Easier Said Than Done

The studio is excruciating when it's been dormant, or nearly so, and when I've gone through so much time and so many changes since really engaging that I don't know what I make any more.

I worked with paper today, then wire, watching myself struggle to construct something that stands up or is coherent out of small, undefined bits.  It's the same struggle I'm having outside the studio, in my working life, made worse by my concern that I won't get ahead of myself in the studio to help with the risks I'm taking outside it.

The real need now is to open my work up to whatever it needs to be.  Isn't that what I'm making all these changes for?  When I think of my art heroes, a miles-wide chasm opens between what I do and the work I most respect.  I feel like a little girl looking at the grown-ups and wanting something, but not sure what it is for me or how to go about finding out, let alone how to get it.  This is a hard, hard, painful thing to feel at my age - the logical result of how I've lived, but that's small comfort.  What is a comfort is writing.  Or is it a distraction?

Now that the shock's worn off from yesterday's fall and I've taken stock of all the places that are scraped or hurting, I see I'm lucky I didn't seriously injure or break anything.  I plan to go running again tomorrow - to get back on the horse.  Same with the studio.  I'm very agitated.