdoors at any opportunity she had. She couldn’t move fast usually, but she could slip through a door before it closed. She’d have to catch her breath, but at least she was outside.

I could tell that Barry’s heart was breaking a little. A few times I held her and walked around the yard with her. One such time he told me to walk over by the back fence, where she had always loved to lie. She looked over the fence at the field beyond and I’d catch a glimpse of Barry looking at us as he walked to his studio. Days went by and she became less and less able to move, so I’d sit on the front porch with her, holding her up to keep her comfortable.

Eventually I noticed that she wasn’t able to use her back legs; she could only lift herself up and drag herself along. She couldn’t seem to make herself comfortable and we had to admit that the thyroid medication was not helping that part. Barry called the clinic and asked to speak to the veterinarian who he’s used for years, if not decades. She agreed to see Cleo, though she was in surgery that day. I drove Cleo to the clinic and they came to my car to pick her up. It wasn’t much later that the veterinarian called to let us know that she had found a large tumor in her abdomen. She said it had grown very quickly. Indeed, the previous vet hadn’t caught it just a few weeks earlier.The three of us together made the decision that the time had come for end-of-life intervention. Normally I am an advocate for letting nature take its course, but I support Barry in this 100%. It was so difficult to see Cleo suffer, and she was suffering. She couldn’t get comfortable; she couldn’t walk or even hobble any more. The doctor was in surgery for a few more hours and Barry asked if we could bring her home during that time. She agreed, so we planned that I would pick her up and we’d take her back to the clinic at 4 o’clock.

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The images above are courtesy of Tamara Talamantes. davincibox.com

It wasn’t very hot yet when I brought her home, so Barry asked me to put her under her Esperanza bush. She wanted to be tucked way back behind it. I sat with her for a while. I did that as much for Barry as I did for Cleo. He’s had many, many cats in his life, and it’s never easy to arrive at this point. Especially with a loving cat with so much personality.

As we got closer to four o’clock, he wanted to go dig a grave for her so it would be ready when we got home. He had just had surgery on his hands, so I did the digging once he told me where. (It had been raining, thank God.) Our friend Tamara was working in the studio, and we let her know. She has three cats of her own, so she understands how it is.

The time arrived. We gathered Cleo up and got in the car. Barry, unable to use his hands, let me set her in the back seat, and he sat back there with her. This time the clinic let us come in; they told us that this is the one, and the only one, exception that they make. We still wore masks and kept a polite distance, but we were able to be there with her. I don’t know that we could have done it otherwise. The vet talked us through what would happen; she tranquilized Cleo first so she’d be asleep at the end.

And Cleo passed in Barry’s arms.

On the way home, I pointedly drove slow, and with my headlights on. When we arrived, Tamara joined us. Barry gathered the holy water and a small cross charm. He blessed Cleo and put the cross in the ‘angel bag’ they gave us at the clinic. Then Barry, Tamara and I did a sort of procession to the graveside, with Tamara’s cat Ziggy following along. We lay Cleo into the ground and took turns throwing dirt into the grave. Then we covered her with earth, the earth she had longed to lay on for the past few months.

I’m always a little envious of Barry’s cats. While it is heartbreaking to say goodbye like this, I know for a fact that he has spoiled them and given them a better life than they ever could have had anywhere else. I remember Cleo, the cat who never noticed the other cats in the house, and never paid much attention to the dog when he was here. She lived, mostly, for me and Barry, and for any other person who came to visit and was silly enough to put their hand too close to her mouth when they pet her. She loved each and every one of them, but she was who she was. She was strong and held her own; the tom cats outside didn’t even try to bother her. I remember her running across the wood floor, sounding like a herd of horses. As soon as Barry sat on the sofa she was on his lap, pushing at his hand and nibbling his fingers until he pet her and gave her attention. I remember fighting with her over the office chair, and letting her have it while I sat on a wooden dining room chair. I remember Cleo filling her own spot on the bed at night, not next to Barry, but close to him. (I also remember Barry, once, sleeping sideways across the bed to keep from disturbing her.)

Barry found Cleo on the side of the road, tiny and vulnerable, and she grew to be big and confident in his home. A cat like that gets under your skin, literally and figuratively. She wasn’t shy about taking up space here. She let us know that she loved us and demanded love in return. She made herself a part of our life and made sure we knew she was important. Without us realizing it, she created a space in our hearts and filled it. The house doesn’t feel the same without her. She will be missed.

Springtime inspires me. Seeing the leaves and blooms make their way out of the ground, or from seemingly dead plants reminds me that the earth is alive, and that people are just a part of the larger organism. We can arrange trees, bushes and flowers as we please, and use them as accents in our property, but plants were around before humans, and will come up from the earth long after we’re gone.

Wisteria is flamboyant when in bloom, but it has very humble beginnings. Don’t let this fool you; wisteria will take over the world. (The cat in the background is Tom Cat, and he’s one of the characters in my soon-to-be released novelette, Carmela’s Outside.)

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Esperanza is another very showy plant. Her leaves and blooms continuously come out, so there are almost always tiny fresh leaves and buds. This was our cat, Cleo’s favorite bush to hide under.

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I have never had much luck with Aloe vera, but these are letting me know that they’re with me for the long haul.

Vegetables, because plants can feed us, not just decorate our yard.

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I have been writing in one form or another since I was a child. And, as most kids, I've been drawing/painting my whole life. Both have come and gone as I’ve grown, but they’re always back there, in a corner of my mind. The child in me knows that the corner where writing and drawing reside is a park where I can always go to play. Sometimes I forget it’s there for months or years, but I always go back and find it eventually.

I began to take the visual arts more seriously in high school when I had a teacher who encouraged me and made me feel good about my work. This was a very new experience for me, and it changed my life quite a bit at the time. Art was something that I was good at, as it turned out, and I enjoyed exploring different mediums. Drawing, especially, takes me to another plane of consciousness. When I’m drawing, music is more exciting and food tastes better. Life in general is better when my pencil is dancing on the paper. Of course, I’ve studied color theory and painting as well, but drawing is a special experience for me.

I began looking into writing as a more serious endeavor a few years ago. I was in one of those jobs that suck the soul out of you. For my mental health I had to do something else and I had no idea what something else was. For years I had written in a blog where I would write for fun, and where I could recapture a writing skill that had atrophied. When I needed to break away from the soul-sucking job, I began to make a more concerted effort to write regularly, and to learn to do it better.

For me, writing and visual arts feed off of each other. Typically, in my blog, I learned to write posts around a photo or series of photos that I had taken. There are many ways of getting images and illustrations from the internet, but when I've tried to do that it always felt flat to me. When I use my own photos—though they may not be as professionally rendered as ones I could purchase—they are more ME.

I was walking around a small graveyard in Kimbro Texas one day and I saw a church a few miles away in the background. I was taking pictures of the gravestones, and I captured a few of the church as well, for the heck of it. That experience led to a post about the concept of needing a home, of having a home and about those of us who feel like leaves in the wind. The article revolves around the cemetery pictures, but the feature image is the church. I love that picture, with the clouds seeming to spin around the steeple. It is a Swedish Lutheran church in a town called New Sweden, inasmuch as there is a town called that. New Sweden is an unincorporated community with 60 residents, per Wikipedia, and it’s vaguely near Kimbro, another town that seems to be only a sign on the side of the rode. To me the church looks like it’s in the middle of nowhere, which is why I love it. Walking around the pocket cemetery that day made me a little melancholy, which is how that post came to be, and the church gave me a feeling of comfort and hope, which also found its way into the article. One friend, after reading it, asked if I needed a hug. (Of course I do. I always need a hug.)

I recently finished writing a novelette (Carmela’s Outside) about some of my cats. Writing it, and working on publishing it, inspired me to paint a picture of the main character, Carmela. It illustrates the story perfectly: a curmudgeonly cat on her sofa who learns to enjoy life again outside. And while painting makes me feel happy in its own right—I love the colors and the way it came out—knowing how it represents Carmela as she is in my book transcends the canvas for me. I didn’t set out to illustrate my story, per se. I wanted to paint a picture that captured the same feeling as the story, which came into being from watching my cats in candid moments.

What I love about this relationship between writing and visual art is that they are both in me. My love of photography, drawing and painting produces the pictures, and my writing captures feelings and situations. Both of those come from outside inspiration, but they are filtered in my mind and that is where they interact. I do write as a solo effort. Carmela’s Outside did not have any photos or drawings to inspire me, though several painting ideas did come out of it. And I do draw and paint alone, for the love of doing those activities. But when I find myself stuck with either writing or painting, I know I can lean on the other to get me going. Sometimes in the end, a story I write does not include the photo or picture I used for inspiration; sometimes it doesn’t even seem to be related to it. But in those cases, it was the picture that set the writing in motion. It works both ways, and the best part is that both of them came from me.

I've been listening to the 'You Are a Badass' books by Jen Sincero. One thing that she mentions over and over again is that once you've made the no-nonsense decision to improve your life, Life will then throw challenges in your path. She suggests such examples as a flat tire on the way to an awesome interview, a flood the day you open your business, the flu just as you're about to sign a business deal, and other things of that nature. Those seem to pale in comparison to getting ready to publish your first book and the world's economy grinding to a halt. That's where I'm at right now, and the irony is delicious. But, I move forward with faith in God and the Universe, and with gratitude for what I have.

I never thought I'd be a self-improvement kind of guy. We used to snicker about those books when I worked at a Corporate Bookstore. Then one day recently, I found myself sitting on the toilet at work in the tiniest bathroom stall I've ever experienced, shaking with anxiety, the level of which I'd never felt before. I decided that I might need some help.

I saw a psychologist, therapists, a psychiatrist, many friends, religious folks. I thought about a daily calendar that a friend of mine had given me a few years ago called "You Are a Badass". The daily readings really struck a chord with me, so I looked it up and sure enough, it was a book. I bought the audiobook and listened to it on my way to work and back. When I finished that one, I immediately got the follow-up, You Are a Badass at Making Money. I went to the author's website and looked around. She suggests other reading material I might find useful, so I've read a few of those. The funny thing is, there are a few points that are pretty consistent across these books, things  that the therapists told me, and religious writing. They all say it differently, in their own voice, coming from their own place, but the message is the same.

I don't want to mention here what those points are; that's not why I'm writing this. If I said them, you either would have already heard them, or you wouldn't have heard them and they probably wouldn't really resonate with you, because a lot of it seems like the kind of stuff that young booksellers laugh at. I recommend you look into it though. You Are a Baddass is a great place to start, because she has a good sense of humor and her writing is easy to follow. But, that may not work for you. There are others.

I know that there are people who aren't even be aware that they could improve their lives and by how much. Myself, I was in a very dark place when I started, but imagine if I had actually read those book in my 20's when I worked at the bookstore. None of us had no idea that we might benefit from some guidance, and looking back, I can see that all of us could have. My point is we're all humans and we can all learn and grow.

So, books. I have a book that will be published soon. It is about my cats. Being around these darlings as much as I have, I started to see personalities, and then the real anthropomorphism began and I could hear their conversations in my head. Finally, I was pushed to write the stories down or they'd make me crazier than I already was. I wrote a story here and there. At some point, and I don't remember exactly when, I decided that they needed to be stitched together into a larger piece. I got out my pen and paper and wrote a few ideas that I felt floating in my head, then I wrote down what the ending would look like. Then all I had to do was color it all in. Granted, there was a lot of work, a lot of agonizing and help from a writing coach, but in the end, it's mine. It's the story of my cats. What was busting to get out of my head is on paper, albeit virtually.

I was reading Twitter the other day and somebody had written that, of course he writes for other people to read; he wasn't journaling. If people weren't going to read his writing, then why would he bother? I get that, but at the same time I don't think quite the same way as he does. Of course I want people to read my writing (except the journal that I do keep.) Part of me—I think it's the part that felt compelled to write it—also felt compelled for me to share it, which can only mean that The Universe has it in her mind that people will read it. The word 'Faith' is buried in there somewhere. I don't think I have to know exactly where, because if my faith is there, that's what counts. My book is in the hands of the publisher; I'll keep y'all posted as it gets closer to being released.

Thank you for taking your time to read this little post. Tell me, have you ever had this sort of epiphany? Gotten to the bottom and realized that you had to get your own self out? What was that like? I want to hear your stories.

I'll write more soon. Be well.

My cat, Anastasia, has a new favorite place—on my lap when I'm sitting on my rocking chair. Not any other time, just on the rocking chair. I have a couple of back issues, so last year I got rid of one super soft chair, which my physical therapist told me I absolutely need to stay away from, and I replaced it with a wooden rocking chair. It's incredibly comfortable, even aside from the back issue. I don't know why I didn't consider it before. So, I sit down to read and Anastasia decides that she needs to be on my lap. She jumps up, fidgets, fusses, and goes in circles and eventually chills. It's cliche and the best.

For my part, aside from loving my new rocking chair, I have discovered what is probably my new favorite place—the front porch. It's been there all 15 years I've lived here, but I rarely use it. I don't know why that is. My partner used to tease me about it for one thing. I don't know why he teased me, and I don't know why I cared. It wasn't malicious, just in good fun. I'm just going to chalk it up to the fact that I've come a long way with my attitude and state of mind. The house itself is pier and beam, so the porch is raised. It's a fabulously old house in an old neighborhood and being there makes me indescribably happy. I just had a long weekend, and sitting our there in the cool mornings was about as close to heaven as I've come in a long time. And another of our cats, Clarice, enjoys exploring the area near the porch while I'm out there.

This makes me think of my favorite place in the world to write—the dining room table. It's only a dining room because we have a table in it. The original house basically has four rooms, one of which is the kitchen. They are all more or less the same size and just make a square. Anyway, we have a large dining room table that barely fits in its room, and it just has a good energy. I can write more here than any other place. For one thing there are no doors between the rooms (except for the bathroom, which sticks outside of the main square.) So, I can breathe and it feels so open. I have been trying to create another space for writing—one that feels the same—so that the dining room table can be a place where we actually eat, but I think that secretly this will always be my favorite space. (I'm sitting at the table as I write this.)

One thing that the other space I'm working on is missing is windows. The space is big enough, though not as open as my dining room office. It doesn't have decent windows, though, and I miss that. The windows that are in the building are all about 7 feet off the ground, so you can't gaze out at anything. When I moved into the room that is my bedroom, the first thing I asked for was for more and larger windows. I feel cramped without them. I only recently discovered this about myself, but knowing it I can't ignore it. So, while this is a beautiful old house sitting on two acres of mowed grass with a back yard partitioned off, when it comes to views it's sorely lacking. Or, so it seemed.

Then one day as I sat at my table working I looked around. The dining room has four good-sized windows and the living room next to me has the same. For the fifteen years that I've lived here every single one of these windows, plus those in the bedroom, have had blinds that have been permanently closed. Closed for probably 25 years, and my partner couldn't really explain why. So, I opened six of them, two in front of me and two to each side, and now the space feels even MORE open. I may never leave this table again.

Honestly, the dark bedroom where I sleep (in a building in back of the house so I can have personal space) would actually make an ideal library. Currently we have all of our books in the back room, one that was added on and is the width of the house. That room also has plenty of windows and they face east. The problem is that the light will not be good for my books. I'm torn, because I love seeing the books there, but they'd last better in the darker room. I would definitely visit that room often, but I don't know about Partner. He doesn't read; he just likes to see the bookshelves with books and artwork. Maybe some UV filters on those back windows? Nobody really looks out of them anyway.

I have to say, in these past few weeks I've learned a few things about myself and my life. I've rediscovered my passion for windows, and a minor case of claustrophobia maybe. I've learned that I love this house even more than I thought. You can discover a lot when you slow down, open your eyes and look around.

Meet Tom Cat. He plays a rather important role in my novelette Carmela’s Outside, which is due to be published this year by Notebook Publishing.

Tom Cat has been nominated for Best Supporting Character in a Work of Fiction, and he is one of People Magazine’s 50 Most Beautiful Felines for 2018.*

I have lived with the cats Carmela, Anastasia, Raku, Tom Cat, Mozart, and Magritte—among other cats—for years. I watch them as they interact, and I can’t help but develop stories in my head about their lives. I hear their voices talking to each other in a Southern accent. At some point I began writing those stories down. Eventually they led to a short story that would not be content with that short-story status. So, I have a novelette. It will be the first of many works featuring the cats that I have known and loved.

With cats, just as with people, if I sit and watch I don’t know what is truly going on between them, so I take the body language and facial expressions and create lives for them myself. People watching isn’t just for people, and it’s the only way I can imagine writing fiction.

Stay tuned for more details about Carmela’s Outside. In the meantime, you can check out my Society 6 page for related artwork.

Thank you for stopping by.

*The second sentence is a work of fiction, in and of itself.

Sunday during a pandemic. I slept. This was not my finest moment, I'll be the first to admit that. It has been a little stressful, so lying for hours with cats next to me felt really good.

I rarely stay home. That has been my way of life since I graduated high school. I go out; I roam streets and stores and hang out in coffee shops watching people. I had a stint in which I hung out in bars far more than I should. Even if I'm not with anybody, I'm usually out and about.

A logical person would be writing more, since I'm stuck home anyway. I could be painting. Or, I could spend the day in my bed trying to be unconscious until this passes. I still go into the office to work, though, so even that is not an option. But still I sleep.

On Saturday I had gone into the office for a bit. When I left, I stopped by the grocery store to pick up vitamins that I had run out of. As I walked up to the building I saw a sign indicating that the line to enter the store started over to the left. Fortunately there wasn't actually a line and I was able to walk right in. An employee was stationed by the door wiping down carts for people. The lady in front of me was wearing a mask that covered most of her face. As I walked around the store I felt the weight of the situation. Everybody looking at each other, everybody knowing that there is a pandemic going on. I posted on Twitter earlier this week.

We're all just sitting around, not going out, looking at seemingly healthy people try to go about their lives, waiting for the virus to hit. Looking at news from Italy. Looking at each other in the stores. Waiting. Waiting for it to hit, or to end.

— 𝓡𝓪𝓽𝓱𝓮𝓻 𝓔𝓪𝓻𝓷𝓮𝓼𝓽 𝓟𝓪𝓲𝓷𝓽𝓮𝓻 (@RatherEarnest) March 19, 2020

I could barely keep from crying while I was in the store. Then I told myself to snap out of it, because if I cried my nose would start running and that's the last thing I needed. I got to the register with my blood builder supplements and saw signs on the floor requesting that people respect social distancing. Pictures of footprints on the sign indicate where we stand, one away from the register, one right at the edge, where the conveyor belt starts. The cashiers had clear plastic between them and the customers, just a square of plastic propped up between their faces. When the cashier was ringing up my purchases I could feel tears coming in spite of my better judgement. They were cheerful enough, though. She smiled and told me to have a great afternoon. God bless these people. Imagine the food shortage and riots if the grocery stores couldn't open because the employees wouldn't go in. They are some of the most exposed people in society right now. I haven't seen even one of them use a face mask.

Leaving the store I stopped by Brentwood Social House for a cup of coffee. There is very little I love more than sitting in a coffee shop, sipping coffee and watching people. Of course I wasn't able to do that, but I did want to support them. So I got a latte to go. Again, as I was waiting I couldn't stop the tears, and they didn't have any napkins out for me to wipe my nose with. They were as laid back as they could be and cheerful. I seemed to be the only one affected.

I suppose at work I'm like them. We are considered essential, so we still have to go in. I encourage people at work. I try to calm my coworkers' nerves. We're going to be fine. We'll get through this. We work, we chat with each other, we walk around the building to get exercise. I do everything I can to make it a pleasant experience. And then I walk out into the world and I can't stop crying.

A young lady I follow on Twitter revealed a few weeks ago that she lives in Northern Italy. They have been on lock-down since February 21. (On March 10 the entire country of Italy came under lock-down.) This young lady has been giving updates fairly regularly. When she first mentioned that she was part of it, she mentioned that it was surprisingly boring. It's international news, but for the people affected who were just hanging out at home, it was not particularly exciting. In time she began to give details of what was happening outside her home. Police would stop people to ask if they really needed to be out. Then, police began giving fines to people outside without a valid reason. Then the quarantine was extended indefinitely and the military was being called in to enforce it. She told us about a man who was running for exercise and he sprained his ankle. He waited in the ER to be seen, only to test positive for COVID-19, meaning that everybody in the waiting room was exposed. She was angry that all of those people were exposed simply because that man couldn't exercise at home. She's frustrated that the quarantine was extended seemingly because people wouldn't abide by the rules.

For me, the worst came when I had to talk to my mother about her upcoming surgery. Normally I would go stay with her for a few days while she recovered. This time it would be a very bad idea for me to go. That's a hard pill to swallow. I never thought I'd have to face a reality in which I am a physical danger to my mother. I mean, I'm not. We don't know. But it is the most basic of caution to not go there. My sisters are already there with her and they can take care of her. But, it's also the most basic of part of human nature, to want to take care of your mother. All the logic and caution in the world won't lessen the hurt.

On March 16, Bastrop County, where I live, issued a disaster declaration. On Tuesday, March 17 the City of Austin banned gathering and dine-in restaurants. (Take out was still permitted.) On Thursday, March 19 Dr. Hellerstedt, the Commissioner of the Department of State Health Services, issued a Declaration of a Public Health Disaster in the State of Texas. At the same time Governor Abbott issued and Executive Order banning  gatherings, shutting down restaurants, bars, schools across Texas. Today Travis County issued a Shelter in Place Order. (No longer just a suggestion.) It's changing daily.

And still we go on. I feel horrible at a store or drive-through because it seems callous of me to breathe on them, even though I'm standing at a reasonable distance and this behavior has been okayed by all of the declarations and orders. I've never been so conscious of my breath, and it's not in a good way. It feels like it should hurt to breathe, like there's a disease in the air and we're breathing it in and there's nothing we can do about it. We're just waiting for the disease to hit our communities and for all of us to be morbidly sick.

Looking at China, Italy and New York City makes me think of a line in a book by Zora Neale Hurston. Toward the end of the novel a hurricane comes and tosses the people about. They take shelter in fear; they wonder if God is angry at them. Their eyes strain to see in the storm. "They seemed to be staring at the dark, but their eyes were watching God."

We are now in March, three months into the new year. I am working on ramping up my writing and painting output. Yesterday I went into the office I have at home... finally. I've been afraid to go in there for weeks, afraid of dealing with what was in there. In December we had an art show in the studio where my office is located, so stuff just kind of got pushed to the back and ProPanels were thrown up to hang art. The office was a mess to begin with, but shoving stuff out of the way kind of pushed the mess over the edge, and I'm still trying to recover. The goal is to put my office, not only back in order, but to make it more organized and a more pleasant place to be. I began by pulling everything out of the bookcase. The bookcase, you see, has been in the corner. I had a desk against the wall next to it and another computer desk on the opposite wall. The writing desk was moved from one wall to another so that I could be at the computer and swivel to the right to be at the writing desk. So, suddenly my bookcase was 6 inches from the side of my writing desk, which is not an ideal location.

Having pulled everything out, I was able to consider what was what. I have a lot of material related to genealogy—books that my ancestors are mentioned in, for example. I have books about politics, fiction I need to read, books that have been signed and some that are old and delicate. Some of these were not actually on the bookcase; they were lying around because the bookcase was full of unrelated stuff.

I pulled the bookcase over to the edge of my space, closer to the front door of the studio. Now, it has more space to breathe. I have tentatively put things into it. I love books and I collect them, but I want this to have more than books on it, I want to display other things as well. So, I'm considering what sort of reading/written material needs to be in this space particular where I write and paint. Unread fiction doesn't seem to be what is called for in this office. Art technique and political intrigue are much more fitting. Old books and books that are signed and or inscribed need a safer place to be than a studio that shape-shifts for different events.

Artwork definitely needs to be around. While I'm trying to be creative I need to be surrounded by ceramic pottery and woodwork that I love. I also need other interesting things... an old decorative doorknob or an interesting bottle. There is a fine line between hoarding and collecting, and I haven't seen that line in quite a long time. It's been buried under stuff. Now my cleaning ideas seem to be growing outside of my bookcase, which is good because that was just a starting place.

I dedicate the month of March to Finding my Office. My first novelette is being reviewed by an editor at my publisher and I need to be working on my next novel. I need to create more paintings to go along with my novels, because... well because I like the idea and I want that to be a part of my art. So, my first right step this month is to organize my space.

How is your 2020 going?

As I've written here before, I, along with a small group of friends, have been pushing each other to expand creatively. Most recently we tasked each other with coming up with five paintings for a studio show in December. I, personally, managed three... well, two and a half. One wasn't quite done, but the day and hour had arrived so I hung it up. It felt good to have work hanging and shown.

All three pictures I painted were of cats. One was Carmela, whom I've written about here in Bemol Ardiente. The second painting, the one that wasn't quite finished, was of PumKin, a beautiful orange cat that lives in the back yard. (The Cat in the Grass from a few posts ago.) But, the real star of the show was Clarice. Clarice is a black cat who is getting up there in age and who has a lot more white in her fur than she used to. The most prominent examples are two white whiskers that stand out on her face. In the painting (and the picture that I used as a guide) she is looking at the person who is holding the camera and letting them know that taking a picture is not an acceptable alternative to actually giving her attention.

A lot of people, as it turns out, have needy black cats. I knew that people would relate to cats, and I've always been fond of the picture that I used as a model. (Have you ever tried to get a cat to sit for a painting? Just save yourself the tears and trouble and use a picture.) But, I was a little blown away by the response to this particular painting. Looking back, I shouldn't have been surprised. In Carmela's painting, she's sitting on a quilt, in profile with the sunlight gently falling on her face. I find it lovely, and people told me that as well. But Clarice is facing the camera, her body language and facial expression clearly say, "Give me attention.” It’s a much stronger image.

People actually requested to be able to buy prints of the Clarice painting. This is new for me, and I don't quite know what to do with it. Of course I want to sell prints; that's why I painted it. But, that part of me who's not used to selling his artwork is screaming that my art isn't worth it yet, that I should be giving it away until I have developed more of a style, a following and a body of work. I gently shut that part of my mind up by putting a chocolate chip cookie in its mouth. That done, I began to make plans on how to sell prints of Clarice, and create a system that can be used for future paintings as well.

Carmela the cat, who is featured in the second painting, is the main character of a novelette that I wrote, "Carmela's Outside", which is due to be published this year. I've mentioned to the publisher that I have a painting, and they are interested. That is doubly exciting for me, and makes me think that I should focus my attention on painting the cats that are in the novelette. Mozart, Tom Cat, Anastasia and Raku are all quite beautiful, each in their own way. I'm working on finishing up the PumKin painting and starting one on Anastasia.

At the moment I'm having the Clarice and Carmela paintings professionally imaged. That is a logical next step. People have also asked me about buying the original of Clarice, but I’m not willing to part with it for a small amount. I can use the digital image to make limited edition giclée prints, which could be sold for a reasonable price. And, I can send a digital image of Carmela to the publisher for their consideration for use on the cover of the novelette. To get the digital images I am using a photography service here in Austin. I had considered taking the picture myself, but there are other people with years of experience and studios set up specifically for that, so I decided that my time would be better spent painting and I'll let the professionals do a better job at photographing the art than I could possibly do on my own.

Now I'm preparing for the May studio tour. And I'm writing on a mystery novel, until I begin working with an editor on Carmela's book. 2020 is stacking up to be a very successful year. I like to think that I laid a good foundation for it during the atrocity that was 2019. As I fought to retain my life and my sanity, I also made plans for what to do once the storm had passed and I found myself still alive. I don't know how I had the presence of mind during all of that, but I'm thankful that I did.

Check out a few related websites: davincibox.com is Tamara Talamantes' page. She is a graphic designer, among other things, and she is one of the friends who painted and showed work. barryperez.com is, not surprisingly, Barry Perez's page. He's the other friend in the group. Barry is a master jeweler who has been making hand-fabricated jewelry for over 30 years. Lastly, a work-in-progress page is elginstudio621.com. This is the studio where it all happens, a place with great energy and where we plan to have many more events—not just visual arts but yoga and writing and ceramics. Keep an eye on it.

Let's here it for new years, new decades, and new beginnings. Make 2020 a great year.