I had a post all planned out yesterday. I did. I had points and a conclusion and pictures. It was going to be awesome. Then about 3:00 my back started to hurt. By 6:00 I had to give up sitting and go lie down. After a night with very little sleep, I finally did what I should have done in the first place and Googled the issue. I appear to have somehow strained my lower back, which, according to the website, destabilized the spine, causing periodic severe pain. I should ice for the first few days, take a painkiller, and avoid heat until day three. While this evening I am not 100% (approaching 10%, which is better than last night), I do think the ice is helping. So, I’m going to bang out some version of the post I wanted to do yesterday, have dinner, and call it a day.

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I recently skimmed an article (another thing I can’t find) that suggested an artist needed to carve out (at a minimum) about 25% of their time for “admin” work such as keeping up the website, answering inquiries, entering shows, etc. This weekend, I spent WAY more than 25% of my artistic time fighting with my website.

One of my 2021 goals is to sell more paintings. This is mostly a goal that is coming from the enormous stack of finished art that is piling up around the house. As a friend says, “You don’t want to become the best collector of your own art.” A friend and I have come up with some goals (such as a regular newsletter) and she is helping me achieve them. Another goal is to get the inventory on my website up to date (I haven’t updated the paintings page for about two years.) I have a spreadsheet that I use (periodically) to keep track of things, so I thought I’d bang out an update. My friend and I had discussed it, and we decided that putting all my paintings on one page was too much, mostly because the load time was long (and people are impatient). So, I wanted to spread things out a little.

What should have been a simple fix turned into a three day saga involving two calls to tech help, more trial and error than the average scientific study, and a lot of words unbecoming an artist. In the end, I figured out the problem, but I am still waiting on a response from the tech company that caused the problem and we all may grow old before I get an answer. So, I patched up a fix and moved on until I figure out a better plan.

All this is to say that I only did one painting this weekend.

Sandhill crane (name TBA)

I have done a small version of this in the past, but this is bigger. Unfortunately, it may end up staying unfinished. My mop brush had a wire that scratched the surface of the paper and created the scratches you see. Sigh. Typical luck.

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My best guess for the cause of the back pain mentioned earlier is that I did quite a bit of birding this weekend. I visited Basket Slough (Friday), Finley (Saturday), and Ankeny (Sunday). I’d get up in the morning and head out, returning by noon to fight with the computer. I did see some nice birds, though. My back is hurting, so I’m not going to give you a detailed explanation. Just enjoy.