Sidetracked Charley

"Oh would some power the gift give us, to see ourselves as others see us."  Robert Burns. At a period in my life I underwent counseling for one problem and came up with a host of others my counselor thought I should work on. Actually it came down to really only one problem which all my other problems seemed to hang on. It was just a shock it was the one I was most in denial about. Perfectionism. My father was the perfectionist. Not me. My problem was I was not good enough. Never good enough. Not tall enough, not thin enough, not smart enough . . . the list could go on forever. In fact it did. I had to make a list. It is somewhere in one of my many journals I kept religiously before the days of blogs. I was pretty good at that. But perhaps not good enough because I never filled one up to the very last page. And I skipped whole blocks of time. Making the list of my not good enough's was just one exercise. Another was to do something I was horrid at and rate...

Garden August 2012 Oh, no, not another garden blog!! Yes, another. But this one is in response to a question which came up during a conversation with a new gardener: Why do I garden? And that is a really, really good question, because I have always been bad at it. Or at least that is my conception of my ability. Mother was the perfect gardener. Never a weed to be seen and nothing dared not grow. I can remember gardens back to preschool days when we had a truck garden that covered a whole acre of land. And sold veggies at a road side stand in the summer and fall. We also sold eggs and puppies but that is another story. My first garden of my own was in 1972. I was being earth mother. I raised goats, angora rabbits, geese and zucchini. I had never eaten a zucchini in my life but it was the only plant that survived Solomon and Sheba my two angora goats. Friends sent me cookbooks and recipes for zucchini and my collection of "Goats Don't Eat Zucchini" recipes for a fu...

My basic problem with being self-employed is that I work for a perfectionist boss who often sets impossible goals and ridiculous deadlines. Fortunately, or unfortunately as far as the boss is concerned, I am a Gemini and ergo often of two minds. Yesterday evening as I was working on the last of three paintings I would like to finish before this weekend - and frame - it hit me how insane my boss is. Right now, this minute, I have 13 new paintings for the fair of which seven are "significant new works" and of those three I consider major - the triptych and the two panorama paintings. I am usually totally happy with just 4 or 5 new works. Am I going to fall off the edge of the world if I do not finish these other three? And there is always the fair after this one. When I hit the bed last night I was so exhausted I fell more into a coma than slumber. So deep was my sleep that when the power went off I was only vaguely aware briefly before falling back into the void. I never ...