Life as it is now…”Post-Cafe”

10/18/2016 It’s been almost 3 months now since we closed the café. When people ask me how I am doing, I am never really sure what to say, as I am not sure how I feel. I have been working a lot and my “job” consulting…as well as working to get my household back in order. Within a few weeks after the café had ended, I wandered around many days, trying to figure out what to do with myself and the chaos I had created at my home. What was going to be “my thing” now? What was going to excite me about my day, about what I was going to accomplish, what were the goals…how was I going to change the world now? When I gave up my “my job” several years ago to become a full-time artist, that was my thing, Art. Then I added the Art Classes, and then came the Café, and I was making a difference in the world through Art. Now what am I doing? Nothing. I did not how to reconcile with that. I would look at my art pieces and art supplies, which are stacked up in my shop, my art shed, my house, everywhere, and I felt sad. Here it all sits, with no purpose now. The house, the yard, the shop, all a mess. I honestly would walk around and cry and think, what have I done? What happened? I had made this mess…a mess of our lives. Our finances are in shambles. Everything. A mess. I didn’t know how to reconcile with any of it. Each day I just would get out of bed and go to work at “my job”. I buried myself in that and buried the feelings. At some point I did decided that I had to fix it. I had to do something, and came to the agreement with myself that that would be “my thing”. Getting our household back in order. I worked on making a To Do List every day that included all the projects and items that needed to get done. I felt good about the lists. I would mark stuff off every day, and I felt accomplished. So now, I feel like I have a good handle on this again…just like in the old days: Pre-café. I have a house that feels like mine again, a yard that I enjoy being in again, a gigantic excel spread sheet with all these numbers that go on and on, which equal a very long term budget. I have worked this whole plan like a job, my other job, “my thing”. However, I am wandering again. Now what do I do? I have been getting some advice from friends, and it’s the same advice that I can hear somewhere in the back of my subconscious…that I need to get back to my art. Art to get back to who I was, who I am, for therapy, for the love of it. But I can’t. Why? I think it’s because I am mad, mad at “it”. Mad at what was “my thing”. I am trying to really identify what I am feeling, so I can work through it…but I am struggling to really understand what’s going on in my head. I get that life is full of ups and downs, good things, bad things, and that the fact that I had this wonderful 2 year adventure is what I should be thankful for. I get that it’s better to have tried and failed that not tried at all….blah blah blah. But I am mad. I tried to do something different, something crazy and unexpected, and hard, and it didn’t work. It’s gone. It’s over. And I am mad.