Showing up matters. I’m a big believer in sitting in the seat, lowering your expectations, and being willing to make imperfect art. But I also want my studio time to count.

"I used to make art." Sometimes it's painting. Sometimes quilting, pottery, sewing, knitting, or keeping a sketchbook. The medium changes, but the sentiment doesn't. I've heard that sentence hundreds of times. People think they’ve lost their creativity. I don’t think that’s what’s happened. I think they lost their rhythm. I know, because I did too.

For a long time, I treated studio time for artists as optional. It was something I would get to after I had taken care of everything and everyone else. In other words, I treated it like leftover time. The problem was...there was rarely anything left over. The Real Problem With “I’ll Get to It” Creating is a form of self-care, and that kind of time tends to be the first thing to go when life gets busy. Why? Because studio time is usually beholden to no one but o