So, here we are... the last time I worked a public festival was in mid March. Like the rest of the world, I’ve been social distancing, wearing my mask, using hand sanitizer and keeping my outings to a minimum. I’ve been missing, desperately, the excitement, creativity, and personal interactions of a spring and summer filled with festivals, events, and private bookings. It feels very strange. For more than 20 years my life has moved to the rhythms of my henna and my art; the wildly busy festival season, and the quiet, hermetic winter making creative messes in my studio.
Watching my festivals fall like dominos was awful, then depressing, then predictable. At first I threw myself into studio and home art projects with a frenzied energy; desperately trying to avoid the horrible news reports and the looming inevitability of losing most of my seasonal earning potential. By summer, when even my autumn events were cancelling, I understood that this was indeed my “lost year.” As the devastating realization hit me, I drifted between my bedroom and the couch for about a week, alternately sleeping, eating, reading, napping. Luckily, I am easily bored.
I began to resent the wasted time. Ticking off the multitudinous art projects waiting for me, I bestirred myself to tackle them. One of the greatest blessings of being an artist is that there is always something to do, something to explore, some artistic mess to create and lose myself in.
It also occurred to me that this is actually a taste of my inevitable “retirement.” The hard truth is that the vending life is rigorous and grueling. I’m 64 years old, and though I’m reasonably healthy, there will eventually come a day when I simply cannot manage the physicality of loading and unloading, setting up and breaking down the booth. And while I will miss the peripatetic life of the traveling henna artist, I do love the life of the studio artist. No one ever need feel sorry for me, so why should I feel sorry for myself?
This has been a deeply felt reset for many of us. While the uncertainty can be frightening, I was pleasantly surprised to find that I qualified for the pandemic unemployment insurance, so that has been a tremendous help. I have so many blessings to be grateful for, my daughter lives with me so I am not lonely and have her tremendous support, my brother and his family live nearby, and I have a couple of dear friends, and a comfortable home with food in the kitchen and a studio full of supplies and a brain bursting with projects.... sounds like heaven to me.
So, this “lost year” is perhaps a misnomer... maybe it’s more of a “found year?”
