Sleep Deprived & Thriving

You know whats interesting? When you're doing something you don't really want to be doing in order to accomplish a long term goal that you do want, that thing you don't want to be doing suddenly becomes a lot less taxing. I have figured this out through experience in the last few days. I am fulfilling one of the requirements for my major (Communication Design) by taking an oil painting class. While I do love painting, I would prefer to have free reign and artistric freedom to do what I want, rather than be taught technique through basics that I don't enjoy, no matter how important they might be. I'm just stubborn that way.

Over the last few days I have spent somewhere around 21 hours in the painting studio working on one single piece of art. It has been absolutely exhausting both mentally and physically. I prefer standing while painting on a large canvas, so my feet have been absolutely killing me, my right hand that I am constantly mixing paint and painting with is continuously cramping up, I've woken up every morning with sore shoulders from holding my arms up and being hunched over while mixing. Not to mention I just feel slightly weak and out of it from lack of sleep, liquids, and food (apparently I'm not good at taking care of my basic needs under stress... this might become a problem). I devoted my entire last weekend to this single project and something about that felt okay, right even. It sounds silly I guess but I'm really proud of myself for working so hard, especially considering the level of intricacy (that gets really annoying) of the painting. Knowing that I am working towards my degree in graphic design makes it bearable and even fulfilling. Not to mention I can now look back at classes from the past that I had a very difficult time in and realize how much I learned in them, despite or maybe beecause of the extreme difficulty of them. I can then hope that regardless of my feelings about my classes right now, there's a good chance that in the future they will be well worth the difficulty and stress.

I am finally so excited about my future. I don't think I've ever felt like this before, unless you count that time, while playing in a puddle in the backyard of my childhood home, that I decided I was going to be a mermaid when I grew up. I was pretty excited about that. All joking aside, it's really nice not to be terrified of the coming days and having to hope I'll just be able to get through it. I'm doing so much more than just surviving now. I feel like I'm thriving. I feel like I can handle anything thrown at me and then some!

Now I am under no illusion that I will always be on top of the world and in love with everything I'm doing. I know there will be days when I'm in over my head and barely keeping afloat. But hopefully on days like that I'll be able to look back on days like this and know I will not just get through them, but also learn from them.

My nearly finished self portrait... not 100% happy with it, especially the bottom portion which I'll have to touch up, but overall I kind of like it.

Comments

  1. You'll get there sweety. Keep at it..
    I'm proud of you.
    Hope you got some rest..

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