This morning I’m enjoying some time spent on me doing my own thing. It feels good. It’s a slow morning over leisurely lattes and personal projects. I don’t feel ‘elated’ or ‘joyous’… but I feel satisfied with the day so far, and calm. I feel serene and comfortable. I feel relaxed. It’s nice to feel this combination of feelings, and I think I am inclined to call it ‘happy’… or at least ‘contented’.

There’s no room to paint right now, as much as I need to;  the one decent spot for doing that currently lacks a convenient water supply for urgent clean ups, and is also quite surrounded by stacks of existing paintings waiting to be hung in their new locations; a fragile state of being for some of my heavier 3D mixed-media pieces.  So. No painting just yet. I’m excited to begin work today, though, because I will still be surrounded by art, color, texture, emotion… and I think it will satisfy my needs for a time. I will use checking each piece for damage, and whether it is labeled, photographed for my archive, and correctly filed and cross-referenced, and uploaded, as an opportunity to also really enjoy and contemplate them; remember what inspired them, how I felt when they were completed, what they mean to me now… I can definitely make a day of it, just looking around I see at least 100 canvases, and a stack of work on paper more than a foot tall! I know some of them are not on my web page, I suspect some of them are not even in my photo archives, or on my Facebook fan page. I like to think I’m very organized, in general, but I gotta admit I can be pretty half-assed about maintaining it long term.

I’m learning things about me. Yesterday was good. Intense. Productive. I felt challenged to take my best a bit further than I knew I could go, grow, be a little more vulnerable, face myself a lot more honestly, a little more fearlessly. Self-acceptance doesn’t sound difficult… I find it harder than I want to, harder than seems ‘fair’… especially difficult is how readily I think I have accepted myself –  only to find that I’ve tricked myself into averting my eyes again rather than understanding who I am and treating myself with compassion.  So, today a project to satisfy my need to express myself artistically, and create some quiet headspace to contemplate things I’m learning about having a brain injury, and building good relationships, and taking care of me. I expect by day’s end I’ll still be quite human…perhaps a bit kinder to myself.