Yesterday -- I did nothing

     At least nothing productive.  And almost nothing at all.  I just bummed around online and read a lot of really bad fanfiction.

     At least, that's what it would have looked like to any observer, and indeed, how I would describe it if anyone asked.

     What I really did was process information.  From art education studies, I know that sometimes students will just stare into space or look like they're just goofing off when they are supposed to be working on a project.  And I know that this is part of the artistic process, sometimes a student gets stuck on a project and  just needs to let go of the problem consciously and let the rest of the brain sort out some things so he or she can get back to work and solve the problem.  However, for students this isn't an all day thing (if it is there may be something else going on - like truly goofing off).  Students generally only have one or two projects going on at once and so the down time is shorter.

    Right now, I have about 20 artistic problems to solve and I haven't been allowing myself any down time.  I guess I've thought that since I'm not a student anymore, I didn't need that time.  This was foolish of me.  Just because I'm not in a classroom doesn't mean that I'm suddenly not a student of art.  It doesn't mean that I don't go through the same processes of creation.  I've felt guilty about sitting and staring into space and not getting as much done as I feel I should have. 

   Until yesterday, that is.  Because I finally accepted that I have a backlog of information that my brain needs to sort out.  I'm not the kind of artist that just creates one thing.  I'm not a just a painter, a potter, a sculptor, or a jewelry maker.  I do a little bit of everything.  And right now I have commissions in every one of those areas and I work as a makeup artist.  My poor little gray cells couldn't keep up.

   So instead of taking just an hour or so to process, I needed all day due to the backlog.  And I let myself have the whole day.  It felt really great.  I slept well and soundly and woke up refreshed.  I think that today, finally, I can get a lot of work done again.  I'm excited about getting work done again. 

   Doing nothing yesterday means that I can do more today, without all the stops and pauses and getting angry and glaring at my materials.  This is good.  Maybe I need to let myself do nothing a little more often, maybe if I do this more often, it won't take a whole day to get sorted out.  I need to remember that what applies to an art student still applies to me, and try not to be so hard on myself.