Grounding

Last night I prepped Velma's lovely papers for today's drawings. I tested both sides, the uncoated and the acrylic painted backgrounds. I also painted the page backgrounds for a book I'll hopefully get done this week. Scaling down took out a lot of the stress, and yesterday I thought about how so many people all the time see my work in person and say, "I thought it was bigger." Scaling up is ALWAYS the feedback art students get from their professors. Sure, in some instances, but right now I'm in a big scaling down mode because that's all I can manage.

On Thursday I was in a bad mood and intended to sit down in a chair at my table, and tried to flip my seat cushion up against the back of the chair to sit on the wooden seat. In the process, I pushed the entire chair back and then sat/fell down hard, on the floor. I was stunned, amazed that I had managed to pull out my chair from underneath myself, and indignant. Immediately I called Velma to whine about my butt's landing and she reminded me about teaching kids during her special ed days. When they acted out, they went low to the floor and even took off their shoes. Her friend, a therapist who works with traumatized children, said this is a wholly natural response because the kids were trying to get grounded. I guess I needed that, too. That day it was falling on my ass, today it was drawing, and both are effective.