Several of us paint. You know what’s hard about painting and DID? Some of us know how to use the programs and others of us don’t. If I start a digital painting one day I need to finish it that day because there’s no guarantee when I’ll be back out. The painting could be left unfinished for who knows how long. The other thing is, even if someone else wanted to finish the painting they may not know how to use the programs or know where I was going with a particular piece. Each of us that paints digitally will attempt to finish the painting in a day (one sitting) because we don’t know when we’ll be back around to finish it. We paint almost with a sense of urgency, or as if it’s the last painting we’ll ever do. The many, many styles through out my art blog show just how many of us paint on a regular basis. One might paint today, someone else might want to paint something the next day, on and on. The characters are different, the colours different, etc. The thing that stays the same is the urgency with which it is painted.
I don’t know how many times I’ve opened up a program and looked at it like I’d never seen it before when I know very well I have. I can’t figure out how to use the program in the most simple ways so I just close it and wait for someone else to try and pick up where someone else left off. We try not to walk away from sketches or digital work for this very reason, it may not get finished then we see it and feel as if we don’t finish what we started.
Don’t get me wrong, I love to paint but sometimes when I’m very dissociative I paint as if it’s the last thing I’ll ever get to do. I don’t know if I’ll be back in a few hours or a few weeks. I never know so I do what I can with the time I have forward. Imagine that, you could disappear at a moment’s notice and you don’t know when you’re coming back. Fortunetly for Joan and others that are out a lot they’ll be back around rather quickly but as for me, my time is limited. I don’t appreciate disappearing.
A. August
Thank you for this post, it gave me new insight into my own harried activities.
I know exactly what you mean about trying to do something and not knowing how, even though you know you’ve done it before. I experience this often with my sewing, knitting, etc. I didn’t make the connection before, but it must be as you described it: not all my parts know how to knit or sew.
Also, I don’t know how long it will be before “I” disappear again, and so I work frantically, not even able to enjoy the creative process in my need to hurry.
….it feels like death and resurrection over and over again. Here today for who knows how long, gone for who knows how long, back, gone, back, gone…..
aaah, i’ve noticed that with the piano recently…. and i wonder if that’s why i’ve learned to knit so many times, but i can’t remember how to do it and so have to re-learn it again and again?….. (but then, crocheting we always know how to do…but we learned to do that as a child… maybe it is a more ‘global’ skill???) confusing…. and all the many projects we’ve started on… and now are just sitting there, unfinished, with no interest to work on them….