Not Available at the Pharmacy

I've just discovered a new drug. It's called "painting," and it is incredibly addictive. Over the past three days, I have generated four finished pieces of, er, "work." It is an addiction at which I am incredibly bad and untalented, but it is a very effective drug.

Getting started is always the hard part. And the main reason for that is that I first have to do something that I am very bad at doing: making a decision. If I let myself, I can sit there three hours just trying to figure out where to start. But I have always found that the answer is "It does not matter where you start. Just start."

Once I convince myself that that piece of device is a valid one, the rest is history. Everything begins to flow smoothly. I just do this, then that, then another this and another that. It's all so simple. Before I know it, I have completed another painting.

The finished painting is usually is no better than the previous one. But that doesn't matter. When I embarked on the painting cruise, I quickly realized that my objective is not to get any better technically. My objective is to get a very nagging image out of my head. This is the way it works: Some crazy image forms in my head and then drifts around for days, weeks, months, years, an entire lifetime, demanding that I do something with it. So that's what I did. I captured it on canvas.

The result is almost magical: Once deposited on canvas, the image disappears from my head, and it does so forever. It never nags me again. I feel like a meaningless burden has been lifted from my shoulders. I sleep much better.