Living

I was thinking about the little tag line on this blog's title:  "thrifting, painting, and creating for a living."  Most folks who would read that would assume that I make a living doing those three things, in the sense that I support myself and my family with that work.  I wish that were the case!  I have a day job, one that alternately exhausts and challenges me, and that day job is the reason I was able to pitch in to buy the inventory for our consignment shop. The day jobs pays the bills and gives my family financial security.  But it doesn't inspire feelings of joy, of contentment.  There are times, certainly, when I feel like I'm in the flow at the day job:  when I help someone understand a concept or I solve a particularly knotty problem or when I can help edit a document so that it's easy to understand.  But there are so many semi-negative things that go with the day job that I can't really say the day job does much for my soul/spirit.


Creating, on the other hand, makes me feel more like the real me.  The times when MC and I have painted something in the shop or created something with the Cricut have been the stuff of the daydreams I had when we talked about maybe buying this business.  Someone asked me if I wanted to turn a profit, and I answered that of course, I'd like that, but I'm mostly in this to have fun and feed my soul, my creative side, my eccentric side.  I want this business to do well so that I can have a reason to haunt yard sales and flea markets, so that I can have a reason for sporting smudges and spots of paint on my arms and legs, so that I can spend a Saturday working and see immediate results of my efforts.  I want to let my hair go back to its natural salt and pepper colors and rock long skirts and keds when the weather cools down.  I want to be the eccentric old hippy people talk about, the one who helps run that funky store down by the coast, who's always knitting or painting or doing something crazy with hats and handbags, who likes to talk about cats and books and makes a fuss over little kids.


That's what I mean by 'thrifting, painting, and creating for a living."  It has nothing to do with money for me because I'm fortunate enough to have a good day job.  It has everything to do with feeding my life, my real life, the one made up of yarn and cabbage roses, purring cats and the sticky kisses from a little girl, paint and glitter glue, fabric and thread, wood and stone, sunlight glowing through colored glass, old books and romance.


I'm a lucky, lucky old duck.