First, check out Girl2 in her prom dress. This picture was taken on her very last day of high school! She will graduate cum laude, with a cosmetology degree, an associates degree in science and math, and VERY close to completing Eagle Scout. I can’t manage to change my socks daily. This is why, as happy as I am for her and as proud, I feel like a slug.
I had all of these great plans for 2023. I was going to do a fair every month. I was going to complete a large painting every week, a couple of small paintings, and sketch every day.
With the exception of a couple of small watercolors, I haven’t managed to complete a single painting. I have done a small handful of sketches, but nothing near the volume I wanted to do.
So what’s wrong me? Why can’t I manage to follow through? It’s so easy to get down on myself and think about how terrible I am. But doing nothing is the norm. That is the standard that the human body wants to maintain. Inertia. A body at rest will remain at rest until acted upon by a force, right?
So the real question is what happened before that motivated me to do something? How did I manage to get up and do anything before? We typically throw around words like “discipline” and “plan” without really understanding how those words become actions.
I don’t have an answer to that. I know that routine is the best way for me to get things accomplished. If I manage to sit at a drawing table with my pens and paper, I will draw something. So I have to set the routine to have my pens and paper out, maybe at a specific time or at least convenient place every day. Like the saying goes, “Chance favors the prepared mind.” If my space is prepared and my materials available, it’s a whole lot easier for me to actually sit down and get some work done. The current state of the studio is not conducive to that effort, to say the least
I did manage to take some supplies with me to the mall while the wife and kids explored the shops. I didn’t get a whole lot of sketches in, but something is a brazillian times more than nothing, right?
