And Then…

I didn’t realize how heavy the burden of wanting to “become a writer” was until I put it down. I’d been carrying it around with me since cognition and an internal voice constantly chided me to produce produce produce; it was exhausting and caused resentment.

Any time I did anything other than write, a feeling of resentment would rise within me, mocking my actions and convincing me I was a waste of time. Here I was over 40 and had not published anything other than a few newspaper articles. The internal dialogue was harsh and critical and made creating jewelry more of a slave task than a joyful one.

Do you remember me saying that we took a year’s leave of absence from making jewelry? That was in 2005. Without the jewelry to make, I was splitting my time between doing hair and wanting to write. So then I started resenting hair because it was taking me away from my fantasy career. When I finally decided to take a leap of faith and devote all my time to writing, guess what? I imploded.

What does imploding look like? Well, as a self-disciplined individual, I had never had any trouble before coaxing myself into making deadlines; in school, in college, or designing for the art shows. But as I finally had all the time in the world at my disposal - Groom and I agreeing to live off our savings while we got our writing careers on track - I could not make myself write.

I allowed and invented every excuse in the book to prevent me from writing. Oh, first I had to get my writing space just exactly right. Next I had to do a bunch of research, organize my papers, rearrange my files, and look over my notes. Thereafter, a scrub down of the house lead to a voluminous yard sale and in between if I ever did play on the computer, I couldn’t sit still for five minutes.

I’d start a novel and switch to an idea for an article and then an inspirational piece and then a short story and then about one of our travel adventures and I’d start a squabble with Groom because we were sharing the computer, so that definitely cut into my writing time and the Internet was too slow and I lamented I needed my own computer and thusly I managed to efficiently squander our year’s leave of absence from creating jewelry by complaining, whingeing, whining, diatribing, digressing, crying, weeping, swooning, pretend-fainting (okay, no, not that one) and otherwise wasting a perfectly good writing opportunity. That’s what me imploding looks like.

By 2006, I was thrilled to be making jewelry again. In the convening years, the lovely Hannah Goldrich instructed me to learn metalsmithing, we bumped up against a shifting economy and more competition, rules started changing on the playing field, we got our hands on cameras and began incorporating our images into new jewelry ideas.

We spent November of 2009 in the studio, sort of like mad scientists, thinking and plotting, planning and experimenting with the new jewelry ideas and took the tools we had on hand and came up with something fresh. Oh, don’t let me leave you with the impression that it was all beakers and crazy concoctions and dry ice and romantic Bride of Frankenstein and Madame Curie stuff. No, no, I definitely explored the emotional scale on this one.

It began with a question (what’s something new we can do?) and then it got exciting, difficult, impossible, hopeful, downright grave and depressing, then enlightening and much like childbirth, voila! a new integration of materials was born and I was riding the skyrocket of joy.

Until…

Until a Director of an Art Show told us that they were not good enough. She gave me many compliments on the idea of it, but said the execution was not good enough…YET. She suggested we look at the process as a marathon and not a sprint and take this year to go to school and learn some metalsmithing skills and by next year, with the new ideas, we quite possibly might jump tax brackets.

Hmmm, there it was again, “Get some metalsmithing skills,” told to us by people in the know.

Now I could have had a mini-meltdown (have you noticed I might have a little bit of what’s referred to as an “artistic temperament?”), but the funny thing was, after all that work and experimentation, I wasn’t even tempted to curl up in the fetal position after being told the work wasn’t good enough.

I was inspired.

Looking in the college catalogue, we found two classes that suited our fancy: Metalsmithing and Enameling. We sent in our greenbacks, got our student I.D.’s (hey, they’re great for various discounts) and started the new adventure in January. Wait, that’s this month.

We’ve been pouring over catalogues, getting redeye from scrolling through page after Internet page of websites offering tools, supplies, hints, tips, video lessons, eeeeeeee!!! a confusing tangle. What will we need and where will we set it all up in our doll-sized house?

Oh, one thing for sure, bandaids. As a delicate flower, I am not used to burly tools, hammers, drills, kilns, torches, grinding machines, things called flex shafts, in other words, lots of metal equipment with sharp or hot moving parts.

The first day I hammered my left digits, didn’t realize the metal could get so hot (ouchy-wah-wah!) and sliced my finger. Um, glass is sharp, man. The work scratches the heck out of my skin, requiring mass doses of hydrating cream, and my neck has been out for awhile now.

But guess what? I looooooove it!!!