Curveballs

There seems to be some rule that as soon as I give myself a big challenge and start on it within a short period of time life throws a curveball at me to make the challenge all the more challenging. It happened within the first few weeks of my 365 daily creativity project and now just a few days into a month of daily blogging I am sick. It started out as a sore throat last night, now today I am full blown sick. I get one "I'm sick" blog post out of it. Then I need to keep generating content while feeling like crud. I can do it! No big deal.  

Sick day watercolor abstracts in my sketchbook while I sip tea with honey.  

Failed but not a failure.

Coming off the high of completing October's #inktober Instagram daily ink drawing and sharing challenge I signed up for the daily blogging challenge #nanoblopomo as a way to improve my blogging habit. It started out pretty well but about halfway through it I started resenting the challenge and remembered doing it last year and all it accomplished was blog burnout. So I stopped and promised myself weekly blogging combined with daily drawing, painting and Instagram sharing and enjoyed the rest of the month of November.  Ready for new challenges for December!

Why I Blog?

 This is a question I ask myself a lot as I get back to writing and blogging. After all I am not a writer I am a visual artist. That is the script that I formed for myself long ago and it can be hard to break out of that mold even when doing so is so obviously the right choice. By nature I am insecure about my words. Rather shy and reserved by nature I prefer to let my art speak for me. But writing my morning pages every morning (except once) these past two months and blogging on a regular basis has been changing me. And changing my art as well. It creates feedback with myself and causes me to consider things that I wouldn't necessarily consider if I wasn't forced to write all the time. Seven hundred and fifty words for my Morning Pages every morning is a lot of page filling. But I do it and stuff comes out and I learn how to write while doing it. Blogging is a lot. Instead of just going on with my busy life with my family and making art whenever I can I am forcing myself to stop and think about what I'm doing, why and what's next. I blog because it is changing me and I like it. 

Next is an older piece that I never loved or hated. During my printing last week I found it and added one more layer and now it is finally finished.