The wait was worth it

Glimmers, Ladybirds and finding the light

I don’t know about you, but the mantra “Survive ‘till ‘25'“ has been ringing pretty loudly in my mind for most of this year. It’s been a tough old slog, and I am hoping that this isn’t a dream and I won’t wake up and have to re-live the past year as it has without a doubt been very, very challenging. But that said, I am incredibly proud of myself as I made it through the year despite a lot of sickness and stress and can now say that I have completed my teacher training degree! Something that this time last year wasn’t even a fully formed thought, and yet here I am now, having written 3457 assignments on pedagogy and 83 weeks of teaching practice (I may have miscounted but that is a rough guess). I have learnt so much and realised I am capable of far more than I had ever given myself credit for, including using the word pedagogy in a sentence. That being said I definitely wouldn’t have been able to get through a year of teacher training without the emotional support of my husband who deserves a medal for the amount of crying and “I can’t do this” he’s had to sit through! (a lot).

(I managed to incorporate a bit of art into my teaching, such as this lesson on painting native birds.. not going to lie, I enjoyed the flex, for some reason if you can draw/paint children see you as a kind of magician!)

One of the hardest parts was not being able to create art regularly. With 3 children to look after whilst studying full time, something had to give and unfortunately, that thing was my art practice. The first few months were particularly hard as I felt like I was grieving a part of myself, but that gradually subsided into a kind of empty numbness. Not necessarily better but easier to cope with. I found it hard to even go into my studio, and if I ever did I was confronted with a half-finished painting that I’d started before I’d hit burn-out and realised I needed to supplement my income streams by retraining as a teacher. However, that painting also kept me going as I kept telling myself as soon as I was done I would be able to finish it, and finally, finally, that day came.

It felt quite hard to get into the flow at first, but after a few hours, I found my muscle memory taking over and relaxed into enjoying the process. Even with the worst case of laryngitis that I’ve ever had, it was a pleasure to mutely distract myself with pain(t)ing.

I decided the only fitting title was “Worth The Wait”, due to the length of time it took me to complete it and the challenge to get there. This artwork started as a reminder to look for 'glimmers' - little micro-moments of joy throughout the day. Glimmers - if you haven’t heard of them - are small, positive moments in our environment that bring a sense of joy, such as seeing a shadow dance on the side of your dirty car or looking up and noticing a rainbow after you’ve just got soaked carrying the groceries in. They help us shift into a state of connection and presence away from our ‘doing’ state and into our ‘being’ one. I have had to be very intentional about looking for glimmers this past year, but once I started looking for them I noticed more and more.

Click on the link to see it/purchase via my website.

Another thing that I like to notice aside from glimmers are ladybirds (or ladybugs, depending on where you live, although I much prefer bird to bug). I actually didn’t see that many for quite a long time but towards the end of my training when I was starting to feel a bit wobbly and like I had possibly made a mistake by doing it, I asked “the universe”* for a sign that everything was going to work out and within a few hours one came and landed on my hand. I am really hopeful that means the tides are turning and everything is going to work out positively.

(*this is just my woo-woo belief, yours may be different or you may think it’s all a load of codswallop**, either way is ok!

**codswallop is an old English slang word meaning ‘untrue’ but I just had to google the etymology and apparently it derives from the English ‘Cod Walloper’ who is a person who deals in or handles fish, describing literally “the thumping sound a cod makes as it writhes and flaps around once it hits the deck” and I don’t quite know how that got into common use for ‘nonsense’ but there you go)

Ok, that’d probably enough stream-of-consciousness from me, please go and take a look at my website if you are interested in supporting my art. I hope to find more balance next year so that I can paint alongside teaching. I hope that if you too have been in “survive ‘till ‘25” mode, that your “thrive in 25” era is about to commence.

Glimmers and ladybirds,

Phoebe x