where to from here

The pecan trees started dropped their immature fruit several weeks ago, starting with the little ones 1/2” to an inch. You can tell how they are growing on the trees because the dropped pecans have been getting bigger and bigger. Now, in the last week, they are starting to be fairly good sized and the squirrels are sampling them. I'd guess that at least 70% of the green pecans on the ground now have been half eaten.

In the few years we have been out here this is the first year that I have seen so many of the pecans damaged by the squirrels. I'm not sure why that is but I tend to think it's the drought. Either they are desperate for moisture and food or all the squirrels have migrated to our yard because we provide a constant water source via the bird baths and the turtle pond. I don't begrudge them the pecans.

So now that the new cycle has begun so I have begun my morning and evening traverses of the yard. Now I pick up the immature fruit because they are hard on my bare feet and bare is my favorite footwear but later I will be picking up the ripe nuts. I hope.

I use this time to meditate, to think about stuff. Lately, I've been thinking maybe this was a mistake, moving out here. Not because we don't like it because we do.

We had discussed whether or not our business would survive with us being out here and I, ever the optimist, could see no reason why it wouldn't. We would keep our same phone number and I assured all the designers we had worked with that we were not going far and still intended to do our work. We've done plenty of jobs that were not in Houston when we lived there.

But the truth is, our business has suffered. The last year and a half jobs have been few and far between. We pare down when work is slim, we've had lean years before.

Was it our move out here, my poor to none marketing efforts (which I am trying to remedy, sort of like closing the barn door after the horse got out), the crashed economy, all of the above?

I've been wondering what I could do if I didn't do this. It's possible that, with my background, I could get a design or art related job if I was still in the city. Out here in this small economically depressed town, that's not an option. And then there's my age which would be a problem even if I was still in the city. Out here the biggest employers are Walmart, HEB and the plastics factory.

I'm used to uncertainty, have lived with it from the beginning and we always managed, even prospered at times, but then we also had our youth. We wonder, even if we had jobs lining up, how much longer we might expect to be physically able to do this work, pick up and manipulate these heavy pieces of glass, entering our 60s as we are. 10 more years? Is there 10 more years of work out there? The middle to upper middle class was my clientele, never having garnered the attention of the super rich, and they are hard hit too. And there are so many relatively inexpensive options out there now for decorative glass.

I've been thinking about changing my medium for the small art pieces I do. Glass is so expensive and time consuming and difficult to work with making the finished pieces quite costly. I've been thinking about maybe working in ceramics and incorporating pate de verre elements. We'll see. I don't know shit about ceramics so there would be a new learning curve but I've been wanting to include multi-media for a while.

Well, I have no idea what the future holds but I am trying to face each day with optimism and being open to possibilities.