why i write

In the past six years, I have lived in four countries, five states, no less than 10 house and apartments, and travelled on three continents.  I've been a student, unemployed, single, an intern, engaged, married, a housewife, an artist, a DIYer, chauffer, and so many more things.  Just as I get comfortable, I'm not only doing something wholly unexpected to me, but doing it somewhere wholly unknown previously.  The constant throughout all of this has been correspondence.  Modern technology saved my life while I lived abroad, allowing me to email across oceans and have the message received in moments.   Telephones, emails, Facebook, and this blog have allowed me to keep in touch with people I love all over the world.  Amid all of this technological greatness, nothing made me as happy as good old fashioned snail mail. A handwritten note from my mom, a postcard from Miss Holmes, a wedding invitation, birth announcement, Christmas card, or thank you note.  No matter where I have been, no matter if my phone number has changed or not, those stamped envelopes would find me.  Just like that, I had photographs to hang on the fridge and handwritten recipes to refer to.  Though it took a little longer than an email or Facebook message, these mementos lasted all the longer and have travelled with me as tokens.  Physical embodiments of those I have left behind and, sadly, remembrances of a handful of a few who have left me behind all too soon.

When we reached Cyprus, I could not work due to legal issues.  I needed something to fill my time and hopefully bring in a little extra money.  While I was searching for purpose, I was also acquainting myself with the island.  Very quickly I discovered that the stationery available to me was not to my liking.  The cards did not convey what I needed them to, the paper wasn't quite right.  Soon, my need for purpose and my need for correspondence collided and I found myself making stationery of my own based off of my illustrations.

Two years have passed since we first landed on Cyprus, and I'm still painting and creating these cards that I love.  My style has morphed as much as our locale.  Every day, I grow more confident in my most recent role as an artist, small business owner, and stationer.  And every day I grow more grateful that I have found something to do that moves with me, just like the letters I receive in the mail.  Now I just find myself more adequately equipped to share notes of my own and flood the post with craft paper envelopes.  I have been reminiscing over these changes of late and have felt an incredible amount of gratitude that things have worked out as they have.  Am I world famous artist?  No.  But I am an artist who has travelled the world and has been touched by every inch of it.  So maybe this post should have been entitled, "Why I Paint," but that just didn't make sense.  I paint because I write.  I write because I want to stay in touch.  And that is just a wonderful, wonderful thing.