Painting is not my work; my work is to get quiet and listen, and then sometimes I paint. Or maybe I clean up a mess, or take a nap, or write. But these other things, I know now, are usually making room for painting. And so sometimes I try to skip those first steps: skip the getting centered and the listening. And sometimes, instead, I go straight to the painting part, thinking I can figure it out myself without all the work of connecting to that quiet voice. But it never works; it never works. It just messes things up.

When I get stressed out I tend to feel short on time and that all these things need to happen NOW. And so when it goes south - when a painting goes south, say - my instinct is to push through: DO more. I panic. I think ‘this must happen’ and I keep going and then it gets worse. 

The answer is the opposite: get more quiet. Take more time to meditate and find the quiet space where the directives come. And then I’m in the zone, and I lose track of time, and all the things come that I can get so worked up striving for. 

When you know, you know. So when you don’t know, DON’T DO IT - you’re probably settling. I tell myself this a lot. And I don’t always listen, although, thankfully, I think I’m getting better. It takes a lot more energy to fix things than it does to take the time and wait for them to be right in the first place. But wow, that waiting (and the work it takes to get there) can be excruciating. But it’s always, always worth it.