The Wellness Adventure Continues!

Here we are:  the next 10 pages of the wellness quest. These are days of highs and lows, stopping and starting, on track and off. Over the Christmas period it was difficult to stay focused, easy to let things slide. These ups and downs, stops and starts are a normal part of a process of change. Strength comes and goes. Attention wanders. Sometimes it seems easier to live with less than good health than to push the river enough to make it better. But by the end of the first month, I feel that new patterns are emerging and changes are gradually being implemented.

Day 11

These are homemade shortbread biscuits given to me by a friend. So many words and phrases of self talk go with eating. As they came up, I stamped them in.

One of those inexplicably heavy, melancholy days. Even though they are low and gloomy, they are not without interest. I like to get to know these feelings, give them names, differentiate one from another. Befriend them, even.

It wasn't my intention to sit out in the backyard in the dark drawing my washing. But when I saw the clothes and the Jacaranda in the cool light of the moon - it was just irresistible.

There were a bunch of days when I did no recording or drawing at all. They seemed to pass very quickly and I was shocked that I had almost forgotten that I was doing this. How easy it is to be side-tracked, distracted, turned astray? But here I am, back again. Not as regularly as before, but still going on, keeping going.

Yeah, this was a really hot day.

More stopping and starting, on track, off track, on track again. Wandering off track - how much harder it is to get back on track than to stay on track in the first place. Why am I making this harder than it needs to be?
So here I am, taking myself to task, setting the ground rules again clearly.

Simple food, coffee and water - a picnic by the river on Christmas afternoon. What you see here is mostly leftovers. Eat first, draw later.

I can't believe some of the conversations I have with myself. I have such a talent for persuading myself that what I feel like doing is better than what I know I ought to do. What's laughable is that I'm the one who decided what I ought to do and fully support it - or at least one of me does....The others are kicking and screaming and weaselling around trying to convince me that I agree with them and giving me such excellent reasons! No wonder my head hurts. It's full of my very own personal demons.

Knitting is very therapeutic for me. Especially knitting small things that can be finished quickly. I get bored knitting only one colour, so most of the things I make have stripes. My favourite part is going through all my yarn and patterns and then casting on. And changing colours. I like that too. Also chatting and knitting with friends is really nice. So yes, knitting is good for me.

One of the things that is contributing to my growing sense of wellbeing is having a vision of wonderful accomplishments in the not too distant future and mapping out the steps to accomplishing them. I've been doing a lot of planning. Then implementing and adapting the planning in the light of the implementing. I've filled up most of a bullet journal just this year. Next post, or maybe the one after, I'll show you my colour-based planning and review system. It's the colours that keep me going back to it. If I forget, remind me!
Till next time.

Evelyn

Tasmania: the East Coast

This almost qualifies as a throwback, since a couple of months have gone by since I took a slow drive from Launceston, through the Fingal Valley, to St. Helens, then to Hobart, with two nights at Swansea on the way.

The things I love most about  holidays like this:

1. They are full of unstructured time. No schedule. Anything can happen! Having a few days of unstructured time is what, for me, best promotes creative thinking and new perspectives. Minimal routine, maximum productivity. Strange, perhaps, but true.

2. I'm alone. Bliss.

3. There is no plan. If the beach where I eat breakfast just begs to be walked along, I can spend the rest of the morning walking. If I meet someone on the beach, I can stay and talk as long as I like. No "sorry, gotta go, gotta be in blah place by blah o'clock". And without a fixed plan, it's as though my vision expands from something narrow and driven, to something wide and open, ready to involve and be involved in all the world:  newly flowering wattles,  the mutter of fishermen on the rocks,  the changing colours of the sea from shore to horizon, thinking about how aboriginal people would have lived in a place like this, the unusual number of motorbikes on the road, erosion, cloud formations, unemployment, rural lifestyles, family history, coffee, languages, shoreline geology.... .

4. Beauty. It is good, now and then, to be in a place where, at every turn there is gut-punching, heart-stopping, soul-soaring beauty. To participate in it, to resonate with it. To exercise that heart muscle that recognises and identifies with it. To be overwhelmed and swept away.

5. Remembering, These are places that are familiar to me from long ago. They are rich with memory and experience. I love travelling through unfamiliar places too, but this is a different kind of love.

6. Time to reflect, time to imagine, time to draw and write.

Here are some of the drawings from that drive:

The Ben Lomond Massif seen from the Fingal Valley. There were so many stunning views on this clear, cold day, but very few places where the road had sufficient shoulder space to pull over. 

Binalong Bay, just north of St. Helens. 

Granite rocks at Binalong Bay.

Swansea: the view from my window on a quiet, misty morning.

Some broken shells I picked up, walking along Beer Barrel Beach, a little south of St. Helens.

More broken shells, these I collected above the high tide mark in Swansea, some drawn there, others finished when I got to Hobart.






A short stop on the way south, for some breakfast and a bit of conversation.

At my sister's house, looking out of the window from my bed, first thing in the morning.

These are the drawings in my sketchbook from those few days. I'm glad you could join me!

Christmas afternoon: down by the river

We put our folding chairs in a dense patch of tree shade and looked out across the river.
There was hot water in a thermos for tea or coffee, spectacular home made nut and cacao and coconut confections, leftover homemade ravioli, a bag of chips and some cherry tomatoes. In other bags we had sketching supplies.

At first one of those delicious afternoon-shady-spot-hot-day-well-fed lethargies settled around us and I thought a nap might be a better choice than dragging out the sketching gear. But, pleasant as it was to sit there in a dreamy daze, the itch to make marks was strong.

I am between sketchbooks at the moment, still waiting for my new one to arrive. I had a small watercolour pad with me and decided to play with watercolours. No pen today.

At first I used the watercolours as I usually do - just as a way to add colour, mixing the colours I want and slopping them down.

Then I tried working very wet, letting the colours run around and visit each other:

Finally, in the third sketch, I put down washes, let them dry and layered other colours over them:

All in all, a lovely Christmas afternoon!

Drawing Makes Me Love Things More

For the next two Saturdays I'll be doing workshops for the City of Perth as part of their Winter Arts programme of activities. To prepare, I've been wandering around the CBD looking at suitable sketching spots and possible plan B's if the weather is too much of a challenge.

The city centre does not feel warm and friendly. The architecture does not inspire cosiness,  human warmth, humour or delight. Attempts at quirky and funky are overburdened with transparent tryharditude, poorly masking the real intent of persuading people in to spend money.  The city's dead, what can we do, oh lets make some urban arty alleyways and do what Melbourne does.

Whatever its mood and its failings, this is where we will for the next two Saturdays be and this is where I sat down to sketch yesterday afternoon.

I'd come from a sketching class at The Meeting Place, where I managed to compose a picture that was mostly asphalt and draw some oddly proportioned cars that looked like they were all parked on different slopes - not the fault of the terrain, please note, but of my failure to see the wheel and body placements properly -  I sat on a bench in Forrest Place and drew other people doing the same. As I studied the slope of someone's shoulders, the way they put their hands to their face, the hair that fell over their eye - as I drew their jaws and ears and hoodies and chins, the bleak, cold city became a much nicer place.

Drawing makes my eyes kinder, makes me love things more and makes me feel closer to the life around me. It makes me give the things I draw a quality of attention that changes the way we respond to each other and the atmosphere around us. That goes for rocks and trees as much as humans and other creatures.

It was good to remember that yesterday, that the world changes when I change.

nb: the building isn't in the city centre, its a remnant sketch from South Freo.