My Painting Is Smudged
Life has in no way turned out as I thought and dreamed about as a kid growing up. Oh the illusions of grandeur I had! A great job, one long successful marriage, happiness, money to do whatever I wanted and the list went on and on.
I’ve had jobs that I loved, a couple marriages, happiness and always seem to get by with what I have at the time but, it is quite different than those childhood dreams.
Some of those things ended in failure and as I look back over the course of my life, I wonder what I’ve accomplished. What do the brush strokes on the canvas of my life look like? There are some beautiful parts of the painting, my sister and her family, my kids, my parents and a few friends. Along with those beautiful things, my painting is smudged.
Many times those smudges seem to over-power the rest of the picture and as the artist, it is all I can see and there are instances when we as the artist of our life react to seeing only the flaws.
I’ve had my share of failures in life, or smudges on my life’s canvas and they had affected me and things I do. For a time, I pretty much decided that I’d simply quit life. I had lost a job about 9 months into my second marriage and desperately needed to find new employment but the area of my expertise was very slow in hiring and in my desperation I took a truck driving job. I had to do what I needed to do to support the family and pay child support.
Long-haul trucking, what a life! I loved it, it was like a drug that got under my skin and just HAD to do it. Being away from home, across country strained the young marriage and it eventually fell apart. Another smudge on my life’s canvas. Damn the artist, can’t he even paint a half way decent picture?
I sold everything I had, left family heirlooms with my sister and hit the road full-time, living in the truck and making it back home to Washington State two or three times a year to visit my mother and sister for a couple days each time.
I gave up on life.
I had decided that I’d simply wander the highways of this beautiful country until I slipped over the icy edge of a snow covered cliff somewhere. It just didn’t matter anymore; I failed yet again and was pretty much worthless.
I stopped driving about six years ago now and with the gracious love and support of my sister and brother-in-law (who is truly my brother) and the rest of my family, I have found reason to re-join life, pick up the paint brush and add more beautiful strokes to the canvas of my life. I know along the way that those ugly smudges will simply become objects in the background the add character to the finished painting.
My painting is smudged, but isn’t that life?