The Story Behind Hourglass

Hourglass - conceived 2013

There was a period in my life I'd like to forget. Who doesn't have that black, dark, heavy life experience? Babies, maybe.

During this dark time (for temporal context, roughly between December 2009 until sometime in 2017), I quit my extremely stressful airline job/career and did the cliche: began walking dogs part-time. Stress released.

There were many beautiful things about this period in my life, despite it being filled with gloom, doom and darkness. One of those things were dogs. I worked for a very small local business located in Hi-Lo Denver, really cool guy and his wife had just had a baby so they needed help with their upstart dog-walking business. Honestly, if I could have worked there the rest of my life, I would have. It kept me sane, and besides the love for the dogs and the overall healing I went through, it was an intensely creative period for me (I am NOT a prolific artist - by intensely creative, I mean, I actually worked on a few pieces). Hourglass was born during this time.

The original Hourglass drawing (pictured above) is from a photo I took on one of my dog walks. The dog I was walking was the next door neighbor to the Hourglass house. One day, the Hourglass house was there - fine, normal, nothing to talk about. The next day, I arrived and the house had, literally, blown up💥. Something exploded in the house the night before I had arrived, and it caught fire, just devastated the home. Seeing it in person, I was shocked, stunned, and, obviously concerned for my little doggie friend.

I went in my doggie friend's house, but couldn't find him. The house smelled of smoke damage and part of me thought I should call emergency services, but, I knew this was just aftermath I was experiencing. I did call my boss, and he contacted doggie's parents. They forgot to cancel the walk because the house next to them EXPLODED and they, clearly, were a little busy and had checked into a hotel with doggie 😜.

It was crazy, so, I took a few photos; it was kind of like my life at the time. I don't like to over interpret my art, but this one is pretty obvious. My interior life looked (and felt) like this dilapidated house. I was compelled to draw it.

During that same dark time, I wrote a short story called - you guessed it - Hourglass. When I went back to school to get my Paralegal certificate, I actually submitted it to the College literary journal, and to my utter shock and surprise, they published it!! Here's a little secret, all the characters in the story are me. If you are interested, here is the link to the archived publication: https://writerstudio.wixsite.com/progenitor2016/hourglass#:~:text=Hourglass

(Back in 1994, I graduated university with a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature, but was never really able to convert that into anything tangible. I hate my own writing, I know I'm not a great artist, nor am I a great writer; I have more self-doubt than courage to just appreciate my work for what it is.)

At some point during my dark period, I had to re-evaluate everything. Consciously, I went back to school and tried to re-do my life (mulligan!), but do it better this time. Subconsciously, I think I was working on my self-worth. Prior to my dark period, I had been relatively successful, but I felt like a fraud; I was extremely insecure, self-conscious, and spent a lot of time in a state of self-loathing.

AI interpretation - 2025

Cut to post-dark times, sometime in 2017 things started to lighten up. There was a perceptable lighten-ing sometime in 2017.

Now, I'm better. Not perfect, but, I'm better. Everything in my world is much, much better, much lighter. The house has been re-built. It's not perfect. But, it's nice, comfortable and livable.

In my vein, AI interpretation - 2025

I will be using this illustration with my short story, Hourglass. It's in the past, yes, but it's also where I'm heading.