I need to try sketching again. My son and I got into it last summer, using just the basic pen and ink and paper. He kept going and is still enjoying it. I didn't. Fear of failure? A general lack of ambition? I don’t know. Not that I haven’t been busy, as there is no shortage of sparkly things to grasp at. Still, it feels lately that I’ve been wasting my days doing fun but less challenging things - like playing games or watching videos or reading fantasy books or surfing the interwebs. Yes, I am retired and I can do anything I want, so maybe it really isn’t wasting, but still . . .
This didn’t use to be me. I think it may be from the lack of routine and control that this whole COVID thing gave us, with a lowering of expectations to just staying healthy, along with a need to self-isolate. We/I don’t have enough balance in life now. There’s a need for more than just a long faded list of things to do, but for more structure and planning, so that things actually get done, with a feeling of having accomplished something. For many people, their employers are forcing this, with a return from the flex hours work-from-home environment to some flavour of being at your desk 9-5 Monday to Friday, so “they” know you are working. Not especially productive, but it is easy to implement. For many kids, it’s a return to the physical classroom - a good thing I think.
For a vocal few, already angry about their lives, the past few years have not been more freedom to do what they want, but less. Particularly when they are not free to choose whether or not to get a vaccine shot, or whether or not they need to wear a mask. I see that as them wanting the freedom to infect others with a communicable disease, but that’s just my perspective from my pro-science bias. Their demands have been for fewer rules and controls, for freedom from all mandates, at least for them, for a return to a life when men were men and women were not, when might meant right.
But I digress. For most of us, we will need to adjust to the new normal - possibly arriving this spring. I'm ready for a change, but not sure where one starts. Maybe writing more? I'll add it to my to-do list.
Too much freedom
Sketching sounds like fun.