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Bartender, Tutor, Coffee Shop, Theater Usher, Gallery Work, Substitute Teaching, Mary Kay,….are all jobs I have thought about doing or done as a side gig. And when I’m feeling confident, I find my Artist Self!

Why? I carry that guilty messaging. I should not be retired this young….. we are supposed to work hard. You are not supposed to enjoy life. I carry that nervous messaging…. But my work isn’t as good as …. fill in the name of any other artist I love. But you can’t make a living at being an artist. But if I was really successful I’d have as much stuff and money as other people and I’d fly around the world vacationing and have no worries in life.

On the contrary….in retirement, I love the quiet moment. I love getting so present I notice the timid little coyote hiding down in the blackberry bushes scrounging for some snacks. I love meeting all of the new people along the way. And I love exploring coffee shops and art galleries. I love taking on an attitude of abundance, celebrating all of the artists around me as well as myself. I love throwing out the word should and finally learning to let go of comparing myself to others. I love the levels of self acceptance that I layer on myself with each painting.

It turns out that side gigs are kind of fun too. I enjoy the puzzle of figuring out each new city I travel to… how to get around. Working for the theater, I got good at finding the best parking. I find it fun disovering fantastic restaurants to go back to, understanding the difference between the Max, the Street Cars, the Tri Met, and which roads I can drive on, and when to stay clear of the tracks here in Portland, how to short cut through town and dart across the river and home without hopping on a freeway. Picking up a side gig forces me to do a little more of that kind of exploration and get to know an area a little more intimately.

In working for the theater I also learned how humbling it can be to experience the world from different points of view. There is something to taking on service jobs where you are low on the totem pole and you are all wearing the same polyester uniform, with the goal of making people happy, and making sure they have a wonderful magical experience. It made me notice all of the invisible people I see everyday, who stretch pennies to feed their families while making my life something special. There is no “executive” in their title, they don’t make six figures and drive a BMW. They likely take public transport and don’t have the luxury of avoiding the homeless and the mentally ill who tend to stay warm on public transit. And they don’t complain about their lot in life. Working here, I’m surrounded by happy people.

I also love the fredom of putting in some time with an arts organization, around other arts lovers but knowing if I get too freaked out by wherever we are in the cycle of mask/no mask mandates, I have the option to go back to very simple, very safe living in my trailer and outdoor spaces.

When bartending I’m not going to lie, I loved having a tip job, because I’m good at getting tips. I loved being there for people. Bar folk come and want to share their stories, connect, be heard, be seen. I thought I went there to mix drinks and realized I was really handing out some love and a listening ear. Plus others were just plain fun, laughing, joking, getting me out from behind the bar to do kareokee with them. And I realized that mixing drinks is quite the art form in itself. Yes… always an artist in everything I do.

With Mary Kay I learned a ton about business and marketing and I also learned what not to do. Knowing I could jump back in and substitute, give back, help out the Portland teachers on the one hand, felt good, and on the other hand when I really thought about it, it validated my journey that has taken me away from that. There is so much that needs to change in the way we treat our education professionals. It would take more than a blog to get into all of that. Helping out at the camp store made me appreciate that I had had the opportunity in my union job to find ways to continue standing up for the smaller voices in our world.

Taking on a variety of jobs has given me a sense of security, and reassurance. I knew I had that thing to fall back on just in case nobody liked my art. It also taught me to open my eyes and be inspired by others around me, really see people and their beauty and save it for future paintings. It taught me to let go and do a leap of faith and that my efforts in my art will pay off. Every action payoffs somewhere down the road. We can’t always see it in the moment. It’s like a well planned trip, or a journey downa a quiet river in the woods…. things never go the way we plan, but they end up just they way they were supposed to and it is better than anything in our wildest imaginations.

Living tiny isn’t just about the space and the amount of things I have. It’s about the space I let my ego take up, the amount of importance I put on myself allowing others to be less important and become invisible. It’s about trusting in something bigger than self, something that tells us to live with the rule of abundance. There is enough of everything for everyone on this planet. Nobody needs to go without. As soon as I think I might not make it as an artist, I am thinking from a place that forgets abundance exists. If everyone went tiny, there’d be a lot of room and resources for everyone, and maybe, just maybe we wouldn’t end up fighting about things anymore.

While writing this blog, my father passed. In rereading what I wrote, a lot of the lessons are lessons I alswo learned from the way he lived his life. It feels a bit disingenus when writing a blog if I didn’t mention major life events like his passing, but it’s still hard to even let myself think about it. So I’ll just say that for now. Maybe one day I’ll write a blog about him and how he fits into this journey I’m on. If you hop on over to my portfolio page, you will see I have dedicated my paintings this year to processing the grief I am going through. I love you daddy and miss you terribly!

Thank you again for following my sporatic, inconsistant ramblings and writings. I appreciate you more than you know. Feel free to share this with your friends and check out my art too!

This entry is not jazzy or pretty and I’m not going to post maintenance pictures of falling cupboards and a leaky water inlet. Instead I’ll tell you how using a mobile rv guy saved me thousands and hiking and creating art kept me sane through some of the stresses of Fulltime RV Life. I’ll share photos of my gorgeous views that I have enjoyed since sitting still for the last several months problem solving and some of my artwork I have had the good fortune to create and sell while sitting still. So in other words…. you may enjoy the photos and captions more than the actual blog. Just a heads up. 😉

The combination of the fixes my trailer needed and the dishonesty of the two major dealerships I had dealt with (Los Angeles and Portland Airstream) left me feeling quite paralyzed as everything happened one right after the other and I am not a techie mechanical type person. When I had a house, I could do the basics and I’ve learned a few of the basics on my Airstream over time. Like a house there are lots of things that break down, and systems to understand. Unlike a house it is all different than a house so it’s like learning a new language. You know how they say a little knowledge is dangerous. I felt like there was so much I could mess up. I was feeling a bit defeated and didn’t want to take my trailer over the mountains to a better shop in the winter when I would have to deal with chains and ice. I’ll tell you a little about the doom and gloom that hung over me, but if you want to skip to the last paragraphs which are much more cheery… there I will share what I learned… now that I finally found resolution.

The Ohio Airstream guy, who will remain nameless, was great and really tried the best he could to help me over the phone but couldn’t. I ressigned myself to down and basic “camping” in my trailer through the winter as one of my issues was a leak and I didn’t want to run water through it and have the leak area freeze and get worse. In other words, no running water, everything was hauling in jugs. Some people I discovered do that anyway to avoid freeze issues. It was not too bad since there were park showers. I found some answers in all of the usual online places but everything seemed to challenging. I did not feel sure that I could do them. Even getting to my water pump (one of the things that wasn’t working) was a challenge as Airstream basically told me I wouldn’t be able to reach it the way I needed to because of the year it was built and how it was placed under my closet. I figured I would tear the inside of my closet out and figure out how to rebuild it when warmer weather came. Airstream thought they would have to take the black tank down to figure out where the leak was unless we could figure out if it was the water inlet (where the hose meets the trailer on the outside.) But the way they told me to check was looking for water leaks inside back in and behind the closet that was covering everything. That was kind of like a house. In a house you get a leak, then you follow the water marks, typically in the attic to where it actually comes into the roof. I also found a You Tube video on what kind of water inlet piece to get and where to get it. But I still did not feel confident in putting everything back together.

Then there was the recall with the falling down cabinets. LA said they didn’t need fixing and then sent in to headquarters for reimbursement. Portland said they fixed it. They didn’t. They never sent in for reimbursement. It looked exactly the same and the ohio people confirmed Portland did nothing. I was planning a trip in warmer weather to a dealer with a better reputation but dreading it with gas prices going up and 10 mpg towing. I had started thinking of hiring someone who does vintage remodeling and having them help me build something under the cupboards that would hold them up, since the original design of floating cabinets made of pressboard and held up with a couple of screws was a poor design.

Today I can happily say everything is fixed and it didn’t cost me thousands. Along this journey I learned, there are many ways to live in my Airstream. If something doesn’t work I can make due until I have the ability to take care of it. I learned how helpful the Airstream folks in the Ohio Headquarters are, even over the phone. I also learned even though its a brand new Airstream, it’s ok to eventually treat it like a vintage and redesign some of the interior. Most of the new Airstreams are not built like the old ones. The old ones had cabinets actually made of wood instead of press board that falls apart and laminate the peels off in desert weather. The designs back in the day were smarter and more suited to trailers rolling down the road rather than trying to look glamorous with things like cabinets that float from the ceiling.

I learned to get more assertive with mechanics as well as opinionated people who seem to just accept poor workmanship as “that’s the way trailers are”. That’s not the way Airstream trailers used to be. The name Airstream had a quality reputation attached to it and therefore held its reslae value. Airstream is living on that reputation of quality. The old trailers were quality and you knew you got what you paid for. If Airstream is now pumping out massive numbers of trailers for profit and forgoing quality, it is ok to point that out, speak up and demand better. During this time I saw Airstream put out a letter actually saying they were cutting down on production so they could go back to focusing on quality. They are a big business with big money so that is no little deal to share a letter like that. It makes me think our voices are not going unheard. We are not just whining.

I also learned that several things that I need to maintain on my Airstream are generic to all RV’s. When I got my trailer it was implanted in my head that only AIrstream folks could work on an Airstream. In some cases that is an expensive myth. Granted there are certain things I would only have Airstream people do because it is true that if you aren’t familiar with Airstreams and how to work on them you can damage them. But, my issues… the water pump, the water intake leak (which is what it turned out to be) and the falling kitchen cabinets, were all fixed by a well recommended local mobile rv guy. We didn’t need to tear out the closet or drop the black tank for a grand to figure out where the leak was. The inlet on the outside of the trailer had four simple screws to unscrew. After that there was a seal so we pried the inlet off of the trailer and pulled it out a little. We got the water going and put a paper towel under it and sure enough there was the leak.

The pump, the mobile rv guy could reach. Turns out it was clogged. The light bulbs went on in my head. Everyone on the Colorado River was always clearing out the faucets of the gunk that came up with the water there. So of course, my system would be clogged. It’s clear and ready to go.

As for the cupboards, with two of us, I was able to push them up and my mobile rv guy was able to add several screws through the cuboard to hold them up. We just had to figure out where the real support was. I may still put an elbow support under the cupboard next to the stove vent but for now they are up, and they are staying up. I have running water, everything is fixed and a big load has been lifted. I’m feeling light and ready to hit the road. Although with 10mpg and a tank that today costs $170 to fill and rising….my next adventure will be another Truck Trip I’ll be heading back to the Canadian Rockies and going off the beaten path to explore some tent camping.