Do you ever wonder where I am? What am I even doing? Not in a 3-day deep into a bender kind of way, in an existential – How did I get this far in my life and not do, know, achieve, become X, Y, Z? I spoke with a very successful gem of a human recently who said you’re -so clever- because I had made some trouseres ( soft ones, flat, front elasticated back, no zips, belt loops, bells or whistles) but I don’t work full time! I have the time to watch extensive amounts of YouTube tutorials and to make something wrong 5 times before it is as good as I want it. I have the massive privilege of time. I’m safe, fed, housed, and not working a 40+ hour week, AND my nest is empty save a couple of long dogs ( one of whom is the emotional and financial load of 6 toddlers).

My pace is slow, and that’s ok.

It’s normal to feel like you have to catch up if you have taken the long way around, but it doesn’t stop the feeling of being slow and that being negative. I KNOW it’s not just me, the internal, voiceless knowing. I spent years missing the point because I took the phrase “negative self-talk” very literally. I didn’t think I spoke negatively to myself, and the negative thoughts were the voice of grown-ups when I was small. If you don’t have that, congratulations. If you want to know what that looks like, read My Good Bright Wolf by Sarah Moss; she writes it in a way that felt comfortingly familiar. ( not managed to finish this as it’s thick with the feels) The trickier part to deal with is the KNOWING: if you grew up reading a room, an adult’s posture, a sigh, thrown crockery, slammed door, a silence, you may also have a felt sense of KNOWING you’re not good, correct, worthy of care and safety comes from this constant reading. You, as a person, are just wrong and bad, and everyone else is good and right. It’s not true, OBVIOUSLY, but unlearning that feeling is HARD. The same way, learning that your normal was way off for 30 years.

My pace is slow, and that’s ok.

After 8 years of being a carer, I have now worked a job for nearly 3 years part-time, learning curves steep, space to make, pinched. Learning to mend and sew my own clothes and continuing knitting have been a creative safety net. Working in fits and starts, writing and drawing, but often find it’s just so fricken hard to maintain the intensity that working with old difficult things brings. So I don’t maintain it. This protects me from myself and protects my relationships from the narky pants I become if I dwell in it all too long. Almost sure I have heard Sophie Pearson talk like this, working for a chunk of time, then having periods away from the work. Sophie paints the way old difficult things feel and helps me remember – My pace is slow, and that’s ok.

Making work is slow and as gappy as my teeth once were. Developing small bodies of work with stretches of time between, phases of thematic drawing, collage, writing, oils, acrylics, watercolours, all with recurring motives works for me. Having a visual language that is unapologetically myself, as rough as it can be, is necessary. Im not filling anyone’s shoes but my own; however, painter and octogenarian Rose Wylie is GOALS and shows me – My pace is slow, and that’s ok.

Anywho, im most regular on IG, very lonely over on Bluesky or LinkedIn, more sporadic on Faceache, in case you need more content and context.