Greetings!

Lately I’ve been thinking about life experience. At least my version of it, since we all have our own versions. Our lives are all very situational. And very fluid. What our life was like yesterday, even if it feels like it, isn’t exactly like our life will be today.

A cab driver in New York is cleaning the car up for his 12-hour shift. A young girl in India is making jewelry to sell on the streets. Someone is landing a fighter jet on a deck, deadheading a truck home, doing their rounds in a hospital, just finishing a bike ride on a mountain trail, or sliding down a pole to rush to a fire where they will save a child. Right now!

I thought about my job at the city and wondered what it was like now. Someone who did my job before I started retired. And someone else is doing that job now, their way, without a thought about past or future people who will do it in their place when they leave. Today I would not know anyone in what was my world just twenty years ago.

I’ve been lucky to have had more of a hand in creating my own world the way I wanted it to be. Even then, it’s a bit chaotic, as all lives are. Others come and go in my life just as I do in theirs. I’ve learned to cherish the time others share with me. No one has to.

Given how diverse life is, it’s no surprise art is. Looking back, I regret not noticing and enjoying art. Or creating art. Music, painting, or writing a novel. We can all do that throughout our lives, and I believe we need that. I’ve never been as happy and content as I am when I take pictures and then create art with them. It is playtime for my brain. I can’t get it wrong. It will be what my soul wants it to be.

And I think my time since I became an artist is very likely the best time of my life. The choices I’ve made have been more thoughtful and satisfying. The fact that it coincides with my retirement from a daily ‘job’ might have something to do with it, but I should have found time for my soul to play in the small cracks of time I had to myself throughout my life.

Thank you for coming along for my ride and the art I finally created in life.

And as always, feel free to comment, ask questions, or even make suggestions. I’m at ai7r@mac.com

Buy me an ice cream?