Hello dear friends!
April was an interesting month in our house... Let's start with the good news:
We went on our first bike ride of the year
We learned how to make fresh homemade bread and stopped buying the store brand (this was very exciting to me!)
We enjoyed some amazingly sunny days that felt like midsummer
I started my little herb garden (indoors for now!)
I spent lots of time on hobbies: knitting, working out, cooking, baking and more recently learning the piano!
I also learned how to make homemade sushi what!
then...
we got hit with Covid. Yep. It's still going around. We were lucky enough to dodge it the whole length of the pandemic and just when we thought we were in the clear my partner and I both got hit with a really bad case of the *vid.
I actually got it a week(ish) before my partner, but for the last two weeks there hasn't been much of anything happening in our house other than sleeping, eating and surviving.
I wish it upon no one, but getting sick like that was actually a much needed break for me, I didn't realize how much I was straining myself with a rigid routine and endless to-do list to try to cover all my bases while learning new things.
My new oil painting studies are taking up a lot of brain power because it's a new medium for me, and I was expecting myself to spend as much time painting as I was before with my gouache and watercolour projects. It's just not realistic for me to do that while also managing my shop and taking on the few freelance projects that I am. I had to learn to be gentle on myself.
I've learned that it's ok to be in a season of life where creativity just isn't happening. If we were ultra creative all the time there wouldn't be anything special about it!
Whatever season you may be in, try to embrace it
I've noticed over the last month, that the more I surrender to just letting my body rest, heal and spend time doing things that feel just a little bit better to me right now I can come back to painting with a relaxed and peaceful mind.
Sometimes your only win of the day might be baking cookies, or that you got out of bed and showered, and that's okay. This last month taught me to surrender to rest, to the ebb and flow of creativity in whatever form that may be if painting just isn't happening in that moment.
“Healing may not be so much about getting better, as about letting go of everything that isn't you - all of the expectations, all of the beliefs - and becoming who you are. ”
– Rachel Naomi Remen
Until next time,
Xox
Sabina