What a difference a year makes

What a difference a year makes

Decided to stay in today to rest my ribs and do some work while the rest of the gang went out to do their own things. As I was drawing wall sections the sun peeked through the clouds and illuminated the end of a console table in the Dining Room here revealing lots of nice heartwood end grain.  Annual rings from various pine logs exemplified “what a difference a year makes” very clearly. I became increasingly distracted and found drawing harder and harder as the clocked ticked. Soon I decided it was time for a portrait and a bit of writing before I got back to metal framing details.

“Humm???, Last year I was”………..working like crazy to make sure the resort project I had been hired to do was going to be open on time and on budget and dealing with the day to day dramas of a place that enjoyed dramas.

As mentioned previously every trip to Taos is its own trip. Lots of memories here of lots of things and I began thinking about annual rings in terms of sustenance that allows survival and growth much like trees and I had a bit of a shift internally of our  years here. If I had to visualize my own rings I’d say that all the time up until Taos were quite thin. Working to make sure monster payrolls were met, paying for multiple offices and homes, addressing staff, subs and owners drained me constantly. I brought all of that energy to Taos and maintained the multiple multiples for a while but it all evaporated into the ethers and I was left with me and a bunch of ashes…….

Thank God for Edy.   As I was licking my wounded ego and wallowing, she was introducing new elements into our relationship that did not require offices, staff or ga-zillions of dollars. That model has kept us going for years now and the rings are fat and strong………….and getting stronger.  I did not have the receptors to even know this kind of life was possible until then but continue to embrace them as they changed our lives that 1st year ………………    And the year after that, and the year after that and the year after that…………..wow, what a difference a year makes…………