Spatter

I mentioned the other day that I paint, and that I'm having a piece published in the upcoming edition of Mavguard Magazine... and some of you asked why I'd never mentioned it before.

Well. This is a writing blog, you know.

But then, it's also about me... and I paint... so I suppose we can talk about it.

In reality, it's more that I used to paint. I haven't had the time to sit down and do it in a while, but I have more paintings in storage than I really know what to do with. In fact, I used to paint almost every day, and it was my number one stress reliever.

"Why give it up?" I hear you ask.

Honestly, I didn't want to. But I moved for college, and we all know what trials college brings along with it. I no longer had the time for it, and I had to find new ways to bring my stress levels down.

That's actually part of where writing came in.

Now, before you all go crazy thinking I'm this amazing realist painter, I should say that I'm an abstract painter. It was always more about the spray and slop of the paint than it was about making it look like something real.

And that was the point.

Sometimes, we need that abstract image to get us outside our worlds, to help us see things in a new light. Occasionally, we need to step beyond the world we know and picture things as blocks of meaningless colors.

For me, it was a wonderful and beautiful way to clear my mind -- and I highly recommend that you find something that does it for you as well.

Maybe it isn't painting. Maybe it's poetry or video games. But find something that helps you to relieve that stress, and use it. Find a way to bring your stress levels down, because if you don't, it only becomes harder to function. Especially when you're in college. Which I'm not anymore, but I was very recently, so I really do understand. 

[love]

{RD}

p.s. Someday, I would greatly enjoy writing a novel with paintings to go along with it.