day #365 - the end of an era

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I thought I was on top of it; I had finished early and was looking for a movie to watch already 3 hours ago. And I don't know how time went by. A phonecall, some networking studying, some online shopping and here we are, already past the time for an early movie. Regardless, today is a special day. The blog is over! I finished 365 days of daily painting and recording it, whatever that means. A big part of the process I will have to keep doing mainly for myself. Perhaps taking daily photos of my work and saving it on some folder. This has provem useful many times when I trying to date a piece I've been working on. Also making a small diary of today's achievements. It's still useful. But this will be done for my eyes only. I also don't know if I will be continuing my obsessively daily painting. How would life be if I had days off? Now for example that I'm moving out and I have to daily chores that until now were completely taken care of, perhaps I'll allow my

day #285 - Acceptance

So here we are today; I feel exhausted. I spent the day photographing one of the acrylic pieces of the summer that had really been worrying me. I finally did it! Two more more to go, more difficult than this one, but hoepfully in due time I'll have everything done. I find very interesting how exhausted I'm feeling now. There was the urge to paint (seeing my old piece I want to do something equal) but I can't, I'm spent. Was photographing the source of this tiredness? Was it something else? I don't know. This is probably one of the top 10 days, that I've come closest to not painting anything. And yet I did!
For today, just one sheet of brushpen strokes; how I love these oscillating waves! Momentarily I had the vision of doing it on large paper with a large brush. I need to find a way and spend less time "archiving" and more time painting; it's almost silly. Can't say I'm not worried since I'm thinking of opening an instagram account and an etsy store in which case I might have to spend even more time doing ...anything but art.
I read something interesting about Haruki Murakami; He'd allocate 4 hours every day and stare at a page. Just writing something, anything. Change is bound to happen maybe 1, maybe 10 years later. I've heard others doing it. I somehow heard it better today. Somewhat similar to what I've been doing. But I've been approaching it with flexibility about the duration and that's different. Somedays it could be 10minutes (like today) other days 5 hours or more. Funny. When I started this blog (and even earlier), I had been trying to disassociate painting from stress and frustration. I think I've succeeded in that. Or at least gone a long way. It's not that painting is fun, or exciting or productive, or something I'm proud of. It is sometimes, once every few days or weeks (now that I have this record I could make a statistic actually). But I'm sure it's no more often that it had been before. It was always like that - dull, dull, dull, awe! dull, dull, dull, dull, dull, fun!, dull, dull, dull, relief!, dull, dull... Only now, that the dullness is no longer dullness plus suffering, but dullness plus the forced celebration of the small things, the overarching progress is finally visible and the sustainability is perhaps attainable.
So perhaps I've succeeded in getting over that patch of distress over painting and now I'm ready to move onto a more steady habit. Am I ready? Or perhaps it's the spontaneity that sustains it and this will harm it. I don't know. I'm a bit afraid, afraid to make it into a chore, and fall back into distress. I don't have to solve this today. It's nice that I'm thinking about it, I can see movement (remember, the small celebrations). Today's success perhaps has been about both respecting the habit, and respecting the tiredness of the day. It's also been about trying to see the bigger picture. Time for rest!

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