Sun Sitting

Apple Tree

Hello friends,

This summer, my mind has followed forking paths aplenty. My ideas are half-baked and mostly forgotten. This is the season of sunshine and bee-watching, the time of year when one tends to live in the moment, not in the mind.

This week I’ll know more about my brain. I think I’ve passed the point of anxiety (what if they tell me I’m normal?) and moved on to excitement and curiosity: what is there to know about my very own noggin? If you missed it, earlier this year I wrote about identifying with almost every hallmark symptom of ADHD, and since then I’ve been working with a clinic through a rigorous and extraordinarily thorough testing process which wraps up in the coming days. There’s no way I’m exiting the week without learning something about myself.

I’ll say, after four months of intensive learning about ADHD and testing for it, I’m really tired of thinking about it. I’m ready to stretch into creative research and drawing and story and on a more basic level, to remember literally anything. I’m done with 600-question tests. I’m done panic-sweating, trying to do math in my head (skip, skip, pass, skip). I’m done wondering.

So, I write to you holding my breath a little. What will the week bring and how will it change my life? Change my work?

Tune in next time.

With love,
Sara

Notes:

I took a Continuing Education class with painter Michael Gaughan this summer at MCAD! It was, amazingly, my first ever painting class. Happy to report that I learned some things! The landscape studies in the newsletter are from an exercise I worked on in Michael’s course. He is a great teacher. MCAD alumni, don’t forget to use your recurring super discount on CE tuition :-0

I’ve also been working my way through Gusti Rosemffet’s course on Domestika, which focuses on sketchbook techniques to stimulate imagination and creativity. The doodle images above are the result of a blob-making prompt.

Meanwhile, I have original illustration work hanging in the MCAD exhibition The Drawing Board! It is on view through August 10.

A brief plug for my favorite radio station, 90.7 FM WTIP, which made me laugh a LOT last week, and made me enjoy a Black Sabbath song. Try to time your first listen with Polka Hour, or Field Notes with birder Mary Hoffman.