The Story Behind the Title

I am an artist. I've spent way too much money, and have accrued too much debt trying to justify that title through education, artistic experiences, and other foolish things that make a person feel like they can justify a title they've given themselves.

I'm also an art teacher by trade - or at least I was at one time.  I love teaching and how it allows you to dabble in every single art medium, even though you may be especially experienced in one particular category - in my case, photography.

I loved going around and working with students individually, exposing them to emerging artists, and watching them grow into artists themselves. But there was one question I always dreaded...
"How do you paint the sky?"

What sky? On what day? In what weather?  It didn't matter.  It was always way more difficult than it looked, and it was outside of this art teacher's ability to explain it prophetically.  My unhelpful advice usually involved me sitting down with a brush and a paper, attempting to create some sort of sky they had in mind and saying things like, "I don't know, you just put some paint on your brush and stab at your canvas."  Don't even get me started on watercolors.

This isn't a "Mommy Blog", or at least it isn't intended to be.  It's more an experiment in living whole-heartedly.  Of showing up.  Of creating experiences.  And of sharing this experiment with my kids someday so that they can see evidence that I tried.  That I loved them.  That I gave it my all, even though sometimes my all seems like very little. Maybe it's kind of a Mommy blog, but you'll never hear me admit it.

 Painting the sky is damn hard.  Living a life wholeheartedly is harder.  It turns out I'm not incredibly good at either.
This blog is about hard things. And happy things.  It's about me showing up, and trying to paint that sky with a little honesty, a little love, and maybe even a little humor.

It's about laughing at myself and not taking things too seriously.  It's about taking some things seriously.  It's about the basic and the abundant.

In case you haven't figured it out, I have no idea what it's about.
I'm just going to put some paint on a brush and stab at the paper.