Here's to you!

Lately I've had a ridiculous and overwhelming urge to get out my sewing machine, blow off the dust and start sewing things.

Now, while I'm not a novice behind the sewing machine, I'm no expert either. I've made curtains, hemmed skirts, tailored in t-shirts-easy things that aren't a big deal. But pleats, zig zags, anything with curves or any kind of detail, forget it.

I can sew a straight line. On a good day. But for some reason right now I feel like I can totally slipcover my sofa cushions, make that tank dress into something cuter by adding material from a skirt that doesn't fit anymore. Or take a skirt that is too big and attach a shirt that is too short to make a cuter one piece dress from it.(Damn you Whitney!)

I know. Anyone who knows me knows. I am delusional. It's like when I watch Olympic ice skating and actually believe in my mind that I could pull off a triple axel or a salchow. What? Like it's hard?

In reality, I'm sure my sewing machine will stay safely tucked away in the closet where it allegedly is, but I have no idea because I've never unpacked it since we moved here 4 years ago. I am not even sure it made the trip here from Pennsylvania.

But the reason I'm so delusionally inspired?

I'm surrounded right now by a lot of artistic people. People with talents who actually earn a living, no matter how modest, through their arts. This, I love. This, inspires me. This, is necessary for me.

Friends who paint, dance, take pictures, write, design and create clothing, paint pottery, make soaps and candles, run galleries, and just “imaginate” their way through life.

As someone who spent the first 15 years of my adult life in a profession that was very, very wrong for me, it's hard to explain what this means to me. I now make my living in an artistic profession and have done so for almost 3 years now.

I returned to my writing almost three years ago, first through my blog and then through freelancing for the newspaper where I now work. I have written a novel that needs some serious attention and editing, and have begun a memoir that needs a lot more of everything before it is complete.

My point is this. If I weren't surrounded by so much creativity I wouldn't be nearly as inspired to be creative, artistic and offbeat. I feed off their energy. And I hope they do mine as well, in some small way.

I know now something that I never realized before. It is...stifling for me not to have other people around me who understand what it is like to have this....thing. And equally as energizing to have them around.

But artists, we're a different breed, all of us our own kind of crazy. Some reign it in and try to maintain a normal façade while others revel in their eccentricities. But we all have it, whether we like to admit it or not.

We're neurotic, hyper, depressed, schizophrenic, bi-polar, split personality sons of bitches who'd run off all our friends if only they weren't as batshit crazy as we are. And the people who love us, well they'd better really love us. 1,000%, especially if they are a non-artistic ilk. We can only hope they love us not only in spite of our crazy but because of it (at least a little bit of the time).

It's been just over 3 years since I kicked off Tinfoil Magnolia in April, 2010. Although I've neglected her somwhat over the past year or so, she is not forgotten. I feel every other day that I will reign my life in just enough to at least commit 3 days per week to posting here. Sometimes (well most of the time) it just doesn't happen. But this blog means a lot to me.

Yesterday a friend of mine told me that he'd received a pretty serious diagnosis. Not one, I don't think, that he was entirely surprised to hear, not one he hadn't suspected. But hearing it in black and white, sometimes that's another thing, isn't it?

Although we've never met in person, I consider him a friend. He was the first non-relative or friend to comment or follow Tinfoil Magnolia when I began the blog. I had no idea who he was or how he found me, but I am so glad he did.

So I'm thinking of my friend and his wife and family today. His new diagnosis? Well, it's always been part of who he is. Part of the artist crazy. It doesn't change how I think or feel about him. I don't have to deal with it daily as his family does, but to change that part of him, I would think, would change who he is on a basic level. As it would for any of us.

The fact of the matter is, and this goes for all of us, it makes us who and what we are. Our narcicissms, our addictions, our faults, our neuroses-they are all part of us. Our insecurities, our grandiose thoughts, our voices and all of our personalitites. It makes life wonderful and difficult and passionate and thoughtful. And I embrace that about all of my friends.

No matter how crazy they might make me. :)