It's that time of day when I've completed all phonecalls, balanced all emails, jogged around my town, changed out of sweaty clothes and into work rags. I've also eaten my early lunch or late breakfast, often to satisfy hunger but also to stave it off for the next few hours. It's a summer day and the sun has already been so strong in the texas sky for hours, yet it's my dawn. What I do now feels like a procrastination before i head out to the stuffy, wooden barn-studio for the afternoon. Because it's been a long weekend with the kids I might tidy up some sneaky skittles wrappers or relocate several pairs of shoes.
Painting is not work, not in the sense that it depletes me, but I like to treat it like work, hang my hat on it, cook on it. As a youngster I held numerous jobs that required a repetitive physical exertion. In fact, the earliest job I took that did not require my brawn was as a clerk, and those hours I spent standing, in idle daydreams, felt criminal by comparison. I was filling space, and I found such amusement in how comfortable it was to be left alone, in peace, for wages.
I've not much complicated my definition of work over these years. I still value contemplative work, both physical/manual as well thought/craft. Productivity, and the time and space it fills, feels similarly criminal, like a reward unto itself. Make something.
The next hours are my time for concentration. It's my time to give up worry and knowledge. My kids are taken care of (I just received a text of them eating lunch with extra ketchup), so my world is as stable as I can make it. I'm off.
