A Brief Interlude (#8)

Tomorrow is a new day.

One day at a time.

It is what it is.

~ My closing mantra for my evening journal entries

Here are three works by a female painter, Artemisia Gentileschi. The first is her interpretation of a famous story, Judith's Beheading of Holofernes. I like her version a lot: it is powerful, passionate, and piercingly beautiful. The other two paintings below it are self portraits. Although I prefer the first one to the second, I find them both stunning. 

None of these paintings have anything to do with what I wrote today. They were included on a whim. At least, that was my initial thought. Perhaps on further review, I might find a connection...

Facing Challenges and Embracing Setbacks

On Thursday, I skipped my weekly checkup. For the past five days, I have not drawn a single picture. Today, I finally exercised—something I have not done since Wednesday morning. And two days have passed since I have made an entry in my journal.

Yes, I keep a journal, which I write in twice a day: morning and night. And, yes, it has a password, and for good reason (I would not want to embarrass anyone).

What could possibly interfere with some of my well-established habits? I was too busy binge watching two seasons of a Netflix original series.

But when it came to my Monday blog posts, I felt a strong need to publish something. Even a short explanation. Well, that and I just finished the series. Like ten minutes ago.

Habits are built on doing the little things repeatedly: meeting blog deadlines, finishing regular drawing exercises, maintaining a workout schedule, and wrapping up daily journal entries. Until this past week, I have been doing a good job. My blog posts have arrived on time since March. For thirty straight days, I have uploaded a sketch to Instagram, having skipped just two days. In two years, I have only missed two straight days of no physical activity a total of twenty times. Finally, since April, I have filled my journal daily, overlooking either a morning or evening entry (never both), at most, a dozen times.

But habits take hold when they have been challenged. And this period of binge watching is my test for what I have been working on so diligently. 

How have I risen to the occasion? I decided to start with a drawing. I kept the task simple: a shoe that I had drawn before, but from a different angle. I would only worry about the outline. It is complete, and I will be uploading it to Instagram within an hour. Next, I have settled on this blog post: writing is so important to me, it should take priority. But it is more involved, so I did not want to tackle it first—failing at it in the beginning would have had a domino effect. It is almost finished. Of course, whether it is good enough, or not at all, has yet to be determined. I usually read it over after a good night sleep, before publishing it in the morning. That is when I will have a better idea of its quality. But, in the end, I accomplished the goal. As for exercising, that will have to wait until the morning, after blogging, and a few daily chores. It is too late to strain myself. In addition, I do not think the ice cream, chicken nuggets, and cheese puffs are sitting well with me right now. However, I am not worried: I designed specific workouts for these moments. They are moderately intense, but easy to accomplish. Finally, I have my journal open. As soon as this blog draft is done, I am going to summarize the events and dreams of the past few days.*

Since I am running out of time—a full night sleep is essential to building habits, and staying mentally and physically fit—I am going to conclude this assignment now. Changes, even positive ones, will not hold unless they are challenged. It is in the act of overcoming an obstacle that the brain grasps the importance of a particular habit. Four days of binge watching has interrupted my regularly scheduled blogging, art, fitness, and writing tasks. So, how I react over the next few weeks will reveal the strengths of these habits.

And, at the moment, I am confident that I will bounce right back.

* Yeah, I put that one off until the morning. But I did do it in the end. So it is all good.