So following on the subject of Fresh Start, the human got one, too. 
I got a whole bunch of good stuff done the past six weeks while healing.

In part that was because I gave myself permission to Just Heal, which left a whole lot of free time not spent on social media, and new work design, and website maintenance, and marketing, and... well, work. 
Work as I learned to define it over a lot of years of working hard and long and well.

But what I did with that freedom was work on small things that cleared home and studio with joy, and that have now made coming home - or going to work - a satisfaction, rather than another unmanageable list of things still left undone.

I don't recall anyone checking my brain after I missed those last three steps on the ladder (I'm sure they did, I was just preoccupied with two days of waiting to get into surgery), but I do remember hitting the ground flat and very hard, and my head was a very definite part of that.  

My working theory of the moment is that the misstep knocked something I've always been lacking into its appropriate place. That core understanding that - no, maybe the desire for - a clarity of environment that leaves an open slate to Be in. 

I am as content with my life and as proud of myself as I have ever been, because a start has turned into pattern.  The dishes are done when the dishes are created.  The laundry is done when there is laundry to do. Windows have been washed and flowers have been planted and the deck is my favorite place to be after getting the last-summer buildup and winter detritus cleared. The VVA truck took away a hunndred square feet of extraneous Things and I'm gathering the same for a second pickup next week.  The lawn is regularly mowed to the point of not-embarassment.  I have cleared some small next space every day.  I have thoroughly (possibly too thoroughly, I'll have to balance that a bit) let go of feeling like I need to work seventy hours in perpetuity in a direction that holds at least the possibility of making money.  I spent days doing floors and scrubbing and making-better at the art center.  

And I pushed myself with that clearing, backed off when it moved from uncomfortable to hurt, and at the medical check at three weeks after the surgery, was where I should have been at six weeks.  And, yeah, I did not follow a lot of the "requisites" [because, no, I am not staying on a walker for six weeks (hey, I did for four days), because it was teaching my body patterns of weakness and distortion I don't want to live with].

And that was part of the "whole bunch of stuff done".  Because movement is good and necessary for me.  Because getting the Meeko and the me back out to the trees and the creeks, before the dog eats me or I implode, is good and necessary for me. 

It's like I'm now a functional adult or something.

I didn't mention it to you earlier, because it was new and it historically hasn't held.  

But it's been a month without a falter, and is pretty clear this is now a consistent pattern, and I'm fair sure celebrating it won't jinx it. 

Pretty sure.
L,L

"Birthed"; LH, April 21, 1994
Artist's Collection

The painting here was the first painting of my adult life.  I remember feeling, out of the blue one day in the house we built that I loved in a life that was good, like I had to paint. I remember shutting myself in the office to create this piece, and I remember being surprised and pleased that it was Something.

Looking at the date on it, it was the spring before the summer that I stepped away from that comfortable life and a good man I loved who loved me, at a time I was needing to stretch while he was where he wanted to be.

After this piece, the art didn't pop up again until 1999, and, again was a surprise. 
That was supposed to be a writing studio.

LH