making progress

I spent yesterday afternoon limbering up my professional muscles, getting in shape for a year of conferences and connections. A continuation of last year's resolution to make more of an effort -- while I still have no strong desire to sell work, I need more incentives to show -- and to learn, to meet people, to give time to the art practice rather than always setting this important part of my life on the back burner. So, I joined the Textile Center of MN; renewed my SAQA membership; joined Minnesota Quilters; and dropped a sorry amount of money on my credit card registering for the Surface Design Association conference here in Minneapolis in June. But I'm so excited to attend! Too bad it's five months away...

It's important to make this commitment now; my work year will be quite complicated again, and there's a chance renovations on the Center will begin in June. They can do without me for a week or so. But if I don't make the commitment -- a financial commitment -- to progress in my other career, I know it won't happen. So I'm getting it done. I'm proud of myself. Given my "temporary" pay-cut at work (we all took one), it gives my self-esteem a boost to invest in this part of my life. Credit card balance or no. Just don't tell my husband what these conferences cost...

We all have to balance our own needs with the expectations of others. Meanwhile, I want to see myself playing more of a part with my professional associations. And therein lays joy. You have to give yourself the gift of time, my advisory pals assure me, and it's true. As someone who has spent most of her adult life promoting other people's artwork, rather than making her own, it's a shift in thinking. But it's not too late! And, in truth, most of the women artists I know don't reach mid-career until well into their fifties, or later -- because they've raised families, taken other responsibilities, in their younger years. I have the average sense of entitlement for a Midwestern woman my age. My spouse, on the other hand, has a well-developed sense of entitlement that has served him beneficially throughout his career. I always used to hate the saying, "Blessed are those who expect nothing, for they shall not be disappointed." I understood the meaning of it, and now that I have the Biblical backdrop I understand the context -- the meek do indeed deserve to inherit the earth. But by expecting nothing in our earthly lives, we're most likely to get just that. Balance....

So I keep going forward. It's not so difficult.