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What no wife of a writer can ever understand is that a writer is working when he's staring out of the window. --Burton Rascoe |
Friday, October 13, 2000 Upswing So I went to my painting class yesterday, and while I didn't like the portrait I'd painted of my brother, my professor seemed to think it was fine. And then I painted a picture of one of my classmates, and this time around I kept going even though I was sure I wasn't getting anywhere, and, again, my professor was a heck of a lot more positive about the results than I was. And I looked at the works produced by my classmates, and noted that they weren't doing much better than I was. And that the person who was painting me wasn't doing any better on the skin-tone problem, putting my face in shades of pink and purple instead. (For my part, I chose somebody with dark brown skin this time around, which made that part of the job much easier. Brown's simple: just mix purple and yellow, and voila.) Maybe I'll survive this class after all.
Afterwards, I went to meet Jen for tea; I'd sent out an SOS all but begging her to get together with me so I could maintain some semblance of a hold on my sanity, not expecting to be on an upswing by this point. After the ritual fifteen minutes spent a few yards from each other without realizing it (honestly, we're good at that), we finally realized that we'd both made it to the designated coffee shop after all and schmoozed for awhile about good books, bad movies, JournalCon, religion, and finances. 'Twas nice, as always. I need to do this sort of thing more often.
Which brings me to my next point. I'm starting to suspect that I may have been misdiagnosing my overall problem. It may not be a lack of time after all. It may just be a lack of quality time. Between the painting class and my rush to the subway station, I stopped by the professor with whom I'm doing the provocative language tutorial (who I may need to find a pseudonym for, I suppose), and she asked a rather dangerous question: what, exactly, am I busy with, anyway? It didn't seem as if I had an impossible schedule... I say this is a dangerous question because it's one I've often asked myself, usually leading to me taking on more stuff to do, usually leading to a meltdown somewhere along the way. One thing I've been learning, I think, is that any given project requires a certain amount of time, even if much of that time isn't actually spent on the project in question. And that having too many projects leads to problems. I've been trying to learn from my mistakes in that regard, even if I don't understand all the mechanics involved. But I wonder. Maybe it isn't really a time issue; maybe I could handle everything. Maybe the real problem is that I'm not getting out enough, and need more social contact, and, having done so, I'll be able to face what needs to be done. Instead of spending hours watching bad TV, surfing the Web, and checking my e-mail, which may be functioning as stand-ins for Real Life companionship. I see where this train of thought is heading -- my cultural background is pretty clear on what should be done when solitary pursuits aren't enough -- and I refuse to follow it there. But it scares me.
Anyway. I've gotta get moving; I'm going back to the family home for the next couple of days, for the start of Sukkos. I'm just hoping we'll be able to avoid the subject of Israel; my father and I have extremely different views on the peace process, and I haven't really been keeping up with the news, it being too painful to do so lately. Maybe we'll manage to have an amicable disagreement on national politics instead. That could work. Chag Someach!
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