Testing One Two....Two.....Two.....

So day two.....hmmm.....Could be worse.....for a start I could be the the kind of person who says, could be worse. A short rant about women and then onto something else.... What is it with women (i know that's a bit Seinfeld) .... but really? Some of the cleverest people i know are women....and quite often some of  the stupidest....and sometimes they are the same person. I know the same applies to many of the men I know, but since most of them ain't trying to either sleep with me or divorce me, it has less effect on me. Selfish of me I know, or at least that's what I am told....I surrounded by women who want something from me, I know this because they constantly lie to me about not wanting anything from me, and then getting pissed that they don't get anything from me.....I have actually become very good at spotting lies and deception....I was always really good at it but never used it in relationships....Silly me....My ex is a very crap liar....but that was ok because I trusted her....She probably thinks our marriage ended because she stopped lying....I suspect it would have ended 2 years after we met, if she hadn't lied....or she could have been honest and the relationship might still be going, at least it would have had a chance....

Soooooooooooo....... I need to get to work now. If I get something pretty done I may feel better....

Day One......

Right.....Let's get this party started.....Though I am not keen to admit it, been reading a lot of hippy-dippy stuff lately, and although the amount of grains of salt I have been forced to take some of the ideas with has probably done bad things for my blood pressure....I am embracing the positive....I know what colour my cheese is and so on. So I will see the 'Life Coach', read the 'Way of the peaceful whatever' and do all the silly stuff it takes to get my head back in the game. No regrets, no apologies (other than a small one for quoting a bonjovi song).....So it is Art, Books and Success.....

More time working, less time bitching I think....I will probably be a web-log-a-holic for a while to keep myself on track......One update a day is completely inadequate till i can limit myself to one mood swing a day.

Midday......Side tracked slightly by sorting of CD collection.....but any progress is, well progress....Managed to find notes, story board sketches, and other bits and pieces for book....Having them in one place will make stuff a bit easier...Still have to get all the bits I have written on two different computers and ipad into one file....Going to see if I can do at least one hour a night on book....must admit that when the person who was doing the art for the book moved away it was a bit of a handbrake....Hopefully she will be back in a couple of months at the most...and I can get going with the book and other projects at full tilt....I have offered to share a house with her....with any other woman on the planet that might sound like a bad idea....but this is the one person I know who is more like me than anyone I ever dated or married....and oddly that makes us completely romantically incompatible...I like her to much, to be anything but friends with her....and I get the sense that she feels the same way.....the kids like her and she is an amazing artist....so I hope she gets her arse into gear and gets down here...She deserves to be more successful than she is...so she can help me with the art stuff and hopefully I can get her some of the recognition she could have, if she had the marketing ability of less talented, but more profitable artists.

Twilight......Hmmm Trying really hard to maintain the happy.....got a start on a new picture....Surly selfish people aside I am doing ok....

The 'Shop'......

So this is how I spent my Sunday, and quiet a few previous ones. Hopefully not that many more. Little bit over the grubby fingered children and haggling and the getting up at five in the morning.

I am giving myself two months to shift the rest of the gear....after that I will just drop the price to a point where it will get snapped up by the dealers.

This will leave me with an empty studio and a trailer all set up and ready to go for a business I want to start....but more of that later.

Time to get the kids to bed.....finish the watercolour I am working on....and watch 'So I married an axe murderer' on TV....My favourite Mike Meyers movie....Beat Poetry and an abusive Scottish Father....What's not to like.....

Was that a flatulent bird?....

Up at sparrows fart....waiting in line at the markets. Got here at six, gates open at seven.....not sure there is any great advantage in arriving early. Gives me a Chance to see the other market regulars in all there glory and helps me know that I really don't want to be doing this forever.
I am here for the money.....totally broke.....I guess that describes most jobs....but I don't want to be here or broke. Need to make $300 today to cover my share of the rent....I don't even want to think about the electricity bill..

So not quite there..... only came home with $200.....and a coffee machine....not to bad.... I like Coffee, and have been known to spend a lot of time at coffee shops, so a coffee machine will actually save me money....and that how things work on Shayn's 'Justify That!' game show.....

The Almost Day One Blog......

OK lets call it T-2 days till Day One......Never good to shake stuff up on a weekend. Spent half the day in bed, and feel all the better for it....Markets in the morning, a nap and then the kids are back.....So let's call Monday a good day to get the party started.

More news at 11.......and I may even try a bit of mobile blogging from the office (well the tent)....

Karma.....that'd be right....

Starting to feel like I did something terrible in a former life.....hope I bloody enjoyed it!!!....Looks like I may have to move from my big arse mansion on the mountain......well that blows....My nice landlady and her shifty husband have got themselves into some kind of financial bover gov'ner....and although they say I am welcome to stay as long as I like, I am getting that feeling in the pit of my waters or something....

So I can just sit here and hope.....not my style.....or start preparing for the worst.....Bingo!!

They say optimists are miserable sods because they are constantly disappointed.....and at least a pessimist is occasionally happily surprised when something goes right.....People think I am a pessimist....I am not. I prefer to think of myself as a realist....Hope for good....prepare for the bad....and be surprised by neither.

So although it is a bit of a roadblock to artistic endeavors in the short term, it may be just what I need....So the most important bit of a pre-move strategy is to thin out the amount of stuff I need to move....So off to the markets goes this little pig....Jiggety Freaking Jig.... Time to liquidate the stockpile of collectible crap I have been toting around the country for way to long.... I really want rid of it, what was a security blanket has become an anchor. I don't want to be a bloody Del Boy wanna be anymore. So out goes the junk.

A good friend gave me an idea....a bloody good idea! Involving teaching art to kids....So I need to chase that with everything I have....While preparing to uproot the kids and myself to a new house.... What the hell ....Lets JUMP!!!!!

Stranger in a Land II....

Not so much strange as uncomfortable.....a night at the ex's with the kids while she goes out.....not ideal but better than them not seeing her at all.....

Just found out that in addition to asking out all my friends and ex's my scumbag cousin is now trying to get a date with my current friend.....wow this guy is a piece of work....He is really ruining my faith in Karma...

On the art side, the new water colour pencils are great.....a wonderful step between fine line work and painting....a step I needed I think. I have always found brushwork to imprecise for the pictures I enjoy....but the use of water colour pencils is far more precise...and allows me to build up colour in layers, the same way I use the ink for fine detail....

When  I get back tomorrow I will post the results.

The Other Other Shoe......And some Water Colour Pencils

So a lovely day shopping, a big pile of water colour pencils, great lunch with a friend and......then of course the spanner....Get a ex-txt asking me to make the appointment for my sons haircut because as the manager of a large government department she is afraid of phones....and then one of those dreaded ambushes by the head of school to have a little chat about my son's behaviour....stomach sinking....it was the one thing i was happy with....So 3 hours of talking to him and trying to work through things, think i started to get to the bottom of it....Part frustration and Part anxiety and part attention seeking.....Guess I should have expected some fallout from the separation with the kids.....I don't think it's a coincidence that his major outbursts today where after he found out his mother wasn't coming to see him last night....My damn fault for telling the kids....Phoned her to talk about it, but just felt like i was interrupting her new shiny life....I get that she wanted to leave me....I didn't think that meant not having to think about kids....really mad right now. I know her mother was a cold hard selfish.....well you get the idea....but you would think that would make someone more aware of the fact that ignoring your own children....even when you are in the same room as them, fucks people up....So she gets her life, hanging out with someone who did something unspeakable to me, and god knows what else...and I get financially screwed and made to feel guilty if I ask for help.....that seems about right.....maybe I should just take the kids and move somewhere a long way away....

Oh but the pencils are nice....

The other shoe.....

The increasing realisation that I am in this alone now has arrived.....To tell the truth the separation had very little impact on the kids....and seemingly little on my ex. That probably speaks volumes I guess....I had hoped that maybe this would allow us both to focus on the kids a bit more and get my own life back in focus. To a small degree that was happening, and I accept progress is slow.....and many years of being there for everyone else is a hard habit to break....probably just having a crappy day. Just feeling a bit like I once again got the shitty end of the stick....I do the hard bit with the kids, school, nightmares and keeping them confident and as stress free as I can, I was really hoping that being the fun weekend parent would be a roll she could embrace, enjoy the kids for the brief time she has them and not see them as an inconvenience to her alone time, they still look to me to explain the way she acts, I explain a lot of it by saying her job is very hard....I am sure it will improve as she finds her own way...Just not getting my hopes up that it will happen quickly....and not letting it get me down to much

On the bright side I am finding it a lot easier to make the house function, amazing how much better it feels just to get stuff done instead of dwelling on the fact that you want someone else to help.....when there is no one else there you just do it.....much easier and less soul destroying....

Couple on new commissions for pictures over the past few weeks....a few more chapters of book....and a dozen other projects on the go. Kind of amazed at how things are moving along in that department. No one to share it with, but that isn't so bad.....

I have decided to shift the collectibles stuff a bit cheaper and quicker....starting to feel it is a distraction to what i really want to achieve....the money will be very tight for a while, but i have cut back just about everything to the wire....at least I don't answer to anyone else for it....and that's a good feeling.

Just a few things I needed to get of my chest....don't want to bottle things up, it stops me getting things done...

Whoops bottle all filled again!!!! I get the impression that my ex is so desperate for friends that she will overlook just about anything....Maybe I should take that as a sign to just let it go....She once said she had changed as much as she could, and resented that she changed at all.... Maybe she did, I didn't see it....It probably wouldn't have mattered anyway. I need a break I think, starting to let things get on top of me again...The Prozac isn't even touching the sides....Starting to think I should stop taking it....I only started to get to that emotionally detached world my ex inhabited...I thought it would help....turns out emotionally detached people are no fun to live with....yes I saw the irony....

So to re-cap feeling like shit......kids sad.....ex who only ever liked me for someone I wasn't....and no clue what to do next.....

I know......a bit more Prozac.

Update a few hours later.......

Alright I feel a lot better now....My new rule is I leave the rant....even if it makes me cringe a bit....can't grow out of tantrums if I hide them.

Do I really need a list.....

Probably.....but list making seems to involve to much thinking about what you need to do, instead of just doing. So maybe I should stick with spirit of the list, and not the letter....

1 - GET UP
2 - DO THE STUFF YOU NEED TO DO
3 - THEN DO THE STUFF YOU WANT

There we go a list.....

The Evening update.....did everything on the list....wow this is easy....

Coffee 13 on a Sunny Day......

A sunny day in the mountains and a lucky coffee.....took a few hours out this morning to relax and smell the roses, or the coffee in this case.....So pleased with my first ever watercolour I may look through some of my old black and white stuff, for stuff that needs a bit of depth.

Maybe I could use a little colour?.......

I tend to work in black and white.....and not just on paper. Maybe I need a little colour, maybe that would cheer me up a bit?

Turning over a new forest.....

The last year was not a friend to productivity.....in fact it has pretty much been an off the rails, in a ditch, belly up train wreck.....but that's life for you.

Now that, with fingers crossed and a knock on the nearest timber, the worst is over - it is time to get back on track, to continue the train metaphor....and that means kicking out all thoughts of back-up plans and embrace the sink or swim approach to art.....

So daily updates and works in progress will be the norm......

Welcome to MY LIFE 2.0