Its that time of Year: But now there will be More

Evidently, my desire to post on my blog has slowed to once a year.  My last post was of my daughter Grace running last years half-marathon.  This post is of my daughter running this years half marathon.  I have been creative, but not painting.   I sorted through the reasons I have not had enough determination to paint.  There are really several key reasons.  1.  Painting just for the sake of creating is not enough reason to make me want to put something on paper or canvas.  When I paint, I want it to be for a specific purpose.  I have so many paintings and drawings hanging around that I'm running out of room to keep them.  The painting a day was very useful in getting me back into painting.  Now I need to paint something that I will either hang for myself, give as a gift, or sell.
2. Creating a painting will now take more time than I am willing to set aside.  My insane work schedule has left me with no sleep schedule.  So there is no specific time available to set aside for painting like there used to be.  Ideally, if I were to have a 6AM start time, that would leave me with a perfect opportunity.  Not going to happen at my current job.
3.  I have found an outlet for my creativity that has temporarily replace painting.  I was given a Go Pro for Christmas.  Since then I have spent a portion of free time filming different things around town.  Then editing and putting music to them.  It's incredible that only a few years ago you needed tapes and clunky editing software to create movies.  Now even at a novice like myself can shoot and edit a decent movie or Time Lapse segment for nominal investment.

Skip this section if you don't care to hear about stupid Golf:

A fourth reason and probably the biggest reason I have not dedicated myself to becoming the artist I could be is....Golf.  I spend a decent amount of time on the course and I'm not willing to give up on a game that entices you to get better, even though you'll never reach a level of satisfaction that will allow you to relax and enjoy it like you really should.  The Paradox of Golf.  The better you get, the more you expect, the less satisfaction you derive from the result....

  Actually that's not entirely true.  I found that I hated the game more last year when my handicap went UP slightly.  In the 10 plus years I have been playing golf, I have gotten better every year.  My handicap has gone down every year except last.  (from 7.3 to 7.8).  As a result I re-dedicated myself to getting better this year.  For the first time in my life, I took a series of lessons from my golf pro Ray.  Before that it was only an occasional quick fix lesson.  No quick fixes in golf. My scores have reflected improvement lately, and my expectations are starting to be met, which means I am happier now than I have been in a year.  So in reality, you can only truly enjoy the game when you are at a certain level of ability. If you miss a putt or make a bad decision, you don't feel as bad because you know that you made a mistake.  When you are bad, the mistakes can snowball on you like an avalanche. Birdies can fix things, pars and bogeys cannot.  The difference between fixing a leaking boat and bailing water with a teacup as it sinks.

  On to the final blog entry....

So, having said all of this, I am in the process of shrinking my Go Pro films to a file size that will be viewable on this blog.  I attempted to post several here, but the file size was too big.  Now that I've jumped back onto the Blog Boat, I will post these more often.  The drawback to this is that the fille size ends up being too small to view them in HD.... Maybe an occasional painting will pop up but I can't promise anything.

The best way is to view my videos on You Tube .