This is the text I sent to Melissa on the last day of the last guest instructor workshop of 2017.

I felt like I wanted to text it to the whole world. To send up the characters in 7,200 size comic sans ms to shine across the screen of the sky to every waking creative

‘Are you here yet?!’

The EncaustiCastle.

Much like EncaustiCamp did and continues to do, this place exists and breathes and grows not just through me and because of me but despite me as well.

It has it’s own being and essence. 

I certainly get to, but the wonder of that statement, ‘I get to!’-

-the wonder exists in it because of this very being, life, the get tos take on for themselves.

This wonder is the substance of which, and when which, I know something is real.

That something that’s come through me, that takes on and becomes a life of its own, is on-point.

I lose it a bit, when it is most real, because it lives in and of itself. Yet gratefully, graciously, it still needs me. It’s the open-handed holding…

 I get to the EncaustiCastle.

I get to WinterWax.

I get to Bi-coastal Bi-annual.

I get to EncaustiCamp.

I get to Guest Instructor retreats.

I get to the amazing opportunities to write those books. 

IgettoIgettoIgetto

and so do you.

If you will.

I willed just 10 years ago now, certainly the seeds of it were sprouting before this time but 10 years ago they broke through the ground and began reaching their tender shoots toward the sun.

Fragile sure, and scared and unsure; so vibrant and malleable. 

Some serious pruning and dying off of branches and shoots have happened over the decade but lately, I’ve begun to notice that the branches remaining have grown in girth. That the roots seem endless now, reaching so deep and set so powerfully in the ability to hold up the ever-widening trunk. 

I willed, and look what’s come. Do you remember Patricia Baldwin Seggebruch in 2004? 2005? Do you recall just 10 years ago this name where you could search a name? No? It hardly existed. There was barely the me of this me-iteration out there. I did not fully exist. 

There was a me of course; there is richness and depth and beauty preexistent to the me of now, but that’s another life’s story. 

The me now, the 51 years-now me, four books now, EncaustiCamp now, Australia life lived now, EncaustiCastle now-and all this to not mention the failed attempts the blundered appeals the tightly-fisted manifestations-the me now, is, because I willed. I will.

Will you?

A mere 10 years and the me you can see where ever you seek me is nothing of what you would find of the me ‘back then’. 

Will you? What do you want to be in 10 years?

Will you?- let me be a part? It is my part, to be a part of the will you will.

I have created an environment, environments, where to wake early and receive a text of anticipated excitement, joyous discovery, immense inclusivity and sometimes tremendous growth-spurts and stretch marks occur.

Will you see what it is that your will can be in the I will of me?

in love

trish