Two hours or ten minutes?

I've been setting my alarm for 5 am every morning for the last for weeks in order to get in some painting before starting the morning (the goal). No kidding. Hey, I know of another artist who gets up this early regualrly to paint, can’t I? Apparently not.

Funny thing is for the last two weeks every morning the alarm goes off and I bury down deeper in the blankets and procrastinate and then finally get up to leave about ten minutes maybe half hour if - I’m lucky - for painting. Every day those weeks I didn’t get up and then all day long I basically mentally beat myself with a stick. Why couldn't I get up earlier? Why was I wasting those precious morning hours sleeping?

In an effort to motivate myself, I even wrote a list of reasons why I could get up do this.

• Nobody would bother me this early
• Two hours of uninterrupted painting time!!!
• For the great habit I would form
  
  (I lost the rest of the list)

When that didn’t work I decide to allocate the first bit of the studio solely for doing fun explorative pieces on canvas pad – not touching the larger Pure Abstraction body of work which is my goal for this year.

This was a fun idea but it didn’t get me up at 5 am and yesterday I ended up playing all morning and not getting to any of my “serious” pieces. Hmmmm...

Maybe I need to call Nancy and ask how she does it!!!

Oh dear.

This morning the alarm didn't go off. I heard our neighbor’s car as he left for work and it seemed to be getting light out. Usually it’s dark when the alarm goes off. So I got out of bed, curious to see what time it was. 6:30 am!! But instead of the usual panic I tidied some things around the house, made my daughter’s lunch and then headed to the studio for the 10 minutes before seven when I wake her up and start the process of getting her ready for school.

And, honestly, it was the best 10 minutes ever!

Maybe ten minutes is enough. Less is more. I keep saying that to my friend Meg who is craving to get back into her creativity…”Just a few minutes in the morning is enough.” Yet here I was being a hypocrite and aiming high for two hours!!!

Cheers to ten minutes of painting time in the morning!