She Took to Her Bed

Bed_7260, originally uploaded by carolsLittleWorld.

I’m having one of those days, you know the ones. It’s one of those days where you just do not feel like doing anything, where you just can’t seem to get it in gear, where even coffee of the highest caffeinated value does absolutely nothing for you. No, today I’m absolutely convinced that, should Brad Pitt happen to appear magically in my bedroom complete with a cattle prod, a bucket of paint, and the finest camera rig known to mankind, I would just simply roll over or, at the very least, sit up only long enough to complain about how I really do not want to get out of my sweats. Even though I’m not all that much of a Brad Pitt fan, I’d have to say, man, it’s just one of those days.

I tend to call these my “She Took to Her Bed” days. They are days you just don’t feel like doing a thing. Days when even a small pile of laundry is a mountain of too much. Days when not only do you not feel like cooking, but the mere act of finding the take out menu, picking up the phone, and calling for delivery is too much of a bother. Yeah, it’s been one of those days.

Somehow, I think we are all entitled to these kinds of days, at least every once in a while. I mean, sure you can’t have too many but, one every now and again? Come on, can that really kill me? I start to rationalize these sorts of days like this, and this process of rationalization maybe makes me feel better about it, maybe just a little bit or maybe just for a while, but it’s hard too being a working artist and not feeling guilty over wasting an entire day like this. Paint never dries and new ideas never sleep. We need to be in the studio to, well, to be in the studio. Not in our sweats. Not watching old John Wayne movies, not eating Bonbons waxing reminiscent about how things used to be or how they might have been or how you wish they were or, well, whatever. No, they don’t call this art *work* for nothing-frankly, you need to work at it to make it, well, work. And, that’s just what I should be doing, really. Working.

I had all kinds of big plans for today, really I did. This morning, I had this notion, this foolish notion, that I was going to spend all day today in the studio, painting some, making some new work, yes, but also cleaning up, “painting ’round the edges” of some of my existing work. I have a lot of existing work, you see, and frankly it’s cluttering up my house. I can’t really box it up, stack it, and be done with it, no, in part because I have not done all of that little “cleaning up ’round the edges” that needs to be done. I have a lot of paintings that are just sitting out, sitting around, waiting for me to frame them, really I do. So much so, that this is almost killing me. It’s making me not want to paint anymore, but to really just watch this work, that work all just sort of stack up until I collapse underneath it all. And that, snowflakes, that is not a good thing, really it isn’t. (I get visions in my head of me crushed beneath mountains of undone laundry and barely not-finished artwork, really I do.)

So, tomorrow? I have high hopes for tomorrow, yes I do. I’m hoping that, maybe after a good night’s sleep I’ll wake up early, have a nice meal, get all out in the studio, maybe even finish off some of the crap work that I need to do (stuff like framing and painting the edges of my work, plus maybe take some pictures of it too, so that I can share it with you.) Yes, maybe I’ll do that, all that, and more because, well, frankly, I can’t just keep taking to my bed. Can I? (Never mind, please don’t answer that.) I mean, at some point, probably sometime soon even, why even I am going to run out of Bonbons. And, when that happens? Oh man, you are *so* going to be reading crap on Twitter again about me not going to the grocery store for XXX number of days. And that? Yeah, that really will kill me. (I don’t want to eat dead/frozen raspberries for dinner again. Really I don’t. Somebody, please, convince me that I don’t. Do I?)

She Took to Her Bed. So lacking in character development, predictable plot, but, heck, at least it’s a short-lived epic that the critics can really get behind. Well, except for the John Wayne’s not really in it bits. And the frozen raspberries of a sequel. Bonbon, anyone?

Until next time…