Welcome to Morning Ink, where I share my daily fountain pen drawing and whatever thoughts (sometimes none, mostly reasonably short, occasionally long and very rambling) jump out and onto the screen. If you don’t want daily emails you can toggle them off by going to Manage subscription. 1
A week until our eldest hatchling flees the nest. A week and a half until I spread my wings for the first time in quite a while. A week and a day until I see my sister (yes, I ran out of bird-related metaphors). Less than a week until I am done with work for just under two weeks (not the three I thought it would be). Less than a week until we have family visiting.
I keep introspecting (agonising, even) about whether the planning and organisation of my work is ‘right’. I have spent at least a full day on planning out amd them changing, and changing again, the order of tasks to try to make them fully optimal. Optimally productive. Optimally lucrative. Optimally balanced for mental health.
It’s a bit like my putting off writing for years because I could not find the exact same paper and the exact same pen and the exact same ink that I used when I wrote the most. Not the best. The most. Putting off writing until I could buy the exact right device that would make me the most prolific writer. Not the best. The most prolific.
It is always about quantity over quality. Except… fighting against the search for proliferation, is the need for absolute perfection. The resistance to allowing any piece of work to be ‘good enough’.
Which is why mornings drawing and listening to books or plays and evenings drawing and soaking myself episode on episode of a TV show quiet my head. The work part of the drawing belongs in the daytime – whether that’s collating it into sell sheets, turning sketch ideas into actual ideas, or ideating sketches for specific purposes.
The perfectionism and optimisation agony is switched off during the early morning and evening drawing and culture consumption sessions. And I am so grateful to be able to have that. So very grateful.
Thanks so much for being here. Your presence on its own is a joy, but I love to hear from you, too, so please do feel free to leave a comment. About something that has resonated for you in today’s picture or in today’s words. Or about something completely unrelated. Tell me about your morning, your creative practice, your particular work or life juggling act. Anything. If you want to go even further you can take out a paid subscription – if you’re happy to give me your postal address I’ll send you some art of some kind in the post.
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