So... I've got writer's block...
And, even worse, I've got painter's block!
In fact, I'm stuck.
Not your usual sort of being a little bit stuck in the mud, forget about that. When I say I'm stuck, I'm more thinking along the lines of fast setting concrete being poured around me. Actually, you can add in some steel re-enforcements for good measure there too. That is the kind of stuck I feel like at the moment.
It could have something to do with the Scottish weather getting to me. After all, it has been raining day after day after day. Whilst half of Europe is getting scorched and Greece is going up in flames, I have had feverish dreams of water coming up to my nostrils, whilst the never ending sound of rain lashing down on the domed roof light keeps reverberating in my head all night.
It has been getting so bad, that my friends no longer dare to bring up the subject of weather, unless it's under the guise of a joke along the lines of "Is it true the Scots tow their cars behind their boats?" (hahaha! very funny...)
There have been days when I truly started to believe that the only place wetter than my garden was the bottom of the sea. But when you are stuck in your little bubble, as I have been all summer, all that is outside of it seems to magnify.
Another reason for feeling stuck, a very weather-unrelated reason, is the fact that I'm now fastly approaching my 37th birthday and I still don't know what I want to be when I grow up.
Somehow I'm waiting for something amazing to happen, for all the lights to come on at once, and to finally find clarity in the dark.
I know a few things: I know I want to spend more time being creative, I want to paint... I'd love to write more (and hopefully improve that skill), I also really want to see a lot more of the world. But like someone who has been given a number of unusual ingredients, despite the fact that they can't cook to save their own life, I have no idea of how I should make some sort of a feasible plan out of the given and known factors.
Sometimes, late at night, I lie awake in bed, thinking of that one year road trip I'd like to go on. In my thoughts I'm crossing America coast to coast and up and down in an Airstream that has been kitted out as a mobile art studio. The idea is that I would record my travels, the places and people I meet through sketches and paintings. Of course, at the end of it all, I would rent a great bright and airy studio in one of America's bigger cities for a couple of months, to finish off those pieces which have only had the groundwork done. All the while I'm soaking up the atmosphere, I'm meeting new and interesting people, I see places I never knew existed before... The climax would of course be the exhibition of the work. This exhibition would be a very rich patchwork of portraits and landscapes, all of them with an accompanying story, almost like a richly illustrated travel log...
Ah... one can dream...
