New Year's gifts

For we are God's handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do." ~Ephesians 2:10

Disclaimer: This post is mostly about art, rather than writing, but pertains to both. I can't separate them; they are two halves of my creative coin. This post is a reprint of one that ran on my other blog, so to followers of both, I apologize for the duplication.  I thought it belonged here as well.

I had heartily hoped that 2011 was going to magically turn off better. Quieter, more peaceful, less chaotic. A place where we could finally relax and enjoy life. Well, it's two days in, and though it seems less than fair to judge a year by its cover, it doesn't look like it yet.

The month of December has been raging insanity. Two trips across the haggard, snowy mountain pass to the other side of the state for specialists' appointments, B's dental emergency and reconstructive surgery just before Christmas, the holidays, the kids home on winter break. And the wonderful, awful pleasure of a houseful of company for the last two weeks, over Christmas and New Year's. Wonderful because we love them, and love seeing them. Awful, because there has barely been enough time to breathe, much less process all of what's gone on in the last gasp of 2010.

To top it all off, the local museum held a call for artwork for it's January juried art exhibition. It's been a dream of mine for a long time to be chosen to exhibit, but I've been very afraid to submit. Afraid of failure, afraid of success, afraid mostly that I'd finally be outed as a fraud. After all, I don't do art full time. I do it for love. I know I'm no professional. I have hopes and dreams, but no confidence. But...B talked me into submitting four pieces, and lo and behold - they wanted one! Happy day!

But of course since we are 'poor starving artists' we don't typically print and frame every piece. And this being a large one (22 x 34), the costs are pretty big for the frame job. And of course we procrastinated, because specialist's appointments and dental emergencies and out of town family took precedence. So, there we were, trying to find custom mats and framing on the day or two before Christmas in a small town where the one frame shop goes on a two week vacation. We decided it was okay - that B could make the frame, since he's such a craftsman. What we forgot was that he was also building a bench for my folks for Christmas, and we were still putting the finish varnish on that one on Christmas Eve. So, suffice to say, we were adequately stressed about the project.

Oh, but that's not all.

I do have this charming tendency to freak out when under great personal stress, particularly when the stress comes from something that I feel very insecure about, such as my art or my writing. I love it, I'm good at it, and I know that in my head, but I can't get over the feeling that I'm just not good enough. So it means that I see EVERY...LITTLE...TINY imperfection in the product, and it drives me crazy, because if I can see it, I figure everyone can see it, and then - do you follow my destructively circular logic here? - they will find out that I'm just a poser. Bleah. I hear it in myself, I see myself doing it, and I hate it, but there it is. So here were are, and even with all these great "Plan B" plans, every single stage of this project has gone wrong.

• We found a great little craft store in town which also cuts and sells mats. They are $20 for a double mat of the size we needed, vs the $75 for the one we found out of town. The little old lady we ordered from promised to have it within a couple days for us. After the couple days was up, we found out (after stopping by to check on the progress) that they did not have the colors we needed after all, and we had to come pick new ones.
• We were going to have B build a frame, but then found a set of metal contemporary frame kits lying around the house from a prior project that were perfect. We just had to cut one down to size. No problem, right? Free frame. Woo hoo! Except, we didn't have a metal cutting wheel, so B had to do it with the Dremel, and, while he's gifted at what he does, he didn't cut it quite perfect, so ... (see next bullet)...
• Lowe's had cut-to-order glass. Perfect, right? So we went in with the measurements from the mat and had the glass cut. Except, when we put it all together, we found out that we were 1/16 of an inch off. Just about the 16th that he had to burn up in making the nice clean miter cut. So, we are now the proud owner of TWO pieces of glass, one approximately 1/16th longer than the other.
• And, the print job, which should have been as easy as taking the thumb drive in to the large format printer, was plagued with trials. Wrong paper, too curly paper, file too big to save, crashing Photoshop, laptop with dying battery, etc.  

We did finally get things together, after at least three days of fighting with the damn thing. All three days of the holiday weekend. And now we get to go back to work tomorrow. But at least we are going to take the darn painting with us, and drop its bad luck self off at the museum. Hopefully there's not so much bad juju attached to it that it ends up burning the place down. Or at least that they have good insurance.

The end result, however, is that there are some severely grouchy feelings around this house. I totally can't blame him for being frustrated, at the project for being a pain in the tush, and at me, for crumbling under pressure. I knew it would be like this, and a part of me did not want to do it, just for that reason. But here we are. Turn in is tomorrow, the show opening is the 7th, and we are on. The piece looks fantastic, despite the little errors that only I can see. And so, this is the unveiling of my gift. I hope it's worthy.

To kill time tonight, because I am not sleepy and because I have been playing with the Netflix through our Wii console, I watched a Veggie Tales video with my girl. Yeah, I know she's in college and we are way too old for Bob and Larry, but the simple laughs ground me, and remind me of what is really important. The message for this episode, ironically enough, is the quote at the beginning of this post. The episode was about gifts, and what we are to do with them. I've been thinking about why I have always wanted recognition for the art and the writing. I've always dreamed that somehow they could support me, that I would sell one piece that would lead to a lifetime of the freedom to do the things that I love doing and be secure, not have to go to work. Now, I'm not so sure that's what gifts are for.

What are they for? What do I do with these hands, these words? How can I make the world better, other than by making the world more beautiful? Is that it? Is that enough? If I use my gifts to please God, will this feeling of inadequacy finally go away?

2011 is a year of many goals. I think, perhaps, that this journey needs to be one of them. To find out what the plan for my life is, and to walk it. I've been looking in a lot of places for peace, but maybe true peace is not in what lies outside of me. Maybe, I should have been looking up all the time.