Showtime

I have always been here before....

I did my stint today at the Horse Shelter and must say that I'm older: the work I'm do there is physically exhausting and I'm not so sure I'm getting any sort of satisfaction out of it.
The horses are generally a pleasure to be around, but there is too little time to enjoy them-it's always a rush to get stuff done in order to get onto the next task. This is one reason to stay a volunteer-no pressure, you know?
The heat and the sun are also pretty damn hard on me...it is a pleasure to go back inside into the cool darkness after a bout of mucking and watering and feeding.
After  four hours spent at the Shelter, I went over to my studio and kept the doors open until 5- as usual, not a single visitor. Not that any of those visitors would generally be worth having the doors open for- oops, do I sound a bit bitter?
After finishing the show at Cherry Creek last weekend (and going through the usual, "Why am I here?", "Why do I subject myself to the public-to these people who are looking at me and my work as pure entertainment?") and leaving the show feeling pretty beaten down, this week has been a real challenge to recovery. This week makes me think that I'm becoming less elastic, less able to laugh off the commentary at these events, of hearing how much my work reminds people of Tim Burton or how cute they find my work: "oh, thank you-I needed a good laugh".
It's good to be out of the spotlight and back into the cool darkness.
Anonymity ain't such a bad thing.