Yesterday I was listening to an interview with Caroline Myss on YouTube, and when I listen to webinars/interviews/some such thing, I need something mindless to occupy me to keep my body from fidgeting. I’ve been knitting a lot while listening, but the shawl I’m knitting right now demands too much as I haven’t landed the pattern yet. And so I’ve been playing patience, which is fun but frustratingly unproductive and usually shows how much pain I’m in, more than anything else. Grabbing a deck of cards is a good way to distract myself from pain, as I don’t need to think. So I decided to grab my mini bloc of sketching paper. I used to draw constantly, but after my MS forced me from art/design school I found it very hard to pick up a pencil again. Or a brush or chalk or whatever. On one hand, my creativity is inextricably linked to who I am, and as far as I am able to discern I have more than one archetype linked to creativity. On the other hand, pursuing creativity as a career produced so much stress that I became horrendously ill, and I exited my dream education by way of a 2 1/2 week stay in hospital. Somehow that experience made a link in my subconscious between being creative and becoming seriously sick. Fast forward 21 years, I am now a mum with two kids that are growing up beautifully, and I have done a lot of inner work to clear all these crap links. Because, far from becoming ill by being creative, the opposite is true. If I don’t create, I become ill. And I yearn to get back to drawing and to develop as an artist. With parenting being less time consuming – babies and toddlers eat you whole, teens not so much – I think it’s time to seriously pursue my creativity again. Which brings me back to the beginning of this post, listening to Caroline Myss. Instead of grabbing the deck of cards I grabbed my miniature Grand Bloc. 10×10 cm. Perfect size for non-threatening sketching.

She was talking about grace, and the need to embody this, so I drew the word and added some hears and naïve flowers.

Then the theme became destiny, and I drew that word.

And that was it. Yesterday, that is. This morning I sat down and decided I needed to find more words to draw, so I drew “vennlig” which is Norwegian for friendly.

No more words yet, because I realised I needed to challenge myself. I need to draw at least one word daily, but preferably more. Will five be to many? Maybe I should settle for three? And maybe I should also grab a pen and ink the outlines before colouring. Who knows. Anyway, the thing is, that being as rusty as I am I have to make sure I allow myself time to build up my stamina. So maybe only one to three drawings a day. Quick pencil sketch only. So, as we’re on the last day of May, let this be my goal for June. Daily doodles of a word or phrase. And posting to instagram @windingsorensen daily, with weekly updates here. That should be doable, though my belly tells me it’s not so sure. Fingers crossed! Wish me luck, and if you have a word or (short) phrase you’d like me to work with, feel free to add it to the comments.