What I’m doing now (November 2020)
My kids turned 14 and 16 this fall. There is a lot of focus on driving. We’re kind of tearing apart the house––cleaning, sorting, rebuilding, and redecorating now that my soon-to-be X has moved out. The Surprise Divorce is still not final. Ugh.
Last you heard I was training for a call center job. In the end, I really didn’t mind the work, but the company culture was for sh*t. I honestly about had a nervous breakdown because of it. I was spending 2-3 hours looking for other jobs every night when I got home.
There are of course very slim pickin’s just now, but I got lucky. For the past couple months I’ve been working a temporary gig packing boxes in a nearby Hallmark factory. It’s a freaking dream compared to the call center. The people are nice, I get a workout, and the repetitive nature of it is actually weirdly therapeutic. The irony is not lost on me that I have been doing design and illustration work my whole career, and now I’m simply packing other people’s work. To boot, when I first started, we were mostly running Valentine’s Day cards. Now I’m seeing lots of wedding and anniversary cards. It’s a mad mad world, you just gotta laugh!
I have been drawing less, not only because I have less time, but because I’m spending a lot of creative energy on reimagining my life after divorce. It’s a great feeling! Fresh and new! It will all surely take the form of art sooner or later, so keep an eye on my Instagram account @darcidoodlewent to catch glimpses of my story and progress.
And of course, I’m still looking for time to sew a few more face masks. They’re like socks in the laundry. Where do they go?
So––lots of balls in the air! It feels a little frantic; but with the election results, talk of a vaccine, my divorce nearly final, and the new year coming, I have a great sense of Hope right now!