Day 16,528 Gratitude

Today I am so grateful ...

For all that the starting and keeping of a sketchbook journal is teaching me. The photo above is of yesterday's page. I had a grand ol' time experimenting with adding Cadmium Yellow (Pale Hue, if you're curious) with the other colors in my watercolor palette. Snakes have been on my mind lately, in a good way, so I decided to add a striped, slithery friend to the page. After I finished, I discovered that the ink from the stripes leaked through to previous pages and I got all oh-crap about it. But then I got oh-well. Is it possible that I may (finally) be relaxing into the uncertainly of art and the sweet surprises borne of things not going as planned?

For my daily "today I will" lists. This is one of the few habits that I am consistent about on a daily basis. It's not a to do list. Those feel icky and burdensome. My "today I will" list serves as a container for the things that I am willing to do on this one day. I keep it relatively reasonable with the focus on having a great day rather than crossing everything off. Love and flexibility steer my ship. But I've been stretching, stretching, stretching to get more consistent with activities of the Magic Beans persuasion, just to get some momentum going at the start of this blessed new year. Guess what? It's working. I'm crossing things off AND having great days. But in saying that I know conditions are favorable for me to do something to sabotage my progress. For now, so far so good. I'll keep making a new list each morning and see how it goes.

For the wise words in Jen Gray's post, The Thing About Creativity, from almost one year ago. I have a folder called Good Mojo and that's where I keep pep talks like this for those days when I have creative self-doubt, feel lost and/or need a reminder that it's not just me. Another good one, also almost one year old, is Jen Lemen's post, What 100 Paintings Will Teach You. Maybe they'll help you, too.

Tell me, please, what you're grateful for today?