I am thinking about changing. Maybe I am not in fact innovative enough to be a painter. I find myself reinventing the wheel and I am even boring myself. I live in artistic isolation now. My old friends have scattered now that they cannot get anything from me. Emails go unanswered, calls do not come in, there is no communication. This happens and I just do not bother to pursue. More to the point though is my desire to quit. I find it all rather not fulfilling lately. To what ends do I doggedly work at night after working all day? To stand in a gallery and have people say it is nice, then pack up and end the conversation? Perhaps my time would be better spent elsewhere. The thing I miss most lately is the activity of my old friends minds. I am so bored of all this. The repetition of my days is dulling to my spirit. It makes less of me and I have not figured out how to break free of it, or if I ever will. After all I have accomplished, I am starting to think I am in fact a failure. Apparently none of that counts. I guess I am demotivated, demoralized, and generally tired of fighting the grind. Part of me is just plain angry, where did these people go? The pretenders! They were not true at all! People just do not ever seem to understand and I grow weary from the effort of it. So before my biggest show, which I am trying to make myself care about, I want to give up. This will be my last show. I will resign myself to being ordinary and finding some other path. Perhaps it was not meant to be at all anyway. I have to work so hard to produce the mediocre and really there is no genius in continuing that. I guess it is finally having the wisdom to see that one has to do it out of love for it, or some blind talent that drives you and lately I have lost my love and well my genius is questionable. I am not finding the poetry of existence, I am just walking day to day and getting by. What is there to paint in that?

I wonder if it could have been different somehow? Then I sit back and reflect on what I have before me, the distance I have yet to go and I know I do not regret. I am not who I was and gratefully so, I have faced some sour days. I made it, here I am! All I thought I needed, I lost and thinking I could not recover, I managed to. Do I still love there, in that place, yes and always. I look and see what is real, not what I imagine to be. Perhaps he hates me and will never return to me, but all that I learned I carry. All that he taught me, I carry in love. That is all, no need for melancholy, or desire, or lack of peace. Only the beauty of the gifts I was given and how they carry me still. Even he, cannot take that peace away.