The Amendment Period

It’s Amendment Time! 

I built this little safety net into the Initiative so that if it turned out to be a complete disaster (see sunflower calamity for definition of “disaster”) or just wasn’t working, I could make some tweaks to the program so that it didn’t make me want to eat my fist every time I thought about the (pauses to do math…..) 64 days I had left once I got to through the 5th painting …which was supposed to have been like 3 days ago.  Which brings me to my next point, I need to do something about my time scheduling for this deal.
     Don’t freak out, I’m not backing out of my plan of 26 paintings in 79 days. I’ll still adhere to that, I just need to tune in the schedule a little. Another thing I failed to take into account is the time it takes to write this blog! I could just toss some pictures in throw in some “here it is” captions, but I want to give it a little something extra.  I’m not a writer by any stretch, just look at the poor structure of all my run-on sentences, but I try to give a little how-to and maybe a little humor as a reward for folks who come here and really get the whole story instead of just glancing the facebook link.

     On that subject, I’d like to say: “Thanks so freakin’ much!” to those of you who come here and read because I know I’ve been getting visits, I saw it on my analytics page, but there are no signs of anybody! Please, pretty please, leave a comment at the bottom of a post that you like.

I know I’m needy but do me a solid and let me know there are friendly eyes perusing this thing now and again, it just takes a second. You don’t have to be a member or anything, you don’t even have to leave a name.  Just a quick “cool” or “I liked it when you did the stuff with all of the things.” I’m being insecure as heck, I know, but its lonely here on the interwebs without you guys!  
   
     OK, done whining. My plan of every three days was a little oversimplified.  I’ll keep the schedule and let you know when I’m going to do what paintings from my list of works, but I need to come up with a better formula to make sure I have lots to do on the weekends when I have time and little to do on other days like Wednesday where I don’t have a free second till around 8:30pm. A painting due on Wednesday is a guarantee that I will be up late finishing and that, in the long run is not sustainable since I become a lazy grumpy-pants if I don’t get enough rest.  You can say it, I sound 80 years old, but it’s the God’s honest truth.  My hope is to set up a schedule page somewhere and link it so its easier to check on than rooting through posts for the “art to do list” one.  Then I’ll update that every week on Sunday so I can be a little more flexible with it.
     In my short 2 weeks of this plan, I’ve learned something.  It’s not all laziness that has kept me from doing my work all these years. Having a full-time job, a wife, pets, stuff around the house to do (we’re talking picking up my shoes and doing dishes every 3 or 4 days, I don’t wanna make it sound like more than it is)  and regular grown-up life stuff like errands and such , I genuinely don’t have a ton of time in my life for art.  Don’t get me wrong, I pretty handily will choose to take care of some of this other stuff over the art by telling myself its more important at the moment thus, avoiding my work that way, but I don’t think I’ve been sitting on my rear watching TV with every hour I should have been painting and that makes me feel a little less like a failure that I’ve let this part of my life slip so far.  That’s all I get out this epiphany though.  It’s actually harder to work in painting around all this stuff that needs to be done instead of choosing to watch Office reruns for the next 4 hours or paint like I thought was my problem.

Oh Jim, you Rascal. 

  But giving art this little bit of importance, enough to make a promise to myself has shown me that I can do it, I just need to learn to tap dance a little better so that there is a balance.

     Moving on, I’m going to leave the 4 hour time limit in so that it’s always in the back of my mind to move it along, but in practice I’m going to treat it as more of a guideline.

the 4 hour rule is more what you'd call "guidelines" than actual rules 

 
   I’d rather go over on my self-imposed time limit that rush it and turn out art that I’m ashamed to show to people (again, see link).

Everything else is working great.  I fall behind pretty easily which we all knew was going to happen, but hopefully, with a little more scheduling magic and a teaspoon more drive, I can get back on track.

Thanks again. Stay tuned for some naturey oil painting of trees…it’s gonna be a lot cooler than it sounds I promise.