unfinished paintings

Recently, it seems like my infrequent pop-ins have coincided with a later hour. I feel like I'm a little 'un sneaking cookies, except now that I'm all grown up I make and eat entire batches of cookies all by myself and so I've had to replace my deviousness with late night blogging. It's still somewhat delicious to be up late (later than I intended or should be awake), listening to the hum of the refrigerator with only a few lights on and my projects sprawled across the living room floor while I'm stretched on the couch.

Have I mentioned that I'm in an oil painting class this semester? Well, I am. These are two of the paintings that I've been working on. I had a brilliant idea to photograph my progress since I feel like from the first to the last brush stroke there is a big evolution and sometimes I love things about my paintings before they're anywhere near completed. (Side note: The paintings are still not finished but look very different from these pictures and I have yet to take any more pictures of them.) It's fun to celebrate success; even when that success is still in progress.

My profound advice for the day: Go do something naughty. It's tasty.

Tuesday Tips--On Succeeding

Do what works for you. Don't set yourself up for failure. Put yourself in a position that will give you the results you want. For example, I like to run and exercise in a general way. I do not like being smothered, even at 6am, by humid air. So if I plan to run and then don't get ready until 8am (hah 10am) I'm not likely to actually get much good out of any workout that I do, if I do even end up running. So we got a gym pass last week and I'm currently loving air conditioning, treadmills and knowing how far and hard I'm really running.

Another example: I sometimes have a really hard time waking up in the mornings. I have my routine down to the nanosecond so that I can just get up and race, tornado-like, around my house and get out the door just in the "Nick" of time. Lately I've wanted to photograph the early morning light, but  when the alarm clock chirped I usually hit snooze because the cost outweighed the benefits. And yet those pictures are of the sunrise, not sunset. I've been awake for three sunrises in the last two weeks by being awake on the "wrong" side of morning rather than getting up early. Do what works for you.