Pain, Loathing, Painting

This will probably be the MOST self-indulgent entry in this very self-indulgent journal.

I have spent four hours in bed so far today, and it looks like I'll spend another four and then it's bedtime! I went to painting studio today which means standing on a concrete floor for hours. I don't notice anything until after lunchtime, usually. I did get thoroughly annoyed by the woman who thought that coming out onto the outer patio studio area to talk loudly on her cell phone was completley ok. I think next time I take a call, I will go into her classroom and stand next to her desk. Otherwise, it was quiet and studious out there. (Same woman came out to glue some shit to her canvas, humming all the while. I plugged in my iPod and tuned her out.)

Anyway, today, right on schedule after lunch, I thought, "Gee, I should sit down." So I went to the computer for about 30 minutes of Photoshop work in a crappy chair.

When I went back to the studio, a few more painters had arrived and the radio was loudly blasting classical music - the drippy noodly kind, and yes, blasting, as in too loud to tune out but not loud enough to appreciate.

I decided to pack it in, and felt rather bitchy about it. As I was leaving, I stopped to hear the instructor talk about someone's painting. It was really discouraging because she is a non-representational painter like me, and everything he was praising her for is stuff that I do. Do I ever hear the praise? No, he keeps telling me that I need to paint 100 paintings before I can really "define" my style. He also says shit like, "maybe you could hang this asymmetrically."

I am not wrong. This is the fourth time or so that I've gotten "damned with faint praise." My painting doesn't interest him at all, and so I get canned, inconsequential comments. I have tried to take his critique and commentary and implement it, but it's just all covered in wrong sauce.

The environment there is COMPLETELY not conducive to creativity. I left. I may not return. Not to be all flouncy, but I just can't afford to spend my time with diminishing returns.

It had rained heavily all morning, but was clearing up once I got to the car. By the time I was turning onto the street, I was in full-blown morose mood. I came home, dove into bed and napped for about an hour. The body pain hit during the nap.

While I managed to get dinner for the kid, I'm back in bed and thinking about pain relief. And chocolate.

Air pressure, humidity, cold, overexertion, disappointment, the big steak I ate last night... all possible factors, but I just don't know which one. And maybe it was nothing. This is the joy of post-polio. It's a hardware problem some days, and some days, it's a software issue. Ask any computer tech – that's the short road to madness.