It’s Time to Move On: My 10-Year Vision

This is the last month that I will have an outside studio.

I’ve decided to move back to my house to work as I navigate transitioning from a metalworking artist to a watercolor artist.

Whew…big exhale here.

I’ve been making metal jewelry for 20 years.

This month, I decided to slowly stop making jewelry and pivot to something that I will most likely be exploring for the rest of my life.

Watercolors.

There are huge changes afoot in my life, and I’ve felt them coming for the last couple of years.

When my husband’s father died, I knew that his death signaled a transition in how my husband and I choose to spend the rest of our lives together.

Everything in my life right now is truing up to who we both are after the last decade of staying in one place, and tending to the caregiving and responsibilities associated with escorting our parents on to their next destination.

Up until we moved to Roanoke, we were nomadic. We loved it, and living lean was something that always felt right for us.

Now that our responsibilities towards our parents are over, we are both feeling the urge to get lean again, and downsize our home and belongings in a radical way.

It’s still in the talking stages. We’ve been in the same house now for 10 years.

That’s the longest I’ve EVER lived in one place and I’m still shocked at how fast we have accumulated stuff! Our house is 2700 sq.ft. and is filled to the brim.

It will take a while to sort and sift through the ‘things’ and decide what stays and what goes.

But to answer the question, Where do I see myself in 10 years?

I don’t see myself here.

I don’t see myself in a large house and I don’t see myself here in Roanoke.

Roanoke is ok. Virginia is going in a direction I don’t like with all the taxes and authoritarian laws about defending yourself, and the city itself has declined fairly dramatically in the last 10 years.

When I go on my summer trips to Utah and Colorado, my Airbnb’s feel more like home than my real one does.

Isn’t that an odd thing to admit?

I don’t see home as a permanent place. I never have.

My experience with living in the same place year after year is stifling.

It feels like I’m stuck in a deep rut.

Your things own your time and your time is filled up with maintaining your things, moving your things, rearranging them, throwing them out and buying new ones to replace them.

I’ve watched myself become too habituated to life at home, and I realize that I’m happiest when I have a small suitcase with my essentials and that’s all I need for weeks of activity.

Mobility has historically been my way of life and I really miss it. I can’t shake it and I don’t want to shake it off.

I don’t like being in one place for too long.

So, it’s time to reset our lives and move on to a brand new beginning.

When we were living nomadically, we met a man who rotated where he lived every 4 months. He lived in Florida, New Mexico and Washington state.

He was a short-term renter and he rented the same places every year.

He had friends and community in each place. His life was full and interesting. This was before Airbnb, and his lifestyle always stuck with me. The places were fully furnished and he just arrived and moved in with his suitcases.

That’s a possible direction I see my life going towards in the next 10 years.

There are other possibilities, too. But I like that one for the time being.

We’ll see how it all shakes out, but adapting to the changing landscape is one of my favorite things to do.

I’m not waiting for 10 years before I start, either.

Radically downsizing and the rumblings I’ve felt over the last few years about changing my creative expression to something different from metal are indicative that my life needs a reset in all ways.

Here’s what I do know: I don’t need a studio, and after this year, I won’t be making jewelry anymore.

I can watercolor anywhere, and need very few things to do it.

Getting back to the basics feels so liberating. We’ve done it before and loved it.

Here’s to change!