Connecting The Dots

I remember when I was a little kid how excited I would become when I explored a new coloring book and found a “connect the dots” puzzle. Each time trying to figure out what the image was … sometimes, I was surprised that I could figure out the image before I started, other times …not so much. Then I would grab a pencil and start connecting the dots to expose the image that would magically appear before my eyes. This would then give me something new to color in, something that I drew with my own pencil.

 

Forty years later and I am beginning to experience growing pains and some anxiety as I move deeper into my world as an artist as I continue to connect these dots. I realize that my life has been a “connect the dots” puzzle all along and each event constituted a dot in which I connected a line. Through the years these symbolic dots have created an outline of the image of my life to date… I question how many of these dots were carefully chosen and how many randomly fell on my page and I wonder if it really matters.

 

The difference, forty years ago I was creating a dinosaur or a butterfly and now the dots that I am joining are creating my life, my future. As I move forward I try to imagine and wonder what the complete picture will look like.

 

I realize that I do have some control as to where these dots land and that there is a method to the randomness. I must admit there is a part of me that finds great comfort in this and an even larger part that is terrified by this concept.

 

I question how I can be prepared without placing limitations on what I choose to put out into the world? How can I stay focused and still see all possibilities available? How can I be certain what is the “correct” choice, how do I know if it is… or not?  I am constantly re-inventing elements of my life, editing as I explore and learn new information. I try to step back and picture in my mind how my life will look to me…but it has been suggested to me by some, that I the question I should ask myself is how does it “feel”, not how it looks.

 

How does it feel to me ” now” or how will it feel to me 5 years from now? Should it feel different?

 

So these are questions I do not have the answers to…yet, as I sit here with my pencil in hand… and my box of symbolic crayons. Waiting patiently for another dot to appear!