Jodi Hills

So this is who I am – a writer that paints, a painter that writes…

Tag Archives: opportunity


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Doors opening.

Although she only sat down for one, Days of Our Lives, the soap operas played all afternoon on my grandma’s television set in the living room of their farm house. Of course we could hear them as we ran in and out of the screen door, up to the corner kitchen cupboard with the Lazy Susan that held all of the candy. We’d spin ourselves almost dizzy trying to decide between the blur of Black Cows, Sugar Daddies, Sugar Babies, and all things sweet. 

Deep into our sugared highs, we acted out the parts we heard from the other room. Using words we didn’t know, but kept repeating them, whispering them into our sweaty hands covered in sticky giggles, after our Aunt Lillian warned us that to say them aloud was to risk living them. 

In no way do I believe that my summer antics, nor my cousins’, brought to life all of those whispered words we seem to be living within. We say them out loud now. Words like divorce and affair and death and cancer. The only real difference, what they consolidated in less than an hour on the television, has taken a lifetime for most of us, but certainly we have all been touched. 

And I think it’s ok to say them out loud. To not hide from them. Not give them the power. To voice our struggles and our fears, whatever they may be. Maybe we knew something as children. We weren’t afraid of any of it. Not the words, nor the warnings. Nothing could stop us. Not screen, nor cupboard, or door of any kind. We raced through it all together.

I suppose I write the words each day in order to release them from the living room set. To fling open the doors and tell you it’s ok. To show you. To run with you. Play with you, amidst it all. We’ve never had the power to rid the world of all the difficulties. The pain and the struggles. But we’ve always had the power to find, still, the dizzying joy, the sweaty laughter. 

I fling open the screen door. Are you with me? 

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Rumpled and ready.

Being brand new to the workforce, it all seemed a bit unusual, but it didn’t take long for me to recognize that Ron Miller was definitely something special. His voice rang across the office frequently throughout the day as he used the intercom for his personal phone. “Eddy,” he would call, “See Ron. Eddy, see Ron. We have a unique opportunity.” He never called them problems. Or situations. They were always opportunities. Once I understood the code, I grew to love him. His own operating system was not without error. I helped clean up the wall splattered in coffee, when an “opportunity” distracted him. He left the machine on all afternoon, until it finally blew up to get his attention — which led to another opportunity. He didn’t always return from lunch, which left a void in the speaker system. His clothes and hair were often rumpled in opportunity. And I saw him as a work in progress. A work of art. 

I haven’t seen him for so long. But his wife, sends me a Christmas card each year here in France. I barely know her, but she is the glorious link that keeps us connected. 

I watch the news from home and my heart hurts for the divisions. Two sides so broken. Only seeing the problems. Where is our Ron Miller? Who is telling us to look for the opportunity. In all of this disarray. In all of this confusion, there remains the opportunities, if we choose to take them. There is art to be made. Tables to be set. Lessons to be learned. Letters to be written. And sent. Links to somehow reach over the divide and keep us connected. Yes, the walls we have put up and forgotten, are covered in mistakes, but we can correct this. Will we? 

I hear the voice overhead. It calls to me and I smile. I will keep trying. Rumpled and ready, I step into the opportunity of today.

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Opportunity

Opportunity.

“Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.” Thomas Edison

I knew my parents went to “jobs,” but my first real lesson in work came from my grandfather. My mother dropped me off at the farm in the morning. It was a day that my grandfather was going to pick rock. (clear the fields of the big rocks so it could be prepared for planting). I told him I wanted to go with him. At first he said no, it was too hard, but my quivering lip made him give in and off we went. He told me that he couldn’t “glamorize the dirt” – it was dirt, and the rocks were heavy, but all you had to do was pick up a rock and place it on the trailer. That made sense. Seemed easy enough.

Each rock seemed to give birth to another. I was so tired. But Grandpa didn’t seem to be. He just kept picking those rocks, one after the other. He seemed to get stronger. There was precision in each movement. I watched carefully. It was like an oil pump that didn’t have a beginning or an end to its motion, but just kept going. I had been throwing the rocks with anger, but he moved them with purpose…and that was the difference. That’s how he could take such a mess and later make something grow out of it. He seemed to be grateful for all of it. The black that surrounded us would turn to green and gold. It amazed me and I wanted to be a part of it. It was hard, but that was ok. I kept picking.

People often ask me how to start their own art business. Like there is some magical solution. The simple answer is – you do the work. You have to pick the rock. You paint. You paint over again. You dig through the scrap pile and find your wood. You stretch your canvas. You study. You feel. You paint. You do it because you have to – you want to – you need to – and that is when you have something green that grows, something gold that shines. You make the work. In between all of that you study the masters. You improve from your mistakes. And you learn all of the other lessons of marketing and selling and collecting. There is work. And it’s not all glamorous, but it is wonderful!

I guess it’s true for any profession, and not only that, just for living. You have to do the work. You have to do the work just to get through the challenging days.

My mother, just like her father, is still teaching me. She picks the rocks of her cancered field every day. When she goes to the hospital, she puts on (not her overalls) but her best dress, her most joyful outfit, and she radiates in the hospital waiting room that illness seems to cover in gray. She is grateful for each day. She is green. She is golden.

There is work to be done. Every day. I tell you now, as I tell myself, “Clear the fields. The opportunity is here! Please don’t miss it.”

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