I slept through some Art History lectures

I was not an Art History major.
I feel the need to say that. I tell people I have an Art Degree and they assume I know a lot about the history of art. Which I do; don’t get me wrong. Growing up in a house surrounded by nothing but books and art and incredibly brilliant art teacher parents will show a girl a thing or two about what came before her.
But I was not an Art History major. I was a Studio Art major. I made stuff. I drew stuff. I painted stuff. I printed stuff. I welded stuff. I shaped clay with my hands. For some reason it seems very far away from a lot of peple who know me as a driven MBA-type. But I used to do that. I used to stay up until 4 a.m. with creativity coming out of my fingertips. I told myself that I had tapped into what felt like to be alive. I also decided that to be a great artist I needed to be in an altered state a lot of the time. It’s a natural pairing: getting fucked up and creating art. Everybody I ever read about had an addiction to something or other or a serious division in their brain that drove them to get the crazy out through a paintbrush.
So I tried that for a few years. I never did any psychedelic mushroom paintings or anything; mom and dad had taught me too well to do that. I did refined stuff. Things you could find in small galleries. Expressions of me but also the world around. It was good.
Then I left a lot of that behind and went on to be pedestrian. My creativity was quarantined to the occasional bout of creating something lovely out of discarded objects. I benefitted but always felt that I was crammed into a little corner. I blamed a lot of it on not having enough space to let the crazy fly. Too small of a house in which to really set up shop.
Excuses.
I finally have 2100 square feet in which to create. I have a huge room full of sunlight and warm carpet and three desks. I don’t have to be monogamous in my choice of surfaces on which to create. I can sew on one table, cut out a million pieces of paper on another, or sit down at the last with a fine point pen and tell the world (okay, just myself) how I feel through writing.
It is good.
I pledge to make use of it.
This past month or two of exercising again has awoken a current inside me as only endorphins can. I forgot how much power I had when I used the gift I was given. I have amazing athletic prowess, just like most people; to honor and respect it is much harder than it sounds. It’s time to carve out a little bit of time each day to celebrate. I fooled myself into thinking that I was exercising again to run the Hospital Hill Half marathon with Megan in June. Okay. I was. That was partly true. But the rest of it is that my body missed its companions of pain and suffering and lithe movement. That’s the real reason.
Through these past two months I’ve gotten perspective on what it means to work in corporate America, and I’m not sure this blog is the right place to share my day-to-day. Instead, I’ll take you along on a journey as I rediscover the powerful athlete within, find the art that was lost, and ruminate here and there about what it means to be a part of a machine.
Don’t get me wrong; ‘machine’ is not pejorative. It just is. And I’m in it. Running.