have a plan for my forties

Boredom. Travel. Moving around, wanting success, going round and round.

I feel I am clearer now.

It seems to me that it is really up to me how imaginatively I wish to live.

I went through a doubtful phase. I think I stopped appreciating things as much as I ought to have, and allowed my self to hide behind routines.

A lot of this s connected with art, and a good deal is connected with sex.

I`m getting my thoughts in some sort of order, with help from this therapist. Her thoughts are often banal, but at least she listens, and asks questions, which is more than can be said for my friends!

Ironical that you have to pay someone to listen to you these days! I don`t think I`m that boring.

I feel despondent about this. I don`t know quite where I`m going, or for what.

I do need a grand plan, it almost doesn`t matter what.

There was a plan to build a house and this would have satisfied this, but that fell by the wayside for reasons of cost.

The painting project, which involves (somwhat unsystematicilly) documenting the suburb in which I live, is perhaps the nearest I have to a grand plan, my only potential source of srtistic redemption.

I feel less depressed about this. I think it`s really all to do with the coming show, and getting th pictures back from the framers- they look good, or at least, the overwhelming majority do- and I think the show wioll be successful.

I`ve also realised and accepted that I just don`t like people, in a gneric sense, enough to teach more than I am and I uite like my, somewhat hermetic existence.

I`m also happy about habving the new canvassses as a project for the next half year.

I`m pleased- I`ve been pruning my 43 things of the silly or unlikely goals.

I`ve been using the site for a good year, and it strikes me that if I haven`t made any efort with certain goals they just shouldn`t be there. They`re a vanity and a distraction

I think I can re-focus on painting as a main means of attaining something.

I can see that I`ll have to develop a different relationship with it than I had before. I think thats for me the next show will define that new realtionship, in tat all the pictures are from the last year , in Brazil.

Looking over that work I think I can say that the new attitude is basically concerned with painting pictures within short periods of time, usually a day or two day`s work.

It`s also exclusively landscape, or architecture. I tried working on some still lives, but I feel the moment for that has passed.

Similarly, I can`t seem myself doing any more portrait work. I just dont enjoy it enugh, the close relationship with the sitter just isn`t that comfortable for me.

It`s very nice to be entering one`s forties with a clear sense of ones weakeness and strengths, and of what you enjoy or don`t, having tested yourself.

“Don`t sweat the small stuff”....but what if there is just small stuff? An endless round of petty events.

I just reached a point and then thought, ok, well what happens next?

A few thingsoccur to me.

1. “Don`t sweat the small stuff”.

I spent too much time in my 30s worrying about trivia, or things I couldn`t influence anyway. I`m just not going to do this anymore.

2. God does not exist. Meaning in life comes from human relationships. I wasted a lot of time on the idea that God might exist.

3. Some people- a small minority – are bullies. You have to be prepared to hurt them.

4. Don`t make yourself into you own enemy. Accept you limitations. I used to punish myself a lot, for things which were inconsequential. And the self-punichment had not positive effects.