This blog is taking a little turn.
Originally, I thought I would focus on the 64 days between September 1 and November 4. But as I started writing, I realized this story is not really about counting days. It is about noticing them. The days that stand out. The days that shift something. The days that quietly tap you on the shoulder and say, Hey… pay attention.
A few weeks ago, I had one of those days.
I realized I had been shortchanging myself.
Since graduating in 2021, life has moved at full speed. We packed up my apartment in Houston and moved back home to Colorado. Then we decided to move to the country, packed up our house in Thornton, and moved to our dream property. Six months later, a hailstorm rolled through and caused more than $40,000 in damage to the property and $20,000 in damage to our brand-new truck—the one we had not even made the first payment on yet. I’m sure our insurance company just loved us.
Then I got sick.
There was a hospitalization, an elective surgery that turned into a much bigger journey, a body that decided to rebel, nine weeks in the hospital, and then the long road of recovery. Since then, there have been three more surgeries over two years, with another one still ahead. Add in my husband’s health, another master’s program, starting and growing a new arts-in-health program, and all the regular day-by-day life stuff, and somehow my own art practice kept getting pushed to the side.
Not forgotten. Just waiting.
One of the reasons we moved to this property was the barndominium. From the beginning, it was supposed to become my studio. My place to work. My place to build. My place to dream big and make even bigger things.
But after a hard move—one that involved packing up three studios from my time at CU Boulder and two more from Houston—we did what tired humans do. We put everything into the main studio space and told ourselves we would deal with it later.
Well, “later” finally arrived.
A few weeks ago, I hired a wonderful company called The Paisley Dragonfly to help me pull everything out, organize it, and begin setting up the space with intention. And on Sunday, I could see the floor. Not the whole floor, but enough of it to feel like a small miracle. I cleaned some furniture. I found my tire clock. I started to see the studio again—not as a storage unit, but as a place where my artist-self could come back to life.
It felt like the beginning of something important.
I need my artwork to stay out of the house. I need room to build large-scale sculptures. I need a space where my creative practice is not squeezed into the leftover corners of life.
I need balance—not perfect balance, because I am not sure that exists—but a better rhythm between work, life, healing, and art.
So this is where I am now: clearing the floor, clearing the clutter, and making room for the artist I have been all along.
It is time to begin again.
Image: By AI, a dream for the future.
