Obsessive compulsive?

[Turpintine45]

Hmmm baby will be here ( grand baby) by then. Will be in Chicago in August. Maybe.

[bluefish]

Sandy

you live in a fabulous part of this great country......those photos are beautiful.......since I live @ the beach, just 3000 miles east of you, I see that same sky in the morning, and the colors at times are exactly like your sunset........since my Island is only two blocks wide, I see the same sunset in the evening over the bay......nature sure is beautiful.......and I'm so happy Judy is bringing her famous 'apple pie' to the party......

'blue

[SandyB]

Jann, keeping your little furry inside is so smart! Both my babies were inside-onlies for just that reason. The only way they ever went outside was under strict supervision.

I am happy to donate my image for a painting . Besides, I think Derek might need something to work on while he's cleaning his studio . Yes, yes, Derek, I know I should be cleaning the entire West Coast but I think I feel the need to head to the Oregon Coast. Ahhhhhh.

[SandyB]

sorry for the double posting but I missed the last page with Jen and Blue's comment and, besides, I'm heading to the coast so I'll be gone for a bit

Sooooo, congrats!!! Jen
and yay Blue!! how nice that we share that

I'm off to find foam on the Oregon beach.
Happy Dusting.

[Dcam]

I am at the easel at the moment putting on the mask, arranging the sticks............wait, maybe I should tidy up a little first????

Derek

[Turpintine45]

Get on with it and just paint!!!!
Have fun.

[Dcam]

Jen: you sound like my old teachers.

[Turpintine45]

Takes one to know one!

[Deborah Secor]

Man, I wish I had this problem. I've just never had to deal with the desire to clean to avoid painting--quite the reverse. Derek, do I understand your problem correctly? Really? Nope, I have to FORCE myself to keep the house running instead of painting. It's been this way all along. Case in point: when our son was in kindergarten (he's a daddy now) they asked him to fill in the blank. "When we play our family ______." He wrote "works"! They called us in for a little conference... I had to explain that one man's work is another man's fun. (Glad they didn't arrange for a little home visit, though.)

[Jason1616]

Originally Posted by Deborah Secor

Man, I wish I had this problem. I've just never had to deal with the desire to clean to avoid painting--quite the reverse. Derek, do I understand your problem correctly? Really? Nope, I have to FORCE myself to keep the house running instead of painting. It's been this way all along. Case in point: when our son was in kindergarten (he's a daddy now) they asked him to fill in the blank. "When we play our family ______." He wrote "works"! They called us in for a little conference... I had to explain that one man's work is another man's fun. (Glad they didn't arrange for a little home visit, though.)

How true! I tend to swing back and forth between these states. I'll get into a project/painting and be so involved with it that everything else disappears...dishes pile up in the sink, dust collects, I even get annoyed if I have to stop and pee!
Then all of the sudden it'll reach a tipping point and I'll get obsessive about the cleaning. I look like the Tasmanian Devil whirling through the house trying to get everything cleaned up! Finally the painting is finished, and then comes some more organizing to avoid starting the next one. Then I start the next one, and the dishes pile up...

Jason

[bluefish]

Jason

as soon as Sandy gets back from Oregan, she'll be over to clean the place up......just have some Merlot and limburger set out for her......

[robertsloan2]

I am so lucky. I not only got home care, but I think I've got the top skilled super genius of home care people in Joy, the lovely small Chinese woman who comes over on Saturdays.

Today, she flew through my room like a small anticyclone, cleaning everything and helping me organize. I have floor space. Everything is spotless. Everything is organized. I know where it all is and I can get at it easily. I love this feeling. Every Saturday night, the whole week is full of potential because I don't have to hunt for stuff.

I don't know how I'd feel about it if I'd never been disabled. But there have been so many times I painted instead of cleaning up because I had the energy to sit up and paint, but not to get up and sort things out. I've been ruthlessly organized for decades because I knew if I didn't get it organized, I'd never get it clean, period. I'd lose expensive supplies to their being destroyed by the mess. I lost some great art to that in the past or to floods because I hadn't been able to get it organized into waterproof containers before flood season when I lived in flood prone areas.

I think that if I won the Lottery and got expensive surgery to completely rework my skeleton, they found a real cure for the fibromyalgia, cured everything - that I'd still be a little bit of a neat freak.

But there's another side to "cleaning up instead of painting." I found it at a writing workshop in the 1980s with David Gerrold. He recommended that writers who were blocked and couldn't motivate themselves to work on their stories should stop and clean the house. Wash dishes, vacuum, scrub floors, organize stuff, just do mindless cleaning.

The idea behind this is that housecleaning is physical and simple. It's not emotionally demanding and doesn't take concentration - so while you're doing these things, your mind wanders and you get ideas. It's easy to get into a creative state of mind while doing something brainless and easy. The other boost that cleaning up gives is a tangible reward for your effort. If your results in creative work are frustrating you because you expect better of yourself (very common because everyone's vision is greater than their reach), setting out to clean up gives an immediate reward.

Your studio's clean. Your supplies are easy to find. For me with pastels, it results in this rainbow inspirational sight of the vast gorgeous array of them. The colors themselves are inspiring once they're in color and value order. Someday I might actually use a full pastel box as some or all of a still life arrangement because I could live with that hanging on my walls. I'd probably sell a zillion posters if I did a good job on that painting. It's the one thing guaranteed to make me feel like painting with pastels, seeing the colors.

So I don't think procrastinating by cleaning up is procrastination. I think it's a way to fight procrastination. Real procrastination is goofing around in email for hours or watching television or getting lost in video games. Cleaning the studio is moving in the direction of painting and meditating on what to paint.

[woodbeck3]

Hey Derek, if you charge for all these cleaning visits just think of the Blick order you could make. You could spend HOURS going through their site making decisions! Oh wait... The Dakota site!!! Man you'd have all kinds of new things to organize, clean and ruminate over....
I don't have a problem starting any painting... finishing it is another matter .

Jeff

[bluefish]

sorry Jeff, Derek can't spend time on those web sites, he has cleaning to get done......man, don't spoil a good thing.......