Paint Dry / Grass Grow

The other night I spent a good amount of time watching paint dry.  And it was pretty exciting.

The problem arose when the paint actually became dry.  The colors dulled and the texture flattened right out.  All those wavy brush strokes that once suggested the swirling storms of a gas giant planet just disappeared.  There was no more contrast; the surface of the planet was barely distinguishable from the surface of the record.

This is my new painting project.  I have a stack of yard sale records, they are round, and I generally think any round thing can become a planet.  Painting planets on round objects is a great project because there is really no skill required, you just glob some paint on and swirl it around in whatever direction you like, and usually it comes out looking planet-y.  In real life, new planets are being discovered in our galaxy all the time.  All of them are round.  And they are all different colors.  Why not paint them?

Maybe someday I'll graduate to using real paints, paints that come in tubes and have names and you have to use special brushes.  If I get good enough maybe I'll paint on canvas.  But what do I need canvas for if I've got records, or brie containers, or jar tops, or just about anything that is a circle?  For now, I'll stick to these various round household objects, and I'll stick to painting them with dollar store poster paints, even if the brush strokes don't exactly hold up.  With a little patience--priming the surface of the record with a bright color, allowing the layers to dry before globbing on more paint--these materials make perfectly acceptable planets.

Incidentally, the poster paint planets project has given me another idea for some wall art: swirl paint globs, photograph up close, print quite large.  This will require a trip to the dollar store, favorable lighting conditions (which the very first examples did not have, as it was night), and wall space to hang the finished art.  I don't have wall space.  Maybe I need to become a real artist?  Maybe I need to get a time machine and/or millions of dollars so that I can go to art school?  (If I got a time machine, would I use it to go back a few years and go to art school instead, or would I sell it to pay for art school now?  If I had millions of dollars, would I spend the money on a time machine?  And when am I going to get a degree in physics?)

I can't start the paint/photography project just yet, not only because of lack of wall space, but because I need to practice the art of finishing art projects.  Nothing will get started until my planet records are on the wall.  Because if I have too many projects going at once, none of them will get done.  This is an oft repeated mistake.  It becomes a toenail-painting situation: too many things to do, so I do none of them.

I liken this to my current seedling situation:

Clearly there are too many beet seedlings here.  How could any of these actually turn into beets if they have no room?  But I love all of them, even the stunted little ones that don't even have their real leaves yet.  I love these beets and I wish I could keep all of them!  And anyway it's not my fault they are so numerous and crowded; they germinated at about 120%, and I don't know how that happened.  How are there more plants than seeds?



Now, if I don't thin the beets, I will have no beets.  Not that I'll have many beets anyway, probably about enough for one jar of pickled beets or one meal featuring a beet side.  Still, that is way better than no beets, which is what happened to my cucumbers last year because I couldn't make myself pluck any of these gorgeous seedlings:

They were just too beautiful.  They were so sturdy even at such a young age, so eager to grow to their fullest potential and create sheer bushels of cucumbers.  Do cucumbers come in bushels?  As the plants grew up and out, little tendrils reached out for the bars of the fire escape, and I helped them climb, and I even tied them gently with cloth.  Then they started to blossom, and some of the blossoms had tiny baby cucumbers!  Alas, there was not enough soil and not enough water to feed all of the tiny babies, and they withered in the unending July heat.  Finally, when the plants had tried and failed to make bushels of tiny cucumbers, and their leaves were just dying of thirst, I cut down half of the plants in the pot.  But it was too late.  There were no cucumbers last year.

Just so, I can't seem to thin out my ideas, that is, to put most of them aside for now so that I can focus my time and energy on just one.  Maybe two.  I used to love the list, and now I resent it.  It's holding me back.  It's overwhelming me with all of its items.

Over the next few weeks, as I settle into a routine with my two new jobs and find out if I will ever have a day off again, I will need to make decisions: which things to pluck and which things to let flourish.  It shouldn't be too difficult.  I'll just choose the easy things....

Just Like Starting Over

Okay, it's time.

Starting over is something I do probably a few times a year. It usually involves making lists of things to do differently, things like, I'm going to floss my teeth and I'm going to those stretches for my hips and, like, some push-ups too. I'll add to the list: “work on story about Rose,” “interview Sage's roommate,” “get rechargeable batteries for audio recorder,” “type up blog post about list.”

The list is empowering. To write down all these things that I am going to do in the near future, and the things that I need to do in order to get the other things done—read Tom Sawyer as character research, join Burlington Writer's Workshop—and then to transfer the list into the dated pages of my weekly planner, it is energizing. Or maybe that is the caffeine consumed while making the list. In any case, the list is amazing. To have things to do! It feels great.  It's just, I have to not give up on the list.

Now, if things had turned out differently, I might be hiking the White Mountains as we speak. There, the list would consist of “wake up,” “put on backpack,” and “walk all day.” For a time this summer, that worked. I met some great people and enjoyed some excellent homemade dehydrated meals. But somehow, a few weeks ago, I found myself alone on a train hurtling up the Hudson River, and my arms were tan and I had blisters on my feet and my hair was tangled up just the way I like it, and I was on that train because I just couldn't walk another step. And I regretted that very much.

My grandmother, who, at this point in her life, doesn't know how to not hurt people with her oh-so-carefully chosen words, said, “You didn't think it through, did you? You didn't know how hard it would be.”

As politely as I could, I told her she was wrong. I thought about it a lot, I said. I knew exactly how hard it would be, and I went anyway, I told her. Then I went upstairs and slept for a very long time.

I came home after a mere 300 miles, and ever since then I have been unable to shake this terrible feeling of failure, this feeling like I never finish anything, like I always quit when things get too difficult. It doesn't matter that everyone I know says, “Wow, 300 miles, that's not nothing.” The point is that 300 is not 1200, and that I set out to do something and I didn't finish it. I'm a quitter. This really puts a damper on the whole summer.

So, while I've been home for several weeks and I've done a few things, some of which even count as being productive, I haven't written anything for this blog. Do Things and Stuff Every Day nearly got shoved in the corner like all of the other projects I've started and never finished. It wasn't going in the right direction anyway, the writing was not of top quality, it was just a bunch of cookie recipes and that was never supposed to be the point. I was going to give up, like I always do, on this little website that nobody reads.

But I've decided instead to start over. I've got heaps of things to write about, I've got tons of projects, so many projects that sometimes I just stand in the middle of the room thinking about my projects, unable to decide which project to work on, and then I paint my toenails. And I think, man, I just painted my toenails instead of doing something productive? But it's okay, because I'm wearing sandals a lot these days so this is something that needed to be done.

I'm feeling better, after weeks of not feeling so, not only because I've moved into my new apartment—some of the best features include bamboo floors, a balcony, and not being my parents' house—but because I have so many things on my list. Some days I have to ride my bike all over town to get everything done: library to print this form, back home because I forgot my bike lock, hardware store for cup hooks, Recycle North for frames and fabric. And of course, one of the most important things to do when unpacking in a new apartment is arranging your art on the walls. Yesterday I put up my planets on the wall above my desk:

And I realized that I needed one more planet for it to look complete. So I painted one:

Success! And I have some much bigger projects coming up, including a custom-built loft bed, a kitchen island or prep table or bar, and a new paint job on my road bike. In the meantime, I'll be painting more planets on other round items, rearranging the kitchen over and over again, planting some fall crops on my south-facing balcony, and going to interviews for jobs I don't actually want to do. (How am I going to get everything on my list done if I have to work five days a week?) I'll still make cookies occasionally, but I think that the cookies of a few months ago were merely excuses for not working on the things I really wanted to be doing—i.e. the more difficult, more rewarding things. I'm starting over on these items; I'm making them less difficult. The list helps. New things are added and old things get crossed off all the time. Yes, this is the way it's supposed to be. This is Productive Amy. I am doing things. And stuff. Every day!