One day at a time...

Although right now I'm going two days at time.

Sunday went well, despite being a long tiring day. I got a lot of love from a lot of good people. I did some bleh sketching to keep to it, and at least thought about yoga amid all the walking and sitting. What with it being a long tiring day with over 100 miles of driving after 8pm and 10 hours of moving around and socializing before 8pm, I'm okay with no actual practice.

Monday is a slam dunk, even with turning off the internet for some hours of drawing. :P

Something important that I have to work on now and pay attention to is focusing on the here and now and taking things one day at a time. Certain parts of my future are decidedly uncertain, and there's nothing useful I can do about it now. A new, unexpected possibility came to light over the weekend, but is so tenuous that I'm afraid to look directly at it.

I have to be patient to figure out Reagan's dates. I have to be patient to figure out my plans. The best way I've figured out to accomplish that patience and not overthink things is to be more present for moment-to-moment things, like yoga practice and drawing.

Ah, drawing. Had a longer-than-usual talk with Reagan about my progress, lack there-of, and frustration there-with. The advice he gave me doesn't make any sense, and scares me. He wants me to cross-train.

I've been pen-sketching for quite a while now, and while some things are improving, other things aren't. The regression isn't complete, but I stopped drawing regularly for a while, and when I came back, I'm not as happy with my pages of sketchbook as I once was.

I showed Reagan my current work, then drawings from 2/3 of a sketchbook ago, and pointed out how much cleaner and more coherent things were then. "I want to get back to this", I told him over and over again. Rather than pointing out specific things I need to improve upon, or giving tips/reminders on how to draw hips, Reagan hands me a pencil and says, "Try this."

In no uncertain terms, I am scared to change media. Typing it out, I realize how ridiculous that sounds, but it's true. He tells me to take a detour to get from where I am to where I was and want to be again, and that kind of off-roading freaks me out. I feel like he's telling me to improve my English by speaking Spanish, when I don't even know Spanish.

At other times I have wanted to branch out at some distant part in the future and try different techniques in drawing, but I never expected it to happen like this. I expected a graceful retirement, or at least to be winning races in the breast-stroke before switching to the butterfly. I'm a builder switching from cement to brick at the early stage of a project, and freaking out--"MY FOUNDATION!!"--... forgetting that brick can make a good foundation, too. In fact, my foundation will be stronger if it has both cement and brick, instead of just the one.

Enough with the silly metaphors. I think I've made my point clear. I'll go in this new direction, but I will be objecting along the way that it makes no sense and worry that I'm doing it wrong. :P



For those keeping track (just me), today was Day 11.