thinking ahead to 2014

A few more days and a new year will be ushered in.

I have never been one to make resolutions. Well, I shouldn't say *never* because I am certain there have been years that I've committed to changing something in my life and called it something other than resolution. Probably failed at making those changes, too, so I might just as well have called it a resolution!

About midway through this new year I will find myself an empty-nester. With that, I imagine I  will find myself with a shift in priorities. While I will always be involved in my babies' lives, I will be doing so with the knowledge that I have raised two amazing, self-sufficient, independent young people, and my involvement will be different from what it was when they were under my roof. Things have already changes so much when my son left for school. I know it will change even further when my girl trots off for the next chapter of her life.

So what does that mean for me?

That is the question  that I have been pondering. Honestly, I know the answer. The question really should be, "what the hell you waiting for?"

I am an artist.

It is what I have always aspired to be. The problem has been that I've not had the time I have wanted to commit to my creativity. I can't really say that now, and I think, on some level, that it scares me. There are all these 'what ifs' looming; what if I starve even more than I already am? what if I fail? what if no one understands what it is I am doing?

I ran across something in one of my journals that I have read a few times in recent days, a quote from Rainer Marie Rilke, and it goes something like this--

"Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not seek the answers which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. The point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer."

'Live the questions now.'

Might just be my new mantra.