Something that Alicia wrote a week or so ago has been tumbling around inside of me ever since I read it. Please pardon me for quoting her out of context:

"I liked to draw those things where you enlarge a picture on a grid, drawing each square for itself alone.....they chopped it up and gave you all the squares, all mixed up, and you drew them one by one in the right places, waiting to see what it was going to be"...and then, "I'm just going to work on my little squares and see how it all turns out." - Alicia Paulson

These words functioned as a shiny magnet that drew a most precious metal memory back to me. You see, when I was in seventh grade my art teacher gave us a similar assignment. We were to take a picture from one of her magazines, fold it into squares and then box by box copy the image to paper. We were required to draw a larger version - an assignment on scale. I chose a black and white portrait of a young girl with two braids in her hair. At first I thought nothing of the assignment but as I drew each individual square I got more and more excited. My confidence started gaining steam with every stroke of the pencil. When finished several weeks later I was stunned at the likeness. I remember that the teacher thought I had done a nice job. That my parents nodded approval. But me? I was so proud. I felt as if I had stumbled into a part of myself previously unknown. And then it happened for the very first time. It suddenly did not matter to me at all what anyone else thought about something that I had done. The only thing that mattered was that I was good with me. My life moved on. I grew up. I forgot all about that drawing. I also forgot how unbelievable and liberating that first burst of being completely confident and comfortable in my skin had felt.

Until now.

And now I will never forget that feeling again.
I vow to get there again, stay there, live there in that feeling.
I know just how to do it, too.

One little square at a time.