It’s admirable to try to be your very best at certain things, but it is wise to allow yourself to experience things without the need for achievement as well.
Today was a very busy day for me, and included a long drive to stock up on goat munchies. (I needed to get Chaff-haye, a bagged fermented alfalfa feed, and the nearest dealer is a couple of hours away.) Add in a few other errands and by the time I sat down to color I was really tired.
But it was a really nice day for a drive, and tonight my coloring felt especially relaxed and mindful. I had to be careful though because if I didn’t color slow, I’d slop outside of the lines. And if I really relaxed and colored super slowly, the ink had time to flow into the paper and ooze outside of the lines.
There is a joy in just letting the coloring unfold, being patient with any mistakes and not being concerned about how your picture is developing. Sometimes you really need quiet, simplicity, prettiness and a complete absence of goals.
I think that the stick of incense that I’m burning as I type this has a similar view on achievement. It keeps going out instead of burning evenly. And that’s OK. There’s no need to have everything be perfect.
I know that some people will find this blog post as they search for ways to improve their coloring or to achieve with their coloring. I find that I have a tendency to search the internet for information on how to do things when I am doing something new or unfamiliar. And most of the time I just end up finding stuff that isn’t all that helpful and that doesn’t address my particular questions about coloring with pencils or markers, or about where to place my fingers on a piano keyboard, or about which type of goat munchies are going to be the ones that my goats like best. It’s natural to want to know how to do things better. Still, some days, for some things, good enough is good enough.
Achievement would be trying to finish this coloring when I’m tired – and it would be at the expense of enjoying the company of the people who may someday read this. Much better to relight the incense (yes, again!), sip tea, enjoy my coloring progress so far and feel good about sharing it with others even if there are a few microscopic oopses and it’s not finished.
(Today’s partially colored picture is from Balance For Crayons And Wide Tipped Markers, colored with Copic markers. I have the finished coloring and shade list for you tomorrow.)