Getting ready to be ready to move

The de-clutter has started for the move that isn’t yet happening. These things always take much longer than you imagine so it’s a good idea to begin well ahead of the time you think you’ll need to start packing.

Done a really good clothing clear out and feel so much better after. Clearing out is not just making storage and floor space but head space too and I really enjoy it. Best clear out ever was when I sold my house and almost everything in it prior to going travelling for a year. Amazing sense of freedom knowing that all I owned was a small 4'x4'x4' cube of stuff in storage and what was in my backpack.

But OMG. How did I accumulate so many canvases and artist pads? Probably just buying them when I spotted the right sizes at a good price but a bit of a shock all the same. Just when I thought I'd stacked them all up, I'd pull another box out and find some little ones. Maybe I should start painting and put them on Folksy. Now there’s an idea. Started on that at the weekend with a couple of small dance pieces. Got one more or less finished after messing with the background a thousand times and another part done. I quite enjoy painting once I've decided what I'm doing but there's always an 'oh gawd what is that period' first.

Sifting through my art shelf and for now I’ve mostly only managed to move things into different boxes. Okay, I did pull out a bit for donating including an ancient easel which went to the kids’ art class that’s now running just down the road from me...and warned them it’s a right so and so to set up.

Got a text from one of my Devon art friends. They have a monthly group meet up of artists and creative people which is starting up again this month. I hope to be able to join them when I’ve relocated as the one thing I’ve realised since leaving Devon is how much it helps to be with other creatively minded people. Seeing how others work, how they market or sell, how they talk about what they do etc. It really helps to have feedback from experienced artists regardless of what they do. Mixing it up with different kinds of makers can give you a quite different perspective on what you’re doing and can help if you tend towards the self critical. They can also point out the obvious things you just can't see when you're up close and working on a piece!

It is nice going on Twitter and seeing the announcements as everything starts to open up again. It still seems astonishing how so much of life was shut down for so long but it's also sobering to know that many businesses and creative venues are gone for good. I'm not so sure it was all entirely necessary as I look around at other countries who managed to keep their economies functioning without having a bad outcome. The more I see the stats the more it seems that every country has to go through the infection cycle. How you come out of it is partly demographics but mostly it's the health of the people judging by a wiki showing the numbers aged over 107 (!) who've had Covid and survived. Then again, anyone who's lived that long obviously has a robust immune system. It's bizarre that the astonishing capabilities of our own body's immunity appears to have been ignored in favour of vaccines but that's a story for somewhere else.