The Signs, they are a comin'! Thank you, God!

This morning I woke up full of anxiety and other feelings about several things, but one that popped to the top pretty quickly was my decision to stop tutoring and to devote myself to art full time.  It's such a HUGE decision! 

This is my last week at Trinity.  This morning I got a lump in my throat several times while I was tutoring my students, especially one whom I have been seeing for 3 1/2 years.  I will miss her a lot.  I've built up such a personal relationship with many of these kids.  It'll be hard to let that go.  Hopefully they'll choose to stay in touch, but it's actually the rare student who does so.  I can count them on my thumb actually.  After 23 years of tutoring.

While doing my Morning Pages (see Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way if you don't know what they are) at 5:30 this morning, I allowed my feelings to pour out then eventually allowed some rationality to break in and told God I'm letting go and asked him to take over.  I do believe that when I surrender to the forces that be, my life is 100% better.  I tend to think I'm in charge and can do very well, but again and again I find that I do better if I let go and let God. 

I am feeling so driven to do this work, I no longer have a choice about it.  It was difficult staying focused on Calculus this morning.  It feels like my brain is a dam, holding in information like derivatives, balancing chemical equations, quadratic formulas, metaphors, the Constitution, the difference between ser and estar.  But it is full to overflowing and can't wait to open its gates and let all that extraneous knowledge go! Pfft!  Occasionally I'll worry that I might let in Alzheimers if I don't keep using my brain as actively as I have been these last 20+ years - "use it or lose it" - but I am SO ready to let it go (not my brain - the plethora of high school subject matter, I mean)!  I want to fill my brain with other things, fill my eyes with other images, fill my heart with other thoughts.  It's been wonderful tutoring.  I will grieve the loss of my students and my colleagues, but I am ready to move on.

I had lots of affirmations today that I'm doing the right thing.  My colleagues were uniformly kind and supportive and encouraging.  Then I met with Valley Haggard for lunch.  I was feeling raw as could be, but tried not to show it - who wants to dump the second they see someone?!  But she almost immediately read my mind and said, without any prompting, "You are doing the right thing.  It's perfect.  It's going to turn out great!  It's exactly what you're supposed to be doing."  Of course tears came to my eyes as I thought of the students I'm leaving and as I felt my fear rise to the surface.  But when I focus on my gut, I know I'm doing the right thing.  There just isn't any question there.

Valley and I were meeting to  plan a workshop we'll be offering in February called Body Shop: Exploring our real feelings about our real bodies through drawing and writing.   I love working with Valley!  She and I seem to work well together and came up with a dynamite workshop with joy and enthusiasm.  I'm looking forward to teaching this workshop with her.  If you are interested in taking it, email me at susansingerart@msn.com, and I'll send you more details once we get the flyer made up.  I'll also be posting the flyer here once it's ready.

Valley also agreed to meet with me to help me brainstorm about the book I'm going to write.  I know it's there, ready and waiting, but I don't have a format for it yet.  So much is swirling in my head about it - I need to figure out how to get it down on paper.  She is going to help me figure that out.  I'm a lucky woman.  We'll meet another time to do the same for her and the book that is swirling inside her head.  I feel so blessed to have met her and to be collaborating with her in so many ways!

When I got back to school and checked my email, there was an email from a woman who's the publisher of a small press who might be interested in my book.  She saw my catalog and liked what she saw so is wanting to meet with me to talk about it.  We set up that appointment for Friday.  God is working overtime giving me signs that this is the right thing for me to be doing!  

When I got back from school, there was an enticing pink gift bag hanging on the doorknob.  My dear friend Lynda had brought me a birthday present, a book entitled: True Work: The Sacred Dimension of Earning a Living.  Sounds perfect to me!  I can't wait to dive into it!

As if all that weren't enough, I just took a break for a moment from writing this and got an email from Foundry Gallery in DC saying that my piece Sally kissing Susie got accepted into their show Celebrate Gay Marriage.  Yippee!  The show will be in DC in January.  Details to follow.

It's been a great art day!