2019: Be Here Now

My goal for 2019 is to be fully present: to create memories, to spend time with friends and loved ones, to become known as an artist.

Those are largely the same goals I had at the beginning of 2018, but this time around, I’m able to “be here now” with less underlying despair. A year ago, I learned that I had a rare, fatal and untreatable disease–one that would shorten my lifespan, possibly even causing me to die before Mason, who is 21 years my senior. (I have written about this in my newspaper columns, but this year-end letter is being written for friends who probably don’t read my columns. They are all reprinted on my website: www.NicoletteArts.com.)

Over the past year and a half, I have gradually retired. My plan was to work until 70, a plan that did assume someone wanting to hire and didn’t anticipate the possibility of not living that long. Starting in February, I will begin taking my Social Security, and working even less than I did this past year–which wasn’t much; I wrote a few paid articles, did a little website consulting and served as an election judge.

During this past year of mostly not working, I did a lot of camping, began teaching art classes and did a bit of travel.

Our as-a-couple travel generally takes us to places we can reach by car or Amtrak. Neither Mason nor I care much for the hurly-burly of air travel these days. Our joint trips took us to San Francisco (to visit friends and care for our two apartments there), to Southern Colorado, where we rode the narrow gauge train between Durango and Silverton, to the Grand Canyon, and to Colorado Springs for the wedding of Mason’s granddaughter Janna.

My travels were more frequent since we bought a second car and I became a member of a local camping group. I had a wonderful early spring visit to Canyonlands, camped at Bogan Flats near Marble, at Twin Lakes and in the Flat Tops wilderness.

Music was a big part of our summer. Mason and I regularly attend 6-8 classical music performances at the Aspen Music Festival, and I also went for four days of camping and dancing at the Four Corners Folk Festival.

Over the summer, I taught a plein-aire painting class during a hike sponsored by the Wilderness Workshop. I had so much fun doing that, I have volunteered to teach two classes this spring, one at the Basalt Library and one at a local art center. I’m also painting very actively, both with my Thursday watercolor group, the Alaprima painters, and on my own. I won a prize for one of my watercolors from the national competition sponsored by the Western Colorado Watercolor Society.

This year, I’m planning more of the same: more camping, more teaching, more art. I’m here now and so is Mason. Who knows how long we–the two of us and our species in general–may have? So we should make the best of it.

Warmly,
Nicolette