I am sitting in my studio right now. The morning sun is coming through one of my windows. I have some other work to do before I get to paint, still, I am glad to be here. I haven’t darkened the doors for a couple of weeks.

My landlord, who is also my friend, has asked if he can take over the space I am in right now but has generously offered to build out a new space for me elsewhere in the building. I will lose the high ceilings, and a few square feet, but otherwise, it will be fine. I will have a few more feet of wall space. Better light (none of the green panels in the windows, which I love visually, but do distort the light.) It will be quieter. I will no longer be a place that everyone walks through as they go from one part of the building to the next.

Change happens. And from time to time. I (we) need some change. It is best when we make the choice to change. It is best when there is not too much of it at once. But it is good. I live in this balance of having routines, which are also good for me, and my needing change. Sometimes I get the balance right, Sometimes I don’t. Like life, it is all a tightrope of a walk, in constant adjustment, trying not to fall.

Mostly I have not. Once or twice in life, I have.

Falling breaks things.
Some can be repaired.
Some cannot.
But you take the pieces
and make a new mosaic.
Art out of disaster.

I am grateful I had an option. It is his building after all, and he can do what he wants with it. He asked, and I had the sense that if I put up a fight, he might have allowed me to stay. But he has a dream, and who wants to squash a dream. Having a studio was part of my dream, and I am glad I do not have to give it up.

After a few moments of mourning, I find myself already rethinking things. Rethinking the space. Thinking in terms of what I might be able to do there that I cannot do here. Thinking in terms of possibilities more than loss. It is a transformation of thinking that I did not always have, but have grown into over the past few years.

And it fits into other changes I am making. A consolidation of effort and work and a rethinking, even if that rethinking does not have a clear form yet. Just a sense that it is time, even if I do not know what it is time FOR. I have had that sense for a while.

There is a branch of thinking called the Law of Attraction (LOA) that a lot of success gurus have talked about and taught for ages. Basically, the thought is that if you put an idea out there in the universe, then it will come to you. Manifesting they call it. The idea is that we live in a benevolent universe and if what we put out there in terms of our thought, speech, and actions, comes to us. There’s some president for it in scripture, though not as a direct line. There is some precedent in other religions as well, but again, not as directly as LOA.

I love reading the explanations of how the Law of Attraction works. They range from new age hoodoo to quantum physics. No one dares say “We really don’t know how it works.”

I think there is something to the LOA. I have seen it work in so many people, including my clients. Not in the direct line. I don’t expect my Jaguar XKE convertible to suddenly show up at my door, as much as I dream about it. But I have learned that when I decide change, growth, opportunities is needed, and talk about it. Act on it in various ways, somehow, it shows up. Rarely exactly as planned, but it shows up.

And often it happens because things come undone for a while. One of my favorite lines of poetry is from a William Butler Yeats poem: “Things fall apart.” They do. but still, ultimately, even if it takes some time…..

Falling breaks things.
Some can be repaired.
Some cannot.
But you take the pieces
and make a new mosaic.
Art out of disaster.

It’s what creative people do, isn’t it?

Have a good day,

Tom