Waiting to Exist:

So now I'm moving on to becoming what I always wanted to be when I grew up -- a bona fide artist. What I didn't know was that "when I grew up" meant in my second life... after my life as a wife was over, after my life as a mother was shelved, after I found myself, after I moved into The Twilight Years. Instead of becoming an invisible old woman, a "distasteful, useless lump of flesh, scourge of relatives, and a burden to society," I will become an artist with all the irrational, eccentric, creative, extreme and brilliant adjectives that implies!

It's taking a lot more research and study to become this new person than I expected. To help with this undertaking, I've ordered the Sixth Edition of "How to Survive and Prosper As An Artist." It is the guide to "Selling Yourself Without Selling Your Soul," which I might add, is exactly what I've been doing wrong up to now.

This handbook is supposed to "put to rest the popular myth of the starving artist." It promises to help me make a good living by taking an active stand in promoting my career and to help me navigate the corridors of power that lead to success in the art world. It is filled with chapters of information: Overcoming Career Blocks, Launching or Relaunching Your Career, Entering the Marketplace, Presentation Tools and Packages, Art Marketing and the Internet, Pricing Your Work, Public Relations: Keep Those Cards and Letters Coming In and Going Out, Exhibition and Sales Opportunities: Using Those That Exist and Creating Your Own, Dealing with Dealers and Psyching Them Out, The Mysterious World of Grants: Fact and Fiction, Generating Income: Alternatives to Driving a Cab, and "Rationalization, Paranoia, Competition, Rejection, and the Overwhelm Factor."

Waiting for the postman to deliver the handbook, I have my black and red pen ready, as well as my florescent yellow highlighter. I'll let you know if it is, in fact, the Holy Grail!