Spread your wings and fly

The tunnel didn’t feel quite like a tunnel anymore. The tunnel of life I mean. It felt more like a vise and someone else was in control of the leaver. Someone else was cranking it round and round, making it tighter and tighter; harder and harder to keep moving through. It used to be so big that you could run through it, fly through, breeze through it with the wind – easy peasy right. But since someone else took control of that leaver, the spaced closed in so I could only jog, then walk, then I had to be crouched over and then, crawling – hands and knees.

But how to get that control back. How to take a hold of my own vise, my own tunnel, my own life. There were no holes to crawl out of, not big enough anyway and I’d just have to get back in it again anyway. But there was a tiny threat of light coming from ahead. I stopped crawling for just a moment. I closed my eyes and breathed in deep. I could smell something. I couldn’t quite decide what it smelled like but it was like sweat and red roses mixed together.

That was it. I did my best to stand up in the crawling space. I was crouched over, well and truly but I wasn’t on the floor. There was space between me and the bottom. I took a step forward. That one step took up most of my energy and I thought about stopping again to close my eyes, to give up. But I didn’t; I took another step.

I kept taking steps until the crawling space became crouching space, then walking space and right back to breezing with the wind. Back to moving with the light instead of only seeing a tiny thread of it from a distance. I took another deep break and I finaly realised what I could smell, victory. It's always going to be hard work, but the result is pretty sweet when you make it. I guess it just goes to show that no matter how hard the tunnel seems to be, there will always be at least a tiny thread of light at the end of the tunnel. At least a tiny thread of hope.

Spread your wings and fly. It’s your life. Take control.

Foam mattress

If words could be sold or bought, the person who put the words 'forgive' and 'forget' together would be more than a billionaire. Recently I’ve learned that by being willing to forgive and quick to forget I’m a much happier person.

So be resilient, be happy. Don’t be like that horrible foam mattress at that dodgy hotel you stayed at that remembered the shape of the last person who slept on it. Bounce back, learn from your experiences, be resilient, forgive and forget.

Perfection will never come

It's not true what they say. Practice doesn't make perfect. It makes you better at what ever it is you're doing, but nothing is perfect to everyone.

One of the many creative things that I like to do is paint. I randomly thought to myself about 12 months ago that I'd like to do a painting. So I did. I liked it at the time but knew that I could always improve. Of course I'd had no training or anything like that, so I was on my own. I tried a few more paintings, then started to add texture to it and liked each one better than the last. Now each time I start a new painting, I try a completely different technique or colour or surface than I've ever tried before and again, I like each one better than the last.

So what I'm trying to say is, no one can improve so much as to perfection. They can only improve. But along the way, there are many lessons to be learned. For example, so far I've learned different ways of applying paint, texture paste and plaster to canvas, I've learned how to make different shapes with different brushes and many other things too, just by trial and error.

So my point is, practice as much as you can, but don't expect perfection because it will never come :)