Down the rabbit hole

It's a rainy Oregon Saturday, Penny up at seven and napping by nine, eggs simmer on the stovetop, a British quiz show just audible from the kitchen radio.
How I wish I had more moments like this to hear my own thoughts. So much time passes these days where I can't quite discern what's happening in my life without seeing my thoughts tangibly in front of me.
This week has held a special kind of synchronisity and intensity - and I don't just mean little things like the last dish just fitting in the dishwasher, or having just enough butter to make two loaves of bread. Having my momentum back with the painting has pushed everything else into motion. Everything feels stirred up, cast open, leaving me feeling especially tapped in to something larger than myself, more atuned to life's billboards, but also feeling terribly exposed and vulnerable. shaken.
Despite my attempts to take the last couple days to rest up after these late nights, my nose has led me down the rabbit hole and I've had to heed the call. In following this rabbit's nose I've ended up at the door of several local artist's studios sometimes quite unintentionally. An old friend, a new friend, and the third, a collector of my work I thought I had lost all record of whom I didn't even know was a brilliant artist. Oddly enough all three are successful local artists who have each been here in Eugene 20-some years. All three are now entering the phase of their careers and lives where they can retire from having to do the production line, bread and butter products to keep themselves in paints and brushes, able to solely focus on doing the work they have always yearned to do. I always pictured this stage as what it's like to finally have "arrived" - a concept which, until now, I didn't really believe could be realized.
It's strange to knowingly be at the beginning of so many roads, a new marriage, a new family, new life, new art - so much in the thick of it that it seems to swallow us hole at times. I'm cherrishing those moments when we wake up in the middle of our day and think, I'm happy, truly happy, despite the struggle and lack of sleep, the diapers and the dishes, the inkling of knowing how much we truly don't know. It's a lovely kind of awakening, to realize life as you live it, and see magic there.