Middle of April Check-in
I may have procrastinated this check-in for a few days, but late is better than never. I think I’ve been doing a decent job of being “busy but not overwhelmed” by limiting the number of things that I think about working on, and therefore limiting the number of things I actually work on. This has been a big mindset shift for me; I find myself thinking about a number of different projects that I want to work on and always try to work on all of them at the same time. It’s finally resonating with me that I can’t work on so many different things at once and I have to let some things go for the time being and focus a bit.
I’ve also started using a new practice where I write down a short and concrete to-do list each night for the next day and I tell myself that if I don’t do what I set out to do on the to-do list, then I might as well never do it. This has been working pretty well for me because I typically find myself full of ideas and want to plan out these grand schemes at night and then quickly lose motivation to do any of it the next morning. So now, when I start my day and look at my to-do list, instead of having the usual inner debate of IF I want to do the things on my list, I tell myself to just do it and if I choose to not do something, then I can never do it again. It sounds pretty harsh, but I think it’s a practice of not pushing things off to tomorrow indefinitely. Do it now or never do it. I put this blog post on today’s to-do list and here I am 🙂
What I’ve been working on
I have not been working on my California Highway One paintings. I have actively decided to take a pause on these paintings because I’m focusing my time on my daily plein air paintings. The plein air paintings have been a good experience so far, and I have been happy with how my paintings have turned out. I’ve only had one frustrating painting day so far, which is way fewer days than I expected. I expected each day to be a frustrating painting day.
I started painting my close up flower paintings again. It seems like my plein air painting practice has motivated me to work on the flower painting I had set aside for over a month. I’m trying to find a balance of working on the paintings I feel motivated and excited to work on with staying committed to what I had initially intended. In my last blog post, I thought I had committed myself to the California Highway One paintings, but I decided to let the plein air paintings take over my time. And then suddenly, I found the urge to go back to my flower paintings and I didn’t want to fight it. I think for now, as long as I’m painting, I’m going to be happy. I don’t worry that I won’t ever finish the California Highway One paintings; it’s more of a question of when they’ll be finished. I know that I’ll be motivated to go back to those paintings again.
I wrapped up my commissioned painting and the varnish coating is currently drying. I’m really excited to ship it out!
My website update is that I uploaded new photos for all the available paintings I have! You can check some of them out here. I took some time to learn some basic photo editing in Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop. It took a little over an hour to figure out all the steps that I needed to edit my photos, but once I learned the steps, it was quite quick to edit all 100+ photos. I write this to mostly remind myself that it always takes time and effort to learn something new, but once I accept the time it takes to overcome the learning curve, things will become easier. I procrastinated on learning how to use Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop for more than four months, I think out of fear of how long it would take me to learn what I needed to know to edit my photos of paintings. It seems silly now to have avoided learning this for so long. This was the first thing I enforced my “do it today, or never do it” practice because it was coming to a point where I might have avoided Lightroom and Photoshop for a very long time.
Inputs
I’m reading Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered by E. F. Schumacher. I had read Doughnut Economics by Kate Raworth first, which pulls a lot of concepts from Small is Beautiful.
Outputs
I took a day trip out to the coast to do some plein air paintings. I haven’t been out to the coast in a while and it was really nice to get there early while it was still cloudy and cool out and then see the skies clear up and warm up while painting.
That’s all for my check-in. Thanks for reading all the way through! This one was a bit more rambling as I processed how I figure out how to stay motivated and what to work on (I also don’t reread and edit my posts because it makes me self-conscious, so we just have to accept the typos and bad grammar). If you had any thoughts or suggestions that came to mind as you read through this, please share with me in the comments. Working alone has sometimes become an echo-chamber of my own thoughts and I know that I get stuck into the same practices and thought patterns. I’ve been reading a lot of non-fiction to help bring in new ideas, but I also hope my blog posts are a space where I can share my thoughts/processes and get some feedback! And if you don’t feel comfortable writing a comment, send me an email or a text, I’d appreciate it! I hope you are healthy and well.
