Mismatched Shoes and Metaphors

2024 has been overwhelming for me. I set an intention for the year and within the first week it has already gone cattywampus. In my sober journey, I have learned a lot about acting and reacting. For so many years after my TBI I was reacting to the the challenges I faced and lack of resources (*cough* health insurance and resources to help me post injury). Something I’ve learned the past 7 years is that reaction comes from a place of heightened emotions, adrenaline, and fear. In many ways it’s a knee jerk reaction. 

So, I try my best to sit with my feelings and my reactions, which I will reframe as emotional turbulence, until they have leveled out. I am by no ways a pro at this and am so thankful for my close friends and family who have, at times, put up with me through the emotional terrain as I learned and relearned the boundaries of what the relationships can support. 

This past weekend I visited my parents and had the absolute best time with them and my cousins family who were visiting. My cousins birthday is Cinco de Mayo and we celebrated, laughed, ate, reminisced and played putt putt at a winery! I packed up my stuff and slip casting molds I’d stored in my parents basement, and of course forgot two of my medications, notably the one I use to get a full nights sleep. 

So, of course is it 3:30am and I am up and have yet to be able to return to dream land. I first started battling insomnia in college. I remember cleaning my apartment at 3am one night as I was clearly awake and not going back to sleep. In grad school I lived in the dorms which were just a 100 yard walk to the clay studio. So… I would just go to the studio, make a cup of coffee, watch the daily show and Colbert report and then get to work. I essentially build my thesis show between 4am and 11am that year. 

In 2018, I started taking medicine that helped me sleep through the 3am witching hour. What a game changer that has been! It wasn’t until 2021 that I learned insomnia was a common long term side effect of TBI. So tonight I have been prowling my apartment, imagining what it can become and staring at the blank spaces thinking about all the work it will take to make this happen and how time is this elusive mistress whose demands on my brain and body I often have trouble meeting. 

I have accepted that I am a walking paradox, by this I mean that I navigate the space between what I am able to do and hope/am expected to. This often leaves me feeling like I am behind on everything and always running late to the party with mismatched shoes and metaphors!

Currently I’m torn between excitement with moving into a one bedroom apartment in the same building as my studio and creating an art-focused life here and wanting to be back in last year when I was living with my parents and rebuilding my business post car injury and a looking like permanently disabled wrist. I love and enjoy my family so much and wish I was able to help out day by day as we navigate my father’s cancer. 

But my life and my work is here in DC. And art is the tool I use to process all the transitions that occur in life. Art is also an area I feel torn. I worked so hard last year to make this year one of such growth for my business and art practice. I was expecting to start the year with a ROI of $78k wholesale or $140k retail, thinking I’d found a collaborative partner that could produce my designs with the same finesse as I do in my studio. 

Unfortunately that didn’t work out and I’m down $50k (and counting) and scrambling to rebound with a wrist that cannot do the physical labor. I am so lucky to have found an amazing team who can support my businesses growth through performing tasks that I am not properly trained in or don’t have the capacity to learn to the level needed for success. But… we need things to sell! 

It’s funny knowing that I am the weakest, or most unreliable, link in this business although it is my vision that is being recognized and growing. As I write this (now at 5:30am) I am thinking of what MUST be done today and what engagements I have that will eat into my creative time. What I have learned is that for me to be productive creatively I just need large blocks of unscheduled time to find my rhythm. For me rhythm isn’t solely producing, but taking all the breaks I need to for my brain and body to not go into adrenaline overtime which will take me out the next day. 

To move forward with products and new opportunities it is looking like my studio may have to do what I tried so hard last year to take out of it - production from slip casting to final design application. Because I have done this as a business of one, I know how rigorous this task is and my limitations. I also know I will need a team who I can manage and this worries me. 

I work slowly. I take a lot of breaks. I don’t want to have expectations of employees I cannot myself meet. But… to be successful if we do end up producing I will have to set guidelines that I have trouble meeting. This difference is heightened for me as, on June 1st, we are launching NeuroMaps, the giving wing of Möbius Keramikk. Last week our amazing web designer created a stellar website for us and we are preparing for the community day which a grant from PG County Arts & Humanities has helped produce. 

I am so excited for this, but there’s a whole mountain of work to do before then to prepare and I still have Möbius Keramikk to worry about and an apartment to move into! Thus, I’m a walking paradox, navigating running a business, creating art, doing self care for myself and my TBI, working to bring education awareness and grants for other survivors, and being there for my family. The challenges I write of are really the wonderful gifts of growth. Even as I am a bit stressed about it all I have such gratitude for the journey my life has taken. I also remind myself that I have faith in myself, my team, and the process. If today goes as planned, the rest of this week I will be free to create and move forward.