11 – Diptych in Love – A Short Story Inspired by Dorothy Siemens’ Art

I met Dorothy Siemens several years ago in an online art marketing course, and I’ve been hooked on her work ever since! The way her art is filled with layer upon layer of color and texture makes me swoon so much so that, many times, I’ve been shocked to discover that I’m looking at the progress photo of a half done, or even just begun, painting...

[If your podcast app isn’t showing the featured art for this episode above visit rebekahnemethy.com/artink11 to check it out.

Castbox and Podcast Addict are both apps I recommend that do show episode specific art.]

Links from the Show at a Glance:

Artist: Dorothy Siemens

Title of Art: Wonder-Rapture

Artist’s Website: https://dorothysiemens.com/

Instagram: @dorothy.siemens

Dorothy’s Lyrical Language series

Support Rebekah on Patreon if you want more episodes! https://www.patreon.com/rebekahnemethy

Art Ink Submission Guidelines: rebekahnemethy.com/artinksubs

Art Ink Podcast Transcript:

[Intro:]

Hello my friends! Thank you for tuning in to a new episode of Art Ink!

I’m late with this episode, and I’m consciously preventing myself from pulling out the S-word. But I feel I owe you an explanation, nevertheless. I do this weird thing I’ve noticed that’s kind of a pattern for me: I seem to procrastinate on the things I want to do most, by unintentionally overcommitting myself. I also do this other thing that I’m afraid many of us in capitalistic societies do, and that is I makes choices based on money. It pains me to admit that, because I’ve spend a lot of time promising myself I will let my heart weigh in more heavily than my mind over the past few years, but unfortunately my head and my wallet still has an equal vote in my decisions.

At the end of a long texting vent with my BFF last week I apologized for complaining to her typing, I hope you’re not rolling your eyes at me, you’re probably even busier than that (she has two kids on totally different schedules, a job, and is going to school full time too), and I know I do this to myself. She replied, I’m not rolling my eyes, it’s like you have four jobs!

Even though I was aware that I have far too much to juggle right now, it hadn’t quite struck me until she did the math for me. Oh my god, I thought, I do have four jobs. And in order to prioritize this podcast, I just recently had to resign from some volunteer work I’ve been doing over the past 6 months. Yikes... so I actually had five jobs?

I didn’t wake up one day and say I’m going to use up every spare second of time I have every week... but back in March, when I had only 1 job I did reach out to a couple of animal organizations that I love. One of them was looking for volunteers and the other was looking for part-time seasonal help. And I ended up getting involved with both of them. So that was my new commitment for Saturday and Sunday.

Then, in June, a friend from my former photography job offered me a contract my logical side couldn’t resist, good money for working only 3 days per week for the next 6 months. After a happy but stressful year of totally freelancing doing audiobooks and voiceover, I thought it’d be nice to have a bit of consistent work so that I could focus on, guess what?, this podcast in my free time (which, at this point, was the remaining 2 days per week).

So I stopped auditioning for audiobooks and I went out of office on my Fiverr account... but the thing is, the audiobooks didn’t stop coming. Authors I didn’t even know were finding my samples on Audible, other clients I’d done a couple of jobs for were consistently sending me more work, and the stash of stories I had queued up for Art Ink rapidly started to dwindle as I hustled more and more.

Luckily, I only have 2 more months left on my contract at the photography job, and the busy season at the animal sanctuary will also be wrapping up around the same time, so that should free up some time.

I have soooo many great ideas for the future of this show. Not just story ideas, and lists and lists of artists that I want to feature, but also lists of ideas about teaching storytelling to creatives of all kinds, and reaching out to authors and writers willing to help create more content, AND ideas for special episodes. But, this all takes time. Time, time, time. Despite my inability to do simple math to count how many jobs I’ve signed up for, I’m kind of a nerd when it comes to project tracking. I track the time spent on all of my audiobook projects an...