I’ve been setting up the picklebird site again. Just a simple Word Press blog. Very bare bones.

The bottom line is that I need to start selling off my art collection, or at least some of it. Now, when I say that, that doesn’t mean art by me. It means art by other artists. I just wanted to make that clear.

We not only don’t have the room for it, but it’s time to raise funds, simplify our lives, and start preparing for the End of Days. …not really on that last part. Or actually, if you thought I was serious, keep thinking that. You’re quite the character.

I’ll most likely be auctioning things off on Ebay under the picklebird name, but rest assured, I’ll be telling you all about it on my blog here too.

So I finished the layout for my book in Adobe InDesign! I know how to work it, and I know how to work Illustrator. What a feat that was. I’m no pro ar anything, but I basically know both programs now, InDesign more than Illustrator of course, but hey, I’m damn proud of myself for picking up two new skill sets. Do you think someone would hire me? A 45 year-old artist with great writing skills but needs to go to the bathroom every five minutes, needs several naps a day, requires two hands to lift a coffee mug to her mouth, and cries after every one of her 15 panic attacks per day? I only get overwhelmed if you give me two tasks at a time. It’s not so bad. My social anxiety only kicks in when I have to talk to an actual person and the pain in my legs, hips and back only persists for the hours I am actually awake. I think I can easily get a job.

My favorite thing is when people think I don’t have a job.

“Oh you’re an artist? I would love to have free time all day.”

“Since you’re not doing anything, can you run to the store for me?”

“You’re so lucky you get to dabble in paint all day.”

I also love it when people say, “There’s no such thing as a ‘self-taught’ artist.”

People say that! I hear it all the time. It comes from other artists, mostly artists that went to school. They are very adamant about it too.

“You learned from somewhere. A book, a video, from looking at a painting. Society.” They think it’s so far-fetched!

What if I bought or stole some art supplies and just tried it out? What if I kept doing that until I seemed to make it work out? Good Golly! I must be some kind of magic genius!

“The paint taught you!, not yourself! How dare you take credit for what the art supplies obviously taught you! You are anti-teacher.”

Anyway, it goes on and on. Sometimes it’s almost that ridiculous.

I finished this little painting finally. I named it, Runaway Slinkies:

There was more I was going to say, but now I forgot.

Happy February.