Today is my birthday. I’m sixty-seven years old. And I’m here to tell you that age is not a number.
Age – aging – happens and by believing that age is simply a number bypasses the truth that as the years roll on we change. For example, the hair on my legs is now growing out of my chin and the hair on my head is thinning. My first step in the morning is more like a first limp (yoga hip). My skin is wrinkling, my eyes have gone dry, and over the past year I’ve developed the same hammer toe my mother was blessed with.
So age is not ‘just a number’. I know people mean well. I know the phrase is meant to comfort. But the words also imply that I should ignore reality. The words imply that if I repeat them like a mantra my body at sixty-seven will perform like it did when I was twenty-seven.
I’d rather embrace all the circles I’ve made around the sun. I’d rather embrace all the changes. The not so great changes but the good changes, too. I’m sixty-seven years old today. I have greying hair and I’ve put on weight but I’ve also let go of the envy that consumed me forty years ago. I’ve become more appreciative of the small moments in life. I laugh more. I go to bed early so that I’m awake to see dawn. I want to remember to accept it all.
Acceptance isn’t curling up in a ball waiting for the end. Acceptance puts me on a path of exploration. What can I do now that I couldn’t do forty years ago? What attitudes have shifted? Moving forward, what steps will I put in place to ensure good mental and physical health? What will I do to commit to living a creative life of purpose – a life that has heart and meaning?
This week I will reflect on these questions – I understand the answers will change over the years as I continue to grow and change. But where am I right now, in this moment? And how can I use the insights I gain by reflecting on these questions? How will these insights impact my art practice? My yoga practice?
There was a time when the level of happiness I felt in a day was determined by the number I saw on the scale upon weighing myself each and every morning. As I aged I saw the futility and ridiculousness of that ritual and stopped weighing myself. For many years I lived without a scale in the house. If I’m being truthful, however, to this day, on those rare occasions when I do check in on my weight the number I see still has the power to set my mood.
Something similar happens when I am in my studio. If the work is going well then I’m all smiles. If I’m struggling with the materials, or if I’m certain I’ve ruined a new piece I was enamored with just the day before, I question why I even bother. Then there’s the mental baggage that accompanies me when I’m headed to the studio. If by chance I open that baggage and spill it’s contents then navigating my studio and doing the work my heart wants me to do is made more difficult by the messy mental stumbling blocks I’ve placed in my way. Like my ever-present impostor syndrome, for example. Or the envy I sometimes feel for another artist – their gorgeous work, their incredible success. And when there is envy, shame for feeling envious is not far behind.
As I write these thoughts I can look out the window and see that the team of gardeners we’ve hired have arrived. It will take some time to clear out decades of overgrowth, to repair a stone wall and to remove the non-native ivy climbing the trunks of our trees. But when the work is finished I will begin to prepare one small bed at the base of the largest tree for planting in spring. Which reminds me of something someone told me a few weeks ago. They told me that gardening is not a project, it’s a process. Indeed.
Two and a half decades ago I joined Weight Watchers and lost sixty unnecessary pounds. I lost the weight so quickly that I gained more than a few gallstones and a nasty case of disordered eating but we can save that story for another day. The mistake I made at the time was thinking of my weight loss journey as a project. And once those pounds were dropped the project was complete. Silly me.
Three years ago, when we moved to Virginia, I was determined to find the artist I abandoned when the need to have a steady income was more urgent than the need to create. Somehow the universe felt my determination and opened a few doors for me. She built a solid foundation for me when I was accepted into the Incubator Program at McGuffey Art Center in Charlottesville.
In 2023 I took on the year-long residency at McGuffey as a project. Show up. Do the work. Exhibit the work. Sell the work. Repeat. What was I thinking?
Gardening is not a project, it’s a process. Holding on to good health is not a project, it’s a process. Creating art that resonates is not a project, it’s a process. I guess it follows, then, that life is not a project. It’s a process.
It’s a process that begins with kindness. Being kind to my home. Planting seeds. Nourishing the earth beneath my feet. Hard and rewarding work. Being kind to others. Admitting when I’ve made mistakes or when my words have hurt someone. Showing gratitude for deep friendships. Remembering anniversaries and birthdays.
But being kind to my breathing heart? Being kind to my creative heart? That can be challenging.
Manifesting kindness towards myself when I’ve spent seven decades judging and comparing myself to my wealthier friends, to the skinny models I see in magazines, to the artists that speak with eloquence and passion about their work is a struggle. Maybe it requires breaking the habits that keep my self-care and kindness at bay.
Maybe it begins with embracing the truth that the process – whether it’s planting a garden, celebrating good health or creating art – doesn’t run in a straight line. It meanders and curls and doubles back on itself and then forges ahead. It moves around obstacles, plows through roadblocks, climbs metaphorical mountains and charges down steep hills like a child on a Schwinn Stingray Chopper, bugs in her teeth from smiling too much and bright colored vinyl ribbons dancing from the handlebars.
Each moment of the journey – the bumps, the stumbles, the thrills and delights – they all require different kinds of kindness. Sometimes I have to be forgiving. Sometimes I have to be honest. Sometimes I need to put my nose to the grindstone and sometimes I need to rest. Figuring that out is exasperating. And kinda fun.
Don’t forget…Practically Twisted is disappearing in a few months. If you appreciate my musings, join me at Mimm Patterson Art.
Note: I’ll be shutting down my WordPress site in a few months. If you signed up to receive my little posts – thank you! If you would like to keep up with my art, my onlineyoga classes or just the ups and downs of life, please visit my new Squarespace website.
Some people thrive under pressure and chaos. But I’m one of those people who prefer order. I like routine. I perform best when there’s a place for everything and everything is in its place. This isn’t limited to the objects I choose to keep around me. I need a place for my thoughts and feelings, my reactions to the world around me. I need a place for unfinished conversations, my hopes and my fears.
The home we loved. Until we didn’t.
Order is a little tricky to find right now. My beloved and I moved house over the weekend. We’ve downsized and our new home – a late 1990’s duplex on the other side of town – is lovely but it is also much smaller than the townhome we left. And it lacks a garage which is, of course, the space in every house that collects the detritus of life. That being said, our new home is much larger than the five hundred square foot condo we shared in California with our dearly departed cat Bruce (naturally Bruce took over most of the real estate). We lived there for almost a decade – even through the pandemic – so if we managed that small space I’m certain that with a bit of determination and perhaps more than a little compromise we’ll manage this space, too.
Besides, trading square footage on a high trafficked main street for a quiet cul-de-sac and a back garden was an easy choice. Right now that back garden is more a dense carpet of weeds and broken branches but you ought to see what it looks like in my mind’s eye.
But it hasn’t been an easy move. Is any move easy? This one – just two miles down the road – has been one of the most difficult I’ve experienced. My beloved agrees. It doesn’t make us less grateful. We’re just aware that the last few months haven’t been easy.
I’m reluctant to blame age and more inclined to blame circumstances that are too boring to get into. Let’s just say, for the time being, chaos and clutter reign supreme. No matter. We both know that it won’t always be like this. At some point order will be restored.
I hope.
I hope because I have a solo exhibit in four months and then another just five months later and of course I’m excited and grateful but after a week away from the studio the deep unease of slow rising panic was beginning to overwhelm me.
But today, after seven long days, I got back to the work. And in doing the work I found a place for my thoughts and feelings, my reactions to the world around me. I found a place for my hopes and fears.
My beloved and I will be living with a few more weeks worth of chaos and clutter in our new home but for now, for me, a little bit of order has been restored.
I’m a person who enjoys choosing the path of least resistance. In other words, I lean toward the lazy. I settle in the middle of humdrum. When I could choose to apply a bit of concentrated focus in order to bring clarity to the path forward I choose instead to distract myself with anything other than the task at hand.
This doesn’t mean I don’t work hard. I do. But when confronted with a challenge I’ll procrastinate or avoid it altogether. Especially when it comes to taking care of business. And by ‘business’ I mean the business end of being an artist. The whole self-promotion thing has always felt a little unseemly to me.
Or maybe naming the business of art as ‘unseemly’ is my excuse. My avoidance mechanism. Maybe the truth is that the self-promotion required in the 21st century to find enough success to justify the expense of being an artist means I need to be both vulnerable and confident. Vulnerable? Confident?
Eww.
Holing up in my studio with the hope that the right person finds my work feels so much easier.
But – sigh – it’s time for me to pull up my wax splattered big girl pants and get real. There is art. And there is the business of art. One nurtures my soul. The other provides an opportunity to share stories that cannot be expressed with words in order to create an ineffable connection with those touched by my work.
And so…welcome to my new website. If you follow me here please connect with me there. I promise to not fill your inbox with photos of what I had for breakfast. The occasional blog post? Sure. Notice of upcoming shows? Definitely (I have TWO solo exhibits in the next eight months!). And that’s about it.
Mimm Patterson 