The Devil makes work for idle hands… or so I’ve always been told… but the thing is… my hands are seldom idle…
One of the my biggest frustrations at being self-employed is how often my time gets tied into other people’s ideas of time…
I’m probably my own worse enemy here as I have had it pointed out to me that what I call later, other people call now… But I like to be on the ball and get things done… I’ve got 4 kids… there’s too much scope for random interruptions to leave things until the 11th hour…
So currently I’m waiting for replies for quotes, parcels and for glitches to be worked out on a new project I’m involved with… And it drives me nuts!! If patience is a virtue, then I’m afraid that is another one that I lack…
Then there are other things in the pipeline that are being organised and I know that I just have to turn up at said time and date and do my stuff… But that’s the joy of working repeatedly with people who know how to get things done!
And really, I should be able to just relax… I have things under control… I’ve done enough gigs to be able to walk straight out the door without a care as my bag is always packed and ready to go…
But I have a busy mind… So how do I stop the whir…
I looked to the Motherpeace… Calm your mind with repetitive manual tasks…
What is it about using your hands to do the same things over and over again, that is so soothing?
Certainly, this is no new news to me… I’ve spent many a dark hour polishing something to sparkling perfection… There’s no obvious practical use for this… and yet somehow it works…
So… I decided to set about the mundane task of filing my tax return… and although not the most exciting of times, it’s completion did bring me pleasure in knowing that come January I can sit back and relax as it’s already been taken care of! And in the aftermath of that, I got sorted a whole bunch of other boring tasks that usually get shoved to the back burner in favour of more enticing options…
Then I finally sat down to complete something that I promised myself I would do a few years ago…
I got out my BOTA… and began to colour…
Like I say… I started it a few years ago and it soon bored me as it comes with a strict colour key to be adhered to… and generally… I’m not that structured when it comes to other people’s rules…
But… it’d started to gnaw in the back of my brain… and with the thoughts of new things on the horizon, this felt to be one of several things that needed putting to bed…
So… the colours came out… and now it is done!
So… God alone knows how many hours of colouring in… And yet I choose to photograph in black and white! 😀
Yeah… A couple of reasons for that…
Those colours are now burnt into the back of my brain and even looking at black and white… I still see them in colour…
Also… part of the process was to visualise the cards in colour before you started to fill them in… To imagine them from the description… so I don’t want to give you any spoilers…
It was an interesting exercise… following strict rules freed my mind up for other things… by eliminating the need to chose colours, I was free to ponder the connections between cards and how and why colours showed up where they did… I linked together cards I wouldn’t normally instantly associate with each other… Getting rid of choices helped me to see better what was already there in patterns and symbols… and oh so many other things… most of which I’ve forgotten for now… But I’m sure they’ll resurface like remembered dreams at some point…
But mostly… it’s a bloody grand feeling to complete something that I’d committed myself to doing…
Oh… and now my hands ache much too much to get up to the Devil’s work 😀
The pure and blessed way 