The past two months of not working an eight-to-four job have been an incredible gift. They have also been incredibly challenging. They have been a space where I have come to experience happiness in ways I only have since childhood. I’ve also felt exposed, lost, confused, yet gained clarity. The past three years have been a transformative time for me while I've found new ways of living and telling my story.

I've scripted several blogs, deleted, and started over. I bum myself out when I delete content of any kind rather than letting it breathe and be for a while. After I get over feeling overwhelmed, I can find value in the questions that appear through the confusion. Questions come to mind like "what do I hope to accomplish with this?", "what do I hope to give with my life?", "Why the hell am I doing this in the first place?". I suppose with any artistic process I engage in, again, it's simply because I have to. It's who I am. I long for connection. I'm honoring myself. I believe I have something to offer.

I was writing yesterday and attempting to encapsulate the past few years. I often try to make the grand smaller by manipulating/controlling/containing it with my little mind. But no song I've ever written tells my whole story. It tells its part. My favorite times songwriting are when the song just happens. For me, that looks like picking up an instrument and writing a song straight through in almost one take. Words and all. Another example is when I finish a painting and step back wondering how it happened. I stare in wonder like I did as a child under the untamed Wisconsin night sky. It's pretty freaking amazing and terrifying at times. That's being. Being, for me. It's so simple when I let it happen, and that is what makes art special. It doesn't need to be anything for anyone. It just is.

I suppose my artistic processes are a dance of trust and I feel less alone when I am connected with life authentically. Isn't art just trying to make life more fun, visible, palpable, and sometimes just more bearable? We long for connection, and I like to think it is what we’re made for. Even shitty connections remind us we're alive and that it’s okay to let some things go. It is beautiful to exist in the dance of completeness, surrender, and openness for what is to come. It's beautiful when people invite me in and who are also brave enough to step into my world.

Our normal is constant stimulation, constant expectations, constant comparing, and the mental poverty of feeling like we’re missing something (in a country of great wealth by our own standards). We want normal and at the same time are afraid to admit that we don’t. If nothing blows up normal, normal hurts until it hurts so bad we can't resist our true experience anymore. The easiest way to move through life is by following the script. The way to live YOUR life is by discovering your own. As artists, I think we have/are walking a journey of understanding that the ideas of security and conformity produce an absolutely predictable outcome, and it is not happiness. We try to be aware of how and where we walk, look for meaning, learn to embrace life as it is and my hope is that we do not give up. I have my really hard days/moments where I can start to look backwards and question, but then I remember how hard I’ve worked to get here and the real joy in trusting God and embracing mystery. This can feel like laughing and crying in the same sentence. We can exist exactly as we are and allow truth to transform us, rather than weigh ourselves and others down with all of our efforts and ideas of shallow absolutes.

We all create, every day, and I know that a little vulnerability can make life a lot less scary <3