Blog for today. Hello lovelies. How are we today? Yesterday and today I’ve made lists and I’m going through an item at a time and getting some things done. I have not been productive every single day of the lockdown (nor was I productive every single day before the lockdown). But this week, for right now, today, I seem to need to stay active. It helps.
Getting some sun seems to help me, not just physically, but mentally and emotionally as well. It’s close to 11 and I still have 8 or 9 items left to go. I’m actually happy about that.
When it comes to writing, I seem to be in a real poetry mode. I had started a fiction book a month or two ago, but haven’t touched it since the first week of working on it. Maybe I’ll schedule a day to work on it next week. In the past, once I start a book, I don’t work on anything else until it’s done. These last four or five years, maybe because I’ve been focusing a ton on my mental and physical health, the idea of shorter/smaller projects has greatly appealed. I can finish quickly and get that feeling of accomplishment faster (like checking things off a list).
Then there’s art. I started painting (acrylic on canvas) a couple years back and I find a lot of satisfaction in it. It’s therapeutic and really energizes the creative mind for me. Then I began to take art journaling classes and that has been life-alteringly beneficial for me. I can do longer, more in depth projects, or even just draw or use color pencils, or whatever, and it keeps my hands active as well as my mind. I can do layer after layer, collage or mixed media, or whatever strikes me.
Finding out how to draw faces is something that has been huge for me over this past year or so. I have studied a lot of tutorials, noted what my art journaling teacher does as well as many other artists, then began to practice for hours and hours, trying to find my own unique style. I think I’m beginning to, and it has been such fun. I don’t know how many sketchbooks and journals I’ve filled with faces, but it’s a ton. I try to at least draw and doodle every day. I tackle the larger projects as I feel up to it. Art has–I know this to be true–saved me in so many ways.
This lockdown and virus mess is hard, it has been and it will be, and nobody really knows for how long. I’ve been through hard things before. I didn’t want to go through something like this, nobody does, but I’ll just keep plugging through the best I can. And that’s life, isn’t it? Facing the mundane, the beautiful, and the horrible and living through it all.
Keep plugging away, dear friends.
As always, Peace Out