One of my big things to do this fall was a research project for the docent group I am a part of at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. I've been a docent there for about a year and a half, not counting the year I spent in training there, and I have grown to love deeply the teaching, research, and learning I have been doing in order to give tours of the permanent art collection. For this project, I researched a German Gothic altarpiece and today and this evening, I presented the results of my research in a talk for the docents.

Teaching has always been something I have enjoyed, but it has been especially gratifying to teach in the context of a museum -- at a time when arts and humanities are marginalized in favor of more objectively-evaluated subjects. I'm on a mission to get people into the museums and see what's there, and see how it relates to their lives and the world around them.

I love research. I love to look things up, find out information I didn't know, and then relate that to other thins I *do* know, and put it all together into something coherent. I think as much as I love to write, I maybe love the research more. Funny, I never used to enjoy it at all, but now, I see it as a fascinating process.

And I am a maker, a creator of things, and ideas, and objects. I am in my element when I am manipulating fabric, or hot glass, or metals into the visions I see in my head, creating objects of adornment, or clothing, or visual expressions of inner thoughts. I need to make things, like I need water and air.

Teaching, learning, research, and creating. All the most essential aspects of what makes me feel whole and human.

How can I turn this into my life's work?