Shifting

This picture is from a waterfall at Ringing Rock Park in Northeast PA. My family went out a few weeks ago to explore. It's a place of incredible geology, with obvious evidence of how old and changing the earth is. A field of odd boulders sits in the middle of a forest. They are evidence of the passage of glaciers in an ice age thousands and thousands of years ago. This waterfall runs over a striated cliff. You can see the folds of the earth and the shifting of plates.
It seemed appropriate to visit this place right before the school year. The tectonics of my life have shifted a bit. I have been moved into a full-time position as a middle school art teacher at my school. My daughter has just started high school. At Fleisher I've begun teaching a new course on Basic Design. And with all this busy-ness, I've had no time for my own work. I've given up the studio at the Papermill, and moved everything back home, reclaiming my former bedroom spaces. It was painful to leave my beautiful space. The room of my own. I will miss it terribly. I do not know how this bodes for my art work. My creative energies are being tapped planning new curriculum and lessons (having to start from scratch for the middle school). I no longer have my free Mondays to work on my own endeavors. I feel like my artist self is hibernating at the moment. It's an unsatisfying feeling. However, it is balanced out with wonderful feelings of FIT in my new work situation.
I suppose a certain amount of dissatisfaction is what keeps us striving..