I’m very sad to say that after a month hiatus in my blog, I don’t have any artwork to show. There are a handful of reasons. The lamest is that I’ve been insanely lazy and reluctant to scan things. I hate my wand scanner and I have to annoying plug in my flatbed scanner, but most of the work I’ve done in the last month were too big for the flatbed anyway. So, I have done a handful of drawings and paintings but…processing them is too tedious for my attention span and routine lately.The other less lame reason is that I’ve been taking my first actual Art Therapy class at my grad program. It’s been 6 weeks of amazingness. But it’s also been full of cathartic art experiences, so coming home from them leaves me with a lot less energy to do my own work. This last weekend, I was reading in one of my textbooks about how Art Therapy students struggled with regret over “giving up” their own art while they’re practicing as therapists, and the author urged such students to prioritize their own art health and lives through continuing their own creating. Feeling guilty and determined, I decided I’ll start now to maintain my own art while I’m a student and later a practitioner.
However, these weeknights since class haven’t been so much an absence of my own art but just of drive in general. I’m feeling sluggish and unmotivated to do much of anything. Rest assured, I’ve been doing everything I normally do anyway, but with more grimacing and reluctance than normal. I’m not sure where that has come from. I’m actually, emotionally, really happy right now.
Maybe I ought to blame the fact that I’m hardcore sucked into the book I’m reading right now – A Thousand Nights – to where we were in bed by 8:30 last night and I was reading till 10. That was all I wanted to do, and I’m not sorry. It was pretty blissful to be completely absorbed and in love with the world I was reading about. I love that the heroine doesn’t have a name (except Lady-bless), I love that the desert is a living, breathing part of the book, I love that I want the book to end the way I think it will (as opposed to rolling my eyes when it does). I love the colors, and the tension. So, it’s a happy distraction from doing what I also want to be doing.
Hopefully in the next few weeks I’ll return with an art update, at least with what has been made. I think my biggest concern I haven’t had time to process is that I haven’t done digital art in several months…and I don’t miss it too much. I don’t know if it’s a general disinterest in being on my computer; my general busy-ness; or just a lack of interest or passion in digital painting. I DON’T KNOW! I think I’m generally just too busy. Class, and work, and engagement (! I’m engaged!), and making ends meet, and Christmas shopping, and socializing. Ugh. Adulthood is so full!
