When I signed in to write up the new post and looked at the previous post date – wow! I guess I was quite immersed in this painting. Of course I was also on an emotional roller coaster (as is always!) but that’s not relevant here, is it?

Remember I wrote something about wanting to scrap it? I resisted the urge and just let it sit for a few days. Then last Tuesday, I listened to a short audio of Brian Tracy’s The Miracle of Self Discipline, in which he speaks about his book. I paid attention to what he said about self-control and tried it. This helped to bring the painting to its final stages. Frankly, I am amazed at the speed of the progress considering that I exercised just a little self-control. Like: I have a habit of watching random YouTube videos on my phone before I go to sleep. Suddenly it’s 4:00 AM, I go to sleep dry-eyed and wake up feeling groggy, foggy and dense. So, I cut down to one video, switched off the Wi-Fi in my phone and slept while listening to sleep hypnosis for depression or music or sitcoms stored in the phone. I didn’t feel fresh and dewy in the mornings but just the fact that I didn’t give into the urge to watch videos into the early hours of the morning gave me a boost. And for depression-sufferers, feeling good is a rare gem isn’t it?

Some other things I did was:

1) Limiting my ‘profound thinking’ to the toilet. That was inspired by a retort by Martin Crane from ‘Frasier’: “Ah, use the can like the rest of us!”

2) Cutting 10 minutes from my usual lunch and dinner time.

3) Mindfulness (which is, by the way, very helpful for distraction from rumination)

I have been slipping in the last couple days but that’s expected. You can’t expect to gain self-control in a week! I feel I should keep trying because being able to discipline myself is giving me a sense of achievement which in turn is making me optimistic. Also the thought of how much I could have done in the last 3 years with an ounce of self-control is dizzying. I could have avoided a lot of frustration!

So here are the WIPs:

The trunk of the tree was made bigger and then I felt it was over powering the rest of the elements. So I changed it back (it’s times like these you wish there was a Ctrl+Z for painting):

The sky color must have been changed at least 6 times. Sigh….when there is no prior planning….

Finally, I settled on this size of the tree trunk and I worked some more on the birds. I am doing a little more planning before I proceed any further. Hope you enjoyed my post today. Take care!