Art. It's this beautiful space to engage with where our maker comes to play. You can go in so many directions with it that it's this mix of excitement and trepidation and sometimes dread and doubt and thoughtfulness. The creative can be as simple as a run on sentence that many will hate and a few will love. It can be jumping into the thick of it with social commentary. Simply trying a new blue or orange.

I'm in the middle of a new direction and find myself often thinking “Is this right? Are people going to get it? Will anyone even like it?” And I kind of love that tension. The self doubt. It means I'm being stretchy and pushing boundaries and comfort. Sometimes I'll find new and beautiful things in a place like this. Other times I'll get way in over my head, which has been disastrous for me. Recovering from disaster is incredibly difficult, or it has been for me.

Trying new things, pushing in different and new directions has never been an easy road for me. It's probably not even a road. Maybe creative bushwhacking is the right term. But I feel alive there as I push through the brambles and the thickets, wondering what I will find and what it will take to get there. And perhaps, at the end of it all, that's all I'm in it for. The realization that I am here, I am alive, and this, right here, is worth it.