If not for my serendipitous discovery seven years ago of artist, author, and teacher, Kasia Avery, who along with her husband, Jamie, started Everything Art in 2015, I still wouldn’t have the nerve to draw a stick figure with a pencil, much less to “let my creative wolf aloose” and play with paints and all the other fun accouterments of art journaling.

Wanderlust 2026 is self-described as “a full year of guided mixed media art for curiosity, growth, and joy.” I first participated in Wanderlust 2019. Once you buy a ticket to the party for each year, you have ongoing access, which is great, since I don’t necessarily follow the weekly lessons in real time, but more in spurts. The library of past years’ video lessons is a real treasure, since most of the time I don’t realize what I’m learning until much later, and it’s enormously helpful to be able to go to the Everything Art archives and revisit certain classes, teachers, and techniques when I’m finally ready for understanding to seep into my hard head. “Oh, so that’s what she was trying to teach me.”

I believe it’s never too late to have a happy childhood. Kasia and her team at Everything Art have convinced me I’m right about that!

These things on my mind are a torrent of events, dreams, anxious moments, thought drifts, existential questions — and we haven’t even gotten to the possibility that, (living in Florida as I do), a frozen iguana could fall on my head.

Can you hear my deep sigh on this dark morning? I mean, it’s nearly 11:00 a.m., but we’ve hit the high of the day, the cloud cover is complete, and damn it all I have to go wash my face and throw on some jeans to go with Buck to Mayo Clinic’s dermatology “spot check clinic” so they can look at and most likely biopsy a weird growth that has come up rather suddenly on his forearm.

Mayo has a patient portal and I use it sometimes to send Buck’s dermatologist pictures of anomalies on his cancer-prone skin. So my cell phone is full of these scary-looking close-ups. He was a lifeguard on Pensacola Beach in 1956, that era from the last century when pale folks slathered on baby oil to broil their skins to a sexy bronze. Who knew, right?

I’m the kind of person that can be annoyingly even-tempered, cheerful, and optimistic. But these last few days, I’ve been feeling a little frail, a little old. It doesn’t help that my Apple watch keeps popping up with High Heart Rate alerts. Man.

I dreamed last night about trying to find my way into a Walmart. Yes, friends, it’s come to that. This was no ordinary Walmart. The employees were on the outside and marching bands filled the spaces inside. I wandered through the throng, but no one seemed to be able to see or hear me. At last, on some invisible, silent signal, doors opened all around the building. The marching bands came out, trumpets and tubas and piccolos and all, and the employees streamed in. The whole place was a big rectangle of bright light. Next thing I remember was being a passenger in a vintage champagne-colored Lincoln Continental. The driver looked like Sam Elliott and was talking to me in his gravelly voice, just as the dream was ending. That was the best part of the dream, but I can’t remember what he said.