The 100 Pound Weight

Today I dropped off my SF Art Commission grant proposal to the appropriate location and feel like I had a 100 pound weight lifted off my my chest. It's amazing how much better I can breathe today knowing that I don't have to think about rewriting my narrative AGAIN or getting together my work samples. I don't have to wake up in the middle of the night, anxious, wondering if I covered all of the questions the panelist will want to hear about. I don't have to worry about the difference between a goal and a concept, and wonder if I sounded intelligent enough. I can just breathe and hopefully get some painting done soon.

Grant writing is not an easy process. I wouldn't recommend it for just anyone. I don't think I could have done as good a job as I feel I did alone. Thankfully I have a support staff that  made my life easier (god, I can't even imagine how much worse this could have been!). My writer friend, Will Taylor, helped a lot in the early stages of editing and writing my narrative. He was a great cheerleader too. Steve Lopez and Antonio Cortez over at Artzone helped me flush out my ideas, become more articulate about my goals, and offered more than one shoulder to cry on and an abundance of hugs when I started freaking out, which happened more than once. It's so nice to know that I have all three of them as my support staff/ cheerleaders and that they believe in my project.

So now what? The panel reviews the proposals and gets back to us in December. You heard right, DECEMBER! It seems like it's so far away and will take forever, but fortunately for me, I have a wedding to plan and get together, plus an enormous amount of painting to do to keep me occupied.  Thank god for distractions! Imagine all the free time I'll have once I don't have to worry about getting married! Frankly, I can't wait.