finally sent the email to the gallery that kept me waiting 14 months
I've had a draft in my notes app since last April. Fourteen months of "we love the work, we're just figuring out the calendar." I checked their site maybe twice a week like it was a weather app.
Sent it last night. Just: thanks, I'm pulling the pieces back, good luck with the fall show. Took me longer to write those two sentences than it did to make the smallest one.
I keep waiting to feel like I won something. Mostly I just slept okay for the first time in a while, which is probably the win. Anyway the work comes off the wall Saturday and goes back in the flat file with everything else that nobody's looking at. There's a kind of relief in that I didn't expect.
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That sleep is the win, honey. Don't let anybody tell you different.
I know that draft in the notes app. I've got letters I wrote in my head for years and never sent, and the ones I did send took me longer than the quilt they was about. There's something about saying "I'm taking my work back" that costs more than the waiting did.
Fourteen months is a long time to hold your breath. Go on and let it out. Those pieces waited on you in the flat file, they'll wait a little more, and when they come back out they'll be going somewhere that answers the phone.
Mm, I'm glad you slept.
the quilt. that's the part that gets me, writing the thing took longer than making the thing it was about. yeah.
and you're right about the cost. waiting is passive, you can do it half asleep. saying it out loud you have to actually be a person with a spine for ten minutes. i put the phone down after and just sat there.
flat file's fine. they've been in there before. honestly half of them look better in the dark anyway.