Ending on a high note

As time goes on, I’m reminded that I’m still recovering from a head/brain injury, that I’ve still a ways to go, and bumping into a new wall, or hanging from a new edge, is mighty uncomfortable.

And, though I know the drill.. I’ve been here now hundreds of times. The need to recoil, wring myself out, or dust myself off.. apologize as necessary for blunders in speech or actions (and try not to worry what others think).. attend to any physical boo-boos (and elicit medical care, as appropriate)..

Then, rest, and then, strategize a new plan of action. Sometimes this takes a while, because, well, it’s exhausting just being here and reclaiming this space. Also, it takes time to recognize exactly what happened, and what needs tweaking in the actions that led me here.

So. New action plan, including steps mapped into calendar, Tiimo app, Things app.. all set.

Okay. Let’s GO!

Truly, this happens in myriad small ways everyday, but I’m quite mindful about how things go in larger ways, I’m very safety conscious, and I do think I’m careful to not be at risk, and so bad things don’t happen.

The small ways occur basically in activities where I have license to make mistakes, such as communication, and my crafting projects. Both of these I find myself bumping into walls, recoiling, correcting, sometimes explaining (in the form of communication), frogging (in knitting, this is unravelling a whole bunch of knitted fabric), and thinking about what went wrong, and then proceeding to make it better, or make it again only better..

When it’s in this medium range which has room for mistakes, I’ve sort of lost track of things a bit, and I don’t have tried and true processes for locking things down as I do with safety and risky things.. so the ambiguous things are quite open for things to go sideways, and with not too much material risk but which take wrangling to sort out, and time and energy and all the things. And this happens, not often, but it happens..

And it happened this week..

For January 1st, I signed up for a drawing practice that seemed like a great idea, 10-minutes a day for one month. I’m not an illustrator, though I’ve dabbled in it a bunch, and I’ve practiced watercolour painting a bit, and I have a few tools.. but I would like to become a bit more practiced at drawing. Also, I’d like to work on handwriting in general, be more comfortable using notebooks again, and reclaim my love of handwriting and lettering.

This group drawing practice seemed similar and mentioned the Artist’s Way daily pages as using 10 minutes first thing in the morning, and ending on a high note. This in fact is how I used writing in my journal to get me out of jams in my thinking processes, basically writing as self-therapy by writing a bit every day in my journal (typing into a notes app, Bear for iOS), day after day, with nothing in particular in mind, just writing and writing. And here we are, me comfortable writing bits and pieces of my life and sharing it with you all..

I was hoping this one month of 10-minutes of drawing in the morning would be the same sort of thing, but my goodness, I hit a wall on the very first day.

January 1st ⭐️

The email that came in on Day 1 was to first make a list of More and Less things for 2024. That, in itself is a day’s thinking in my books. I mean, I cannot make myself think these thing off the top of my head. And then, I needed to conceptualize these things into drawable subjects, and then draw them.. in 10 minutes. It was glaringly apparent I was out of my depth on Day 1, and I was already wondering before I started: how can I make the best of this situation?

So, being the soldier that I am, I worked on this on and off throughout the day, and ended up with a page that was laid out, with some More and Less things, that had pencilled and then pen over the pencil while I was thinking about how to draw the subjects for each of the ideas.. and I basically drew a little picture for one of them and I was done. Ending on a high note.

..

Fast forward to today.

January 8th ⭐️

After I watched several days’ instruction emails in the ‘doodle category’ come and go, one of which referred to the topics and asked us to copy drawings we’d made on Day 1, I just glazed over and waited for the right time to dive back in.. which was this morning.. on Day 8.

My thinking was that I needed some help, and I didn’t want to use prompts from others in the class necessarily and copying from their example, but wanted to use my own research.. and I also wanted to understand from a general drawing instruction perspective, how to break down a simple icon-like drawing of something, into its form parts, so I could draw the thing.

Of course, iOS has an app for that, and for free..

And so, this morning, I installed that app, read the instructions for Day 8 drawing exercise which was to draw food that Delights us, and using the app, I looked for how to draw cherries and waffles.. et voila.

Yes, it took a bit more than 10 minutes to read instructions, plus page setup, plus app download, plus drawing time.. I guess not quite half an hour. Ending on a high note.

Ahhh.. I’m so grateful.

Love. ❤️