I always swore I would never start a blog post or a newsletter with, “Well, I haven’t been contacting you because…” and nevertheless, I am about to do it. 2022 has been a year of working and hanging with my kids and a little bit of renewal. I had a little bump in the road with my health and was working on a big project (more about that in a minute) in the spring and that quickly turned into graduation celebrations with my youngest and here I am smack in the middle of summer.

So, to go back. I found myself in the hospital last Thanksgiving with AFib. I was not expecting this of course, and it somewhat was like a visitor to my life that I needed to learn to deal with. If you don’t know about AFib, you are most likely going to know someone who has it, as it is a quickly growing condition. In my case, we think it was my floppy heart valve (MVP) which got the ball rolling down this path. It took me a little longer than some to get to a medication balance that worked for me and I am likely going to have a small surgery down the road to help mitigate the condition. This has made me say, “oh yeah! 50… I guess I need to do those things I keep reading about.” In particular, I needed to work on sleeping. Sleeping through the night more, and going to bed so I have the opportunity for 7 hours of sleep (which I haven’t done in over 20 years.)

Around this same time, I had the opportunity to work on a really cool project. I was commissioned by the North Carolina Theatre to create key art for their upcoming 22/23 season. It was a joy working with the artistic director, Eric Woodall and the team from Clean Design to create oil paintings that would be used to showcase the upcoming season. Learn more about my year as Visiting Artist at North Carolina Theatre.

My oldest child will be a senior at UNC Charlotte this fall, and this spring, my youngest was accepted into Princeton. So, getting him prepared for that big move has been a joy for all of us. The graduation and trips to schools and all of the changes have made this year so memorable, even if bittersweet.

And here we are in the summer, and I am working on new work! I can’t wait to share with you some new landscapes I am working on, along with new birds. This fall, I have some really interesting events planned, but that fun is for another post!

Thank you for tagging along with me on this journey!