I've added a new painting and put it on the "welcome" page.  What I'm doing is taking canvases that I wasn't happy with or didn't finish and painting over them.

There is another new painting and I will move it up the list in the gallery.

It's amazing.  I don't know how I survived all these years without painting.  I finished the painting for my niece and I'm not happy with it.  So, I'm giving it to them and am going to repaint it with a different perspective.  I will post a picture.  I have two others that are almost finished.  Gotta go paint!

I promised my niece I would give her a painting for their new house.  We picked the size canvas and I began to work in fits and starts.  Then she sent me a text saying she would like to come by and see what I had done so far.  Yikes!  So, I got to work and guess what?  I found the joy in painting once more....finally.  I have been painting every day.  I'm working on something similar over an old canvas to the one for my niece.  I'm close to finished with theirs, but am having trouble with the foreground.  I will keep working.  I can even listed to Wicked Lies without thinking it's somehow my song.  

I'm excited about this.  I have found my purpose again and hope it stays with me.  

Wow, I can't believe I haven't written anything since the election. I don't feel any differently about what I wrote, but I think I'm getting some glimmers of truth about other stuff. 

The truth?  I have been chasing happiness all my life.  I can't even begin to list the things I've done chasing happiness.  Since I chased it up I-5 to Portland, I really lost my way.  I still thought I should be happy.  

For some reason I've just had this epiphany.  I'm maybe not going to be happy, but I'm never going to get there chasing it.  That apparently has been my problem.  

Haha, what to do about it?

You know, I have trusted my judgement a good percent of the time.  I think part of that is because I trust that people are telling me the truth.  When a lover tells me he's never felt this way and finally understands what love is, I believe it.  I have been a fool.  I also have trusted my political outlook.  Sometimes I'm disappointed, but I have never doubted myself the way I do now.  I have usually towed the party line and been OK with it.  I supported Hillary Clinton, over Bernie Sanders,because I believed she could win.  And, because I am a feminist and think it's time for a woman to run this country.  I was glad when Donald Trump got nominated because I trusted that the American people would never pick such a racist scoundrel for president.  (A part of me still believes they didn't.)

I have been wrong, wrong, wrong.  Wrong about the lover and wrong about the election.  

For the first time in my life I have not read a paper or listened to any news program.  I just don't want to know how or why this has happened.  I don't want to know what I can do and how this can be fixed. I'm too busy wallowing in the depths of my despair.