With spring now upon us, family activities are back in full force - baseball, hockey, golf, music lessons… We’ve just converted most of our weekends with 2-3 scheduled baseball games each week.

I love how happy the kids are with these activities. I wish, however, I could coordinate my own productivity into these time frames. Not the game watching times, but the sitting and waiting for things to start or things to end - the lull times that take up so much of the day now. I feel like this time of year I do a lot more sitting and lot less creating.

What I try to do is brainstorm more. Observe more. Ponder and think up new ideas more. The problem lies in the lack of writing all this down - so that when I do have time to produce, the ideas are waiting. I keep envisioning a VW bus covered in cute doodles… advertising that I did indeed get a chance to produce something fabulous. How cool would that be?

art by JGoode on a photo from itlrot.com

March was the month that wasn’t.

It started great. The weather warmed up to 70 degrees. My daffodils broke the soil, and we opened the doors and windows wide. We took Billy to the park for the first time in months. We played ball outside in the back yard. I was going to lose that winter weight chasing around after my almost-two-year-old.

I had a new art direction. I was working on a series of florals that perfectly fit in with my hope for spring. I was excited, happy with the work so much that I bought the 2009 Artist’s & Graphic Designer’s Market, with the plan to approach galleries for the first time in my art career.

Online sales started to perk up. I resolved to make a bunch of new Easter t-shirts. Surely the economy would finally turn around.

But the spring weather didn’t last. It got cold, and gloomy and gray. I lost my enthusiasm for my florals. Sales bottomed out again. And I was completely blocked for Easter ideas. Then Billy caught a stomach virus. Suddenly all I did was change diapers and nurse a sick toddler. Then my husband caught it. Then I did. There were some dark moments during that span where my husband and I, both sicker than we had been in years, were physically at our limits. That’s the downside of living far away from family and friends — we had to take care of our son, when we could barely stay upright ourselves.

Before I knew it, March had passed by and it was suddenly April.

It was one of those months, I guess.

So, new month. Trying to be productive, but I’m still finding it hard to get motivated. Hopefully I can turn things around by the end of the month. I’ve been working on a writing project that I’m actually somewhat excited about. As the world starts to bloom more, I hope to get outside with my camera to make more flower pictures. I did manage to finish one new Easter design, “Some Bunny Loves Me.”

Hopefully April will end strong, with lots of good art mojo. And, before I forget to mention it, I hope everyone has a Happy Easter on Sunday!