Harajuku Girl :: Taken in Tokyo, June 2006

As I am currently in between the two stages of completing my book proposal, for the past 24 hours or so I have literally felt like I was standing between two large walls, having just climbed over one and now waiting to climb the other.  This sounds much more daunting than it really is, but the image came into my mind yesterday morning and has stayed with me since.  At this point I am having to wait for some feedback and input, so there isn’t much I can do on the proposal right now.  Because I am so excited to finish the proposal and send it off, it is difficult to sit still between these two to do lists and simply…wait. 

The idea of finishing the proposal and then moving on to new work for my upcoming show has been so ingrained in my brain ever since the new year rolled around that I could not muster up the motivation yesterday to work on new pieces, so I spent the day doing a lot of quieter tasks – creating "storyboards" for my proposal, planning small details for the show, organizing my computer files and backing them up…little things. 

This morning it has sunk in that I will most likely not be able to fully dive back into my book proposal until next week, so I need to force myself into action and get to work on new girl pieces today.   I always find it interesting when I get stuck in these peculiar places – where I’m not quite done with one project but hadn’t planned on starting another just yet and I feel slightly paralyzed.  Even though I am an artist, there is a side of me that likes things tidy, even in the way I start and complete projects.  Sometimes creative blocks like this catch me off guard but I make a conscious choice to sit still with them, at least for a little while, to see what they are really about.  Yesterday I started to think I should force myself to work on pieces for my show, but I decided instead to let it be OK to rest in the quiet space between the two walls.  To take a breather, and let ideas swirl around in my brain of their own free will. I can’t start climbing that next wall just yet, but I can get my creative juices flowing again today in that beautiful in between space.