After a bunch of fairly rough years, 2016 has, surprisingly, come bearing gifts.
I am home.
2016 saw me into a new house. My own house.
We moved to the Galilee, to a small house in a small village, on a mountain top, overlooking the Haifa bay.
A beautiful, inviting home, full of air and light, with breath-giving views, fresh, crisp breezes, hopefulness and promise, a sense of awakening, a recharge of positivity.
There is freedom in acceptance
Mentally, 2016 has played an important part in my personal, internal, ongoing journey.
I think in life, once in a while, you reach points where you realize your age, advancement in the journey of life, inevitable changes you go through.
At first I resisted, ignored. Then fell into a darkness and hopelessness, not knowing how to digest them, then rebelled, standing up on hind legs trying to shake the changes off, to revert back to my old, familiar, self. In 2016 I found an acceptance, trying to come to terms with the changes, trying to see how to move forward, and with that came a revival of sorts.
I am feeling more alive lively than I’ve felt in the past few years.
Creativity
Several years ago, eyes clouded by that darkness I felt around me, I knew a change was needed. I was crumbling under the pressure and stress of working for clients. Just when I reached 10 years experience as a graphic designer, when I felt confident in my abilities, in being a professional, I made a decision, to lessen working for business clients, try to do more work for end-clients: Make my creations and sell them in my shop.
It is a slow process, that is on-going.
Along with it came a re-acquaintance with art. After many years of creating almost exclusively on the computer, I ventured into drawing, painting, playing with brushes, pens, pencils, experimenting with different papers, different types of paint.
And this experimentation is kindling my creativity. While not at all happy with my abilities most of the time, I feel my horizons expanding, my imagination soaring. I am bursting with ideas. There isn’t enough time for making everything I envision. All I want to do is stay home and create.
Believing in Me
And as I step deeper into making art (I still have trouble saying that. I am a designer, not an artist), I learn to believe more in my art, in my creations, and in myself. It isn’t easy. Like many other creative people, I am my own worse critic.
Yet despite the harsh criticism, alongside it, I keep on going. It’s like a sort of split personality. The negative and the positive, like magnets, create this tension between them, and I am suspended in between.
I hope I am getting better at believing in myself. Having clients buy my work, favorite and share it, is incredibly empowering. It is a feeling that cannot be put into words, it makes you jump out of bed in the morning, ready for work, and I am constantly thankful for each and every viewer, each and every purchase, not allowing myself to get used to it or take it for granted. I take it very personally.
And this uncontrollable force, like a tornado starting deep down in my gut, keeps picking momentum, strength, building up, becoming bigger and hurling me along with it.
The winding path
I always envision life as a winding path, curving its way between mountains, hills, and we never know what awaits us, what may be waiting close by, right behind the curve.
What lies in wait in 2017? Only Time will tell.
Happy new year everyone :-)
