Lightning Strikes!

          We’re ten minutes down the road on a trip when suddenly I have to pee violently.  Damn, we just left and none of us, including me, want to stop.  Plus we’re in the middle of nowhere.   This is extremely inconvenient, not to mention uncomfortable.  Luckily I still have my “teacher’s bladder,” which can hold it for hours (in this case, just 20 or so minutes before we hit a gas station.) Then ahh – relief.  I don’t know why things have to happen at such inopportune times…

          I have the same trouble with artistic urges.  I’ll be at work, when I’m suddenly seized with a “brilliant” idea or a deep urge to create.  It will sing through my veins and circulate throughout my brain and all I want to do is get to my studio and get started – NOW!  But, alas, it isn’t possible at the moment.   I do carry around a small notebook in which to put ideas, which helps a lot…but it’s certainly not as satisfying as having an inspiration and being able to instantly get started.  This happens to me often. 

          I’ve had compelling creative urges on an airplane, in the middle of a training, when I was on a dinner date with my husband...even once in the middle of a job interview.  I was trying to concentrate and this idea kept bubbling around the periphery of my thoughts – I had to mentally admonish my brain to shut up so I could finish.  After the interview, I rushed home and immersed myself In my studio for two days.  (I did get the job, by the way, and I have the quilt to prove it!) 

          It’s interesting that ideas and urges occur when I can’t get to my studio or when I am doing something completely unrelated.  I’ve decided that the fact of being busy seems to actually stimulate my brain, which is good.   However, it can also be enormously frustrating because more often than not, I simply can’t stop what I’m doing and rush to my studio and get to work like I want to - but that’s what the little notebook is all about, I guess.  Sometimes I lose ideas – that’s even worse!   It seems that I have one of those brains whose synapses simply cannot be controlled! I imagine that they are a tangle of unruly connections that pop off whenever and in whatever direction they feel like, whereas other people’s brains are much more ordered and synchronized.

          What is ironic, however, is that sometimes when I actually have a little time and energy to work on something, I flatline.  I suppose I’m just a contrarian to the max – I even thwart myself!  Here’s an example:  I’ve been really inspired lately with ideas for these animals that I paint, and I had a bunch of ideas written down.  Last night I had an hour or two before bed so I decided to work on one of them.  But when I was facing a blank pig, none of them seemed right or exciting.  I doodled quite a bit but was dissatisfied with all the designs – I had no mojo.  How disappointing, when all day I had wanted to get to my art but had no time.  After fiddling around for an hour or so, my eyes began to droop so, defeated, I decided to go bed.  No sooner had I laid my head on the pillow when - BOOM – inspiration!

 Go figure.

Oh well, at least I know what I’m going to do with that blank pig…whenever I can get to it, that is.