My journey into painting - Part 5

My journey into painting - Part 5

It took quite a while until I started to feel convenient at painting severals hours each day. At the very beginning I could paint 2 to 3 hours max. The limit was not my enthusiasm but simply my muscles. It showed that going to the gym lifting heavy dumbells is not the same as holding a brush for a couple of hours. My overall fitness was rather good. In early 2012 I finished my first halfmarathon in 1:50:53h and I had additionally been to the gym twice a week to work on by upper body. During my life crisis I did sports like a mad man. It was like preparing for a war. I was afraid, not knowing what will come. Instead of opening myself up, facing the problem and looking for help, I tried to become a warrior. A good example for the state of my psyche is my first half marathon attempt in 2011. I set the goal to finish within 2 hours. At kilometer 17 I figured that i would not make it below 2 hours but probably around 2:02h. In my deep self-disappointment I dropped out of the race immediately. And that of course made me feel even more like a failure. But instead of learning how to treat myself more wisely my goal for my 2012 half marathon was: „below 1:50h“. So guess how I felt after my first finish in 2012? You got it! 😄

Something must have changed within me. Otherwise I would have hardly finished more than a hand full of paintings since then. Possibly it‘s got to do with the magic of being creative in some way. Maybe being outside the hamster wheel of being employed or maybe I needed that look into profound abyss. It must be a combination of things that brought me to the attitude of accepting that today I will probably fail again but looking forward to it. Just for the curiousity of how exactly?! Not sure how this attitude suits other professions - certainly not for pilots - for painting though it works quite well. It took a month or two until my slow-switching type 1 muscle fibers were fit enough to paint 4 hours each day... a reasonable dose of daily study that can be kept over longer periods.