In the past, I’ve mentioned how I’ve been so busy I can barely breathe, much less plan. My life recently changed. I’m now in a new job with traditional hours. The effect on me was immediate.
Now every week I have two days off in a row – Saturday AND Sunday. It feels like a vacation every week.
It took a while before I stopped manically checking my phone for work messages that needed to be answered right away. On day three I started to ask my new manager for the codes so I could retrieve my emails remotely. That’s when I realized I didn’t have any urgent messages: Everything can wait until the next business day. My shoulders dropped just thinking about that.
The best part of my new job is that I can plan again since I have weekends off and I know what time I’m going to be getting off work each day.
[Author’s Note: That is a big fat lie – the best part of my new job is I’m learning wonderful new skills … and they pay me to fill out forms! That is a Tammy dream job.]
I’m trying to pace myself and not over-extend my newly-found free time. I’m so glad I wrote out that list of things I would do in my spare time.
I have already done one of the items: Dr. Sketchy’s anti-art class. I attended this last past Saturday. While it was fun, I was out of my element. My art background consisted of one quarter at a university extension class nearly a decade ago. I liked learning to truly see what was in front of me. As I was sitting in front of my first ever live model, I realized why that beginning art class didn’t have us drawing people: It’s hard!
In my one class, I was used to having an hour or so for an in-class project and spending hour upon hour for my homework. The longest we had for any drawing at Dr. Sketchy’s was 15 minutes. I didn’t end up completing a single drawing, and for most of the poses I didn’t get a single line on the page.
Here is the single page with my first four drawings, each of which was one minute long:
To give you a feel for what I was seeing, here is a shot of one of the one minute poses in a later set when the model had switched out of her mermaid costume.
Yes, at first I was incredibly frustrated. Then I got into the spirit and enjoyed where I was and that I was doing something that I had wanted to do for ages. That is when I started taking pictures of the model so I could try a sketch when I had all the time in the world. I will go again, after I get my skills up some.
Speaking of which, the set decoration gave me an idea of what would help me get to where I would feel comfortable going back:
It’s on my birthday list for DH2U.
What was the last item you were able to check off your “I’d really like to do that” list? or What skill would you like to build upon?
Grown Up, Now What? 
I’ve always wanted to learn French. I studied it in high school and a bit in college but that was many lost brain cells ago. With retirement and more opportunity to travel just around the corner, I think now is the time to get serious!
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How wonderful that you are going to learn French – and even better that you have such good reasons to! Enjoy the fun of the language where you only selective pronounce the letters. I’ve had three different rounds of learning French – high school, college, and post grad school – each time I was more dedicated than the last even though I really remembered little from my previous attempts.
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I was going to say ballet – but now that I see Mo’s comment – I want to learn a foreign language too – French or Spanish would be fine. It would help so much with the overseas travel. I love that you are trying art after so long away from it and you bring up an important point – to just get in the flow and have fun. I have an author friend who reminds me of that with my writing – in fact I just scheduled a post about it.
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I took my first ballet class as an adult. That was an adventure! I’m so glad I did it. It tested my brain much more than my body. French classes were mind bending as well.
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