Conquering the Hummingbird Syndrome

I’ve given up being frustrated about not doing any artwork and have given in to the notion of just concentrating on catching up with five, ten or more years of a backlog of record keeping and unfinished projects. Along with reorganizing my art files, I’ve sorted through over ten years of time cards and thrown away a good portion of them. After spending days looking for lost art sales records and reconstructing sales records that were lost when my hard drive died three years ago, I’ve sorted through piles of insurance policies and yearly updates to keep only the most current.

And, the list goes on.

We’re also getting our finances in order for my husband’s impending retirement, and the main burden of that falls on my shoulders. In this economy and financial market, worry about whether or not we will have to live like paupers in retirement has been upper most on my mind for the past several years. Thankfully, we’ve found a new financial advisor who is steering us in the right direction now and helping us to make the difficult decisions. Things are beginning to look up.

I can’t help but comment on the emotional toll my mother’s lingering decline had on me over the past three to four years. Being so far away was frustrating and guilt inducing since I didn’t visit her as often as I THOUGHT I should and wasn’t able to be there on a daily or weekly basis to make sure she had adequate care. Fortunately, she was in a very good facility, but like all of them, they were understaffed. Now that she’s gone, I feel great sadness at her loss but also great relief that I can now get on with my life without holding my breath for the next crisis phone call.

This morning as I was doing my usual Monday morning ritual of filling in the planner schedule for the day and my task list for the week, I decided to try something different. There are so many things to be done around here that I tend to flit from one to another from day to day as each calls out to me. An acquaintance of mine calls this the Hummingbird Syndrome, a common malady for women.

So, this morning I made out a rough schedule for each day of the week and pencilled in to do some art on Tuesday and Saturday. My hope is that by scheduling certain tasks on certain days, I’ll avoid flitting from one thing to another like a hummingbird, never making much progress with anything. And, I’ll finally get back to some artwork!

Last week I hung this painting on the wall in my daughter’s room. I painted it for my mother a few years ago. It was done from a sixty year old black and white photograph of me when I was five and a flower girl in my uncle’s wedding. The medium is oil and the size is 18x14 inches. I’m quite proud of this painting since it was a departure from my usual equine subjects and because I managed to design the background from very little reference materials. It is not for sale.

Well, by tomorrow night or Wednesday I promise to show you what I’ve accomplished in the studio even if it’s just a drawing update. It’s very exciting to feel that I’ve finally made enough progress with everything else that I can set aside some time for art, however small.

Talk to you soon!

PS. I would love to have more followers to my blog. It really helps to know that people actually read this blog and enjoy seeing my art. You can sign up in the column to the right.