If you haven’t noticed, I’ve taken a step back from not just social media but from pretty much everything. Its been a few years now that I spent much of my time travelling and in all honesty, rehabilitating from a terrible accident. Its an artist’s worst nightmare to have your hand broken, bones crushed and body completely sidelined at the brink of a few performances and a twenty painting exhibition.TRUTH: I WAS DEVASTATED. Its a funny thing that social media consists of highlight rolls when its in the lowlights that real growth occurs!

I mean, I virtually lost it all and with the injuries sustained I just had the most gruelling year yet. I mean I really had to relinquish any story of control. If you’re anything like me, its not the easiest thing.

I had to let go of all my great plans and deals and commissions and performances and pretty much the grand plan I had made for myself. You know what they say, make plans and someone is laughing upstairs.

It wasn’t until early summer that I finally returned to Canada. I wasn’t quite ready to do all that much except learn new ways of thinking, seeing and being. Is this even possible?? It was no simple task as I raced up and down the walls of my mind. This ego yelling, “hurry up and heal”! Yeah, ok.

Anything I even remotely began to plan again was abruptly shot to hell. man, was it frustrating. here i’m just dying to do what I love, yet it had become of necessity to really just STOP. i’ve never done that so well, but alas, I surrendered.

It was in that moment, those tears and rage that I began to feel different. that anxiety, those nightmares and the long list of expectations I had placed upon myself, just dissipated. now it seems when I feel anxiety trying to creep in, all the breath work I had been failing to harness, finally found its place.

The doctor calls it pacing, but i’m a wild horse running in an open field. do I even know how to pace? well, i’m learning.

I guess I have felt a lot of shame and disappointment in myself for all that I never became. I needed to learn what self-compassion, self-love and acceptance were. You get to a point in life and you’re like, holy shit! Where did the time go!

But its all perspective really. my first 49 years of life have been learning. i’m ready to write the next epic chapters.

i’m clear on what I want now and with a little patience and continued self-reflection to make better choices and at a realistic pace so as to not be discouraged and burn out, I mean smell the flowers and chill the fuck out Masik!

Most of my life it was all about this art machine I fed, until I noticed after over twenty years,

I was actually starving myself. With these realizations, I have one big thing to share that I hope you can take away from this sharing..create your life, not a living. Cherish the moments you share with the ones you love and spend time with people who inspire you to be a better version of yourself. and mostly, follow you heart. it is the only way to truly live.

That’s all for now.. more to share later.