All The Leaves Are

It’s been more than a year since I started this draft and what’s really standing out to me as a theme is how quickly everything can change. It’s everything about 2020 –it’s the pandemic, it’s the amplified conversation of racial inequity and injustice, it’s deciding who gets to be in power, who we place our faith in, who we can count on and in all of this, locating where our own sense of power resides.

In my last draft I had enumerated all the life events that had taken place between the last blog post and “now.” As this blog grows and develops it would be worth while to think about other formats, alternatives modes of documentation when it comes to writing. Given that we have all spent so much time together this year online, everything I would want to share in a post you’ve likely already seen, interacted with, and have commented on.

To be honest I’m glad this post took me over a year to draft (not saying that’ll become a habit moving forward … ) because a lot happened, and those events required more processing time than normal, even for a Scorpio INFJ like myself and that time was so necessary. I didn’t have the regular pressures of having to be physically in an office to do design, which has been a blessing, and this has given my work room to breathe. I think it’s great that I have these records of myself here and that this timeline for my art career is also visible through these blog posts. I feel like a different person writing (and rewriting) this now. I know that 2017 me was ready and hungry for the things 2020 me has done and is doing now. And I think that’s amazing. It’s also time to start being more intentional with my imagination. Goals, milestones, etc. Time, for 2020, has been both the blessing and the culprit.

I remember after two months of quarantine earlier this Spring, I finally decided to go into the studio. I walked upstairs, looked around, and saw everything exactly where I had left it. Time was frozen, at least for part of the year, and then suddenly everything was a blur. Summer seems surreal now, the election is ongoing, Covid-19 remains, my godmother is recovering from a heart attack, and this Thursday is Thanksgiving. What is time, even? And while we’re on the topic, what’s the meaning of life?

“Time, I can’t understand … One moment less than this is future nothingness, already.”