Art is fun and all, but spending two hours every evening painting takes quite a lot out of me. Not to mention it tends to make me go to bed late. The painting is coming along, but I also feel a little as though I am loosing enthusiasm for it. I guess being forced to work on it almost makes me not enjoy it as much. As a result I really hope the picture comes out well.

Personally I am counting the days until I go on leave. It would be my first leave in ages, definitely the first time this year. My only concern is, will I be able to get everything I want to get done in that time. The big events are going to gold reef city, and taking my car in for a service. However a mere week is such a short time. Most of all, I hope that I can get enough rest. Lately I feel as though I have been pushing too hard. I need plenty of rest to return to my more normal self.

I am so looking forward to that.

The problem is, my paintings have gotten a lot larger lately. I guess in a way its a new style for me, but the curretn painting I am working on, I really felt it needed a large canvas to give it the right feeling. Honestly, if it gets famed, I wonder if it will fit in my car.

On the other hand I was also thinking about my art school in general. I have been with them for 8 years now. given that I only go once a week, I would say I have made huge progress since when I started. Now days it is not so much an art class for me, as it is an opportunity for me to paint. They don’t so much teach me as give me some advice, every now and again. It makes it very peaceful to a degree. I really used to hate it when they helped me. I always felt it was making the painting less mine.

For some strange reason that is important to me. I guess in a way each painting is a little piece of myself. Although I dont think its something someone can see in the painting. It is more just the effort and time I put into it. All the time spent staring at the source and still missing some little details. knowing each and every little flaw in the paintin. I guess they leave a bit of a mark on me.

One last bit of news, I recieved my painting back from the eistedford. I still only got an A, I will have to try harder to get that coverted A+.

While driving to work, I saw a dog get hit by a car. It was such a horrific thing to witness. It all happened so fast, and there was no chance of even thinking about avoiding the poor animal. However it didn’t happen fast enough that I couldn’t see it happening. What also horrified me was how close it was to being me who hit the dog. If I was one lane over over would have been me.

I can clearly remember it sprinting into the road and the white car in the oncoming lane hitting it just as I went past. I  remember seeing in my rear view mirror the body rolling out behind from under the car. I remember the noise it made as they hit. I even remember seeing the number plate of the car spinning off to the side.

I also remember biting into my own hand. It was a mixture of shock and sadness. I felt like I wanted to cry, but my emotions felt too mixed up. I basically drove the rest of the way to work biting into my hand. I don’t know why I was doing that, but I was. I guess it was the shock.

Every time I just drive past the corpse of an animal on the side of the road, I feel a twinge of sadness. I feel sadness for the animal that has died. I feel sadness knowing that there is a family somewhere, probably looking for a lost pet, and they may not even know its dead. Its just so sad, but seeing it happen. I don’t even know how to really describe how it affects me.

I never want to see soemthing like that again.

Anyway, I gave my little girls bones this morning. I was just ever so significantly disturbed by the bone crunching noise they made as they ate them. I have a serious problem with animals that cant break bones in thier mouths, and yet we believe they are our pets. They have gently nibbled on my hands and fingers a number of times, and never broken my bones, yet they can crunch much larger bones with ease. It just makes me that litte bit more aware of how they let themselves be our pets.

The other thought I had was that those scientists (you know the ones, those ones that do those wierd studies) should do a test on slightly OCD people in the work place. I often find that if I cant park my car in exectly the same place every day, I am grumpy and disturbed for the whole day. I am sure that if companies made an effort to help slightly OCD people to have an extremely solid routene, it would boost thier productivity. Alternatively, how much productivity is lost as a result of slightly OCD people being upset about soemthing that is missaligned?

That’s pretty much it. This is the start of a terefying look into my twisted little consciousness.