Painting color drenched artworks of places and things I love
The last beautiful, warm day in autumn just called for a quick visit to my favorite spot, Pt. Lookout beach. A wide open sky, calm ocean waves, with the crisp salty breeze made this day perfect.
With my granddaughter in tow, we surveyed every bit of seashell, discarded horseshoe crab carcasses, and our footprints in the sand.
The expanse of beach was limitless, as were our hearts, open and free.
Remember that give-away I said I wanted to get going? The one about adding emails to my soon-to-be newsletter thingy? My friends out there, you guys who read this blog about my bouts with Mr. Resistance as I paint, if you sign on to be added to the email list I will be giving away that free book to one of you lucky friends.
Here’s where it gets tricky. I’m adding some info here, and since I’m not a computer whiz I can’t be sure how it will look. But I’m going to try so take a look at the link here:
Does that look dopey or what?
Well, this is how it’s going to work. Sign up on my email list on the upper right corner and leave a comment at this post saying you signed up. When the campaign ends, which looks like it’s soon the way this works, I’ll announce the winner of the book The War of Art, by my guru Steven Pressfield, and send it out.
Let’s see how things go, okay? No judgement please, I’m new at this thing.
If Resistance couldn’t be beaten, there would be no Fifth Symphony, no Romeo and Juliet, no Golden Gate Bridge. Defeating Resistance is like giving birth. It seems absolutely impossible until you remember that women have been pulling it off successfully, with support and without, for fifty million years.
Steven Pressfield, The War of Art
As my “friend and mentor” Steven Pressfield writes in his great work The War of Art, Mr. Resistance can be beat. I can tell you he’s right because I’ve been successful at it, here and there.
If beating down Resistance would happen each and every day, it would be a grand thing for me.
A while ago I received this great gift in the mail. I wrote a post about it at the time, too. The publicist of the author Steven Pressfield, (a genius on artists and Resistance in my opinion), Callie Oettinger, sent me copies of his books after reading my tales of Resistance woe. Needless to say, I was in heaven.
This blog was new in this WordPress space, having migrated it from Blogger, and I thought it would be a great idea to do a give-away contest with these great books as a gift for readers who signed on to my email list.
Guess what happened? You know it! Mr. Resistance decided that it would be such a stupid idea. He told me I wouldn’t be able to figure out how to do it anyway so why bother. That guy did so much yapping in my brain I couldn’t stand it.
This email sign up stuff has been the hardest thing I’ve had to overcome. Since reading The War of Art I recognize it’s the one thing I need to do to move ahead. I’m having Email List nightmares.
Have I figured out how to manage the give-away? Nope, but I’m determined to do it now as soon as possible. I’m going to give myself a deadline and tell you right now that by year’s end I am giving away The War of Art to a random person who signs up for my list, details to come.
There, I’ve thrown down the gauntlet Mr. Resistance. Let’s watch the fireworks happen now.
Daylight savings time is a real drag on me. When the clocks need to spring forward or fall backward my brain and body can’t handle the action.
My inner clock is thrown off balance. I usually don’t need a watch to tell the time, except when the day comes for the annual clock adjustment thing. The day is dark when it’s supposed to be light, and light when it’s supposed to be dark.
It’s all very confusing to me.
My father used to tell us, “The time is the time!” He had no patience for any thing other than to follow the correct time, whatever season it was.
If you think about it, he was right. Too much time is spent thinking about time, having enough, not having enough, spending it wisely or not. Deciding whether to spend time on doing something worthwhile, or waste it frivolously on nothing much at all.
Should we be busy? Should we stay idle? What’s the best, or worst, use of our time?
Children can’t wait to grow up, and adults wish they were still young. And time does grow short very quickly, no matter how we mark it as we age.
Staying in the present moment is a tough task, but really the only way to slow down time enough to savor and enjoy it. I try to keep my eyes wide open, calculate every movement, use all the senses at once, to really see and watch and learn and remember everything, and everyone, around me.
Otherwise each delicious moment of the day cannot be counted and drift away. Babies grow up, day becomes night, summer turns into winter, and time runs along.