coming up for a breath

Holy cow.

The amount of busy I've been these past 2 weeks is indescribable. 

Well, maybe "grueling" is the word.

Having a weekend class really distorts one's perspective of the world and your need to take a break. 

Feels like I've been working constantly since February 17. 

I had a tension headache on Thursday after painting with third-graders for 2.5 hours. 

Found that it is important to take note of your body and get yourself to relax BEFORE your stress begins to physically affect you. 

Only one more week until spring break starts and my schedule lightens up. 

Even this week should be lighter than the last 2 weeks.

Above is a piece I'm working on for supervision class.

It evolves over the entire semester because we work on it for an hour every Wednesday.

I could decide to paint over everything if I want, continue to add imagery, etc.

It's always supposed to be in response to our practicum experience.

The red lines were added after last week's overwhelming craziness. 

By the way, my practicum is AMAZING.

I absolutely love it, despite the fact that I feel it's definitely consuming my life. 

It's good to like/love the thing that is consuming your life. 

I continue to attend weekly groups at the juvenile detention center, our agency studio, an alternative school, a residential school, and a last one with deaf and hard of hearing third-graders at an elementary school (no one is completely deaf). 

I'm also going to start doing additional one-on-ones with the third-graders.

Obviously, you can see I drive around a lot, which is partially the reason it consumes my life.

Other folks are able to work longer shifts at their practicum sites, like 6-8 hours, 3 days a week instead of me who has 2-3 hours 4-6 days a week. 

But having experienced what I've experienced I wouldn't trade it for the world. 

Going to be an insanely busy and amazing second half of the semester. 

Groups consist of music, art, poetry, and games that are actually teaching them important life skills. 

They remind me a little of the psychosocial groups we ran at P.V., expect it's with REAL, dedicated artists so the intentionality and thought process behind it focuses even more on artistic expression. 

And now I have to go help clean things a little because we've neglected the house because of our schedules this past week.

Welcome to March and happiest of weekends!