Ever notice when you are sick, everything seems to move more slowly? You feel like since you are barely moving, and not leaving the house, that nothing seems as urgent as it used to. A bit of a ‘flu fog’ around your brain makes it feel like everything is moving in slow motion, especially your ability to make a decision.

That has been my last week. The oldest boy, Jordan, started getting sick early last week, and by Thursday, it hit the rest of us. It did turn out to be a flu, that just wiped us out. I couldn’t warm up, had aches and had headaches that really felt like a numb pillow was surrounding my brain like a cloud. It could have been worse, which I felt fortunate about.

I was disappointed to cancel a bunch of things, such as dinner with a friend who will be moving soon, a haircut appointment, 4 hockey games between the boys, planting more of my daffodil bulbs (this one really disappointed me since now we have had snow! And I thought all bulbs had to be in the ground before it gets this cold 😢 did I lose my window for another year?), and my next covid booster.

Although inconvenient, I know things can be rearranged and re-scheduled. There was something about the foggy-ness of my brain that really made me consider the priorities at the forefront of my mind. Although exhausted and lacking in motivation, I just really wanted to paint and create. And I considered more closely, how I want to approach future projects. I re-evaluated what kind of work I want to put out there and put my efforts into. For a long time, the focus had been just to create anything. Now I know that it’s time to dive a bit deeper into creating some specific pieces to explore my own style in more detail. It has made me hesitate before because I don’t want it to not be good enough. I also have a few ideas of how to go about it, but it will take some experimenting to get it to turn out how I like, which means it won’t be quite right immediately.

Other artists that I admire do it much better than I do in so many ways, but I also have to take my own advice and just begin. And that I won’t get ‘better’ at the pieces I want if I don’t work on them enough.

So I began a piece today that I am more excited about. There is a lot of improvement and work to do, but it reminds me of what I loved about this kind of piece from when I was a kid. Stay tuned, it’s not ready yet, and these will require a bit more work.

So, it turns out, a bit of a surprising side effect of the flu, is a bit of a reset.

Sending Love,

Devon