The heat and smoke have let up enough today to allow us to open the windows and turn off the AC.

[Yeah, I know I have been leaning on this one a lot lately, but it's been an unusually bad year for this sort of thing...]

It recently became clear to me that I have gradually slipped into an unusually deep trough over the past while... but what's weird is how it finally clicked for me:

I've sorta noticed for a while that I don't feel like doing anything, lately. But my Aha Moment came when I realized I was tired and I thought, I don't even feel like resting.

Like, what's up with that....

My glasses! So many of the things I love to do, I couldn't do without them.

I was recently talking with Barbara about a local artist [acrylic painter] I have met and conversed with a few times... and how I always find it flattering but odd when I realize that said artist talks with me [and about me] as if I am a peer. Barbara says that I am one and should certainly see myself that way, but I have trouble with this. Then she got talking about whether I realize that I am a good artist, and that my art is good.

Afterward I thought about it for a while, and realized that I do think that my work is generally Good Enough®, but I don't think of it as Good®. Since then, I've been struggling to define for myself just what the difference is, between good enough and good.

Finally I settled on something like this: if I look at a piece of mine, and I don't see things that I wish I had done differently, or parts that aren't quite what I would like.... if the flaws are not glaring, but are acceptable instead, then I can say the work is good.** Then I got thinking about which pieces of mine I can say that about.

I came up with four. Out of sixty years of arting.

Not sure where I'm going with this, I still need to mull over and hash out. Wondering if other people make a similar distinction between good-enough work and good work. I just wanted to get this down while I thought of it.



** and is this how I judge whether other people's work is good? Not sure that I do. Yet more sutff to mull over....

The heat wave finally broke! It's been weeks!

having a shandy on a hot day

An entire day free of obligations. I honestly cannot remember the last time. [I always figured that days like this were what retirement would be like, but boy did I figure wrong.]

going all night and all day while needing neither the furnace nor the air conditioning on at any time

making it this far!

Dunno what's different about this year, but I was really looking forward to this birthday and am glad to have it. Shaping up to be a great day!

[What's more, it's my first day this year wearing my summer shoes — always a Big Event®]

Woke with a migraine in one eye. The part I'm grateful for is that I put ice on it, and it actually listened to the ice pretty well [doesn't always happen].