One of my favorite things about being retired is how nice it is to wake up on Monday morning, and not feel rushed to get the week started. I wake up, enjoy a cup of coffee, write in my journal, and then make a very loose plan for the day and week. Things rarely work out exactly the way I plan them during the week, but you know, it’s ok. I don’t mind too much when the floor gets vacuumed and mopped, so long as it isn’t done before the furniture is dusted, etc.

I lean into that theory even more when Chris is out of town for work. The weeks that he’s gone, I tend to approach with a very fluid idea of what I want to accomplish, and even less structure exists during those times. I may blow off cleaning out the Kallax in the closet on Tuesday morning, if I wake up and see that the light is right to photograph birds at the park for a couple of hours. The house is no longer in crisis, and I am not a stickler, so I enjoy those days when I can take a moment to enjoy some leisure time.

Last week, Chris was out of town, so I planned to spend most of the time in my quilt studio. Sadly, my heel is giving me trouble lately, so sewing was benched, and I decided to spend some time learning a new medium or two. I started with colored pencils, and did some coloring.

Juvenile? Probably, but it was a lot of fun. I always enjoyed coloring as a child, but I can’t say I ever really got into the recent coloring trend. I’ve always wished I could draw and/or paint, but I haven’t spent much time trying to learn either – yet. I can color, even if it isn’t sophisticated, and it was fun. Why is it that as adults, we so often discount things that feel “childish” or even “fun” if they don’t also “serve a purpose.” I don’t know why we do that, but it’s not uncommon, I’ve found. I had so much fun coloring the first picture with colored pencils, I tried another one.

My technique might not be great, but the joy of coloring this was very real. I’ve been intrigued by alcohol markers, and Michael’s had a nice set on sale, plus I had some rewards, so I bought this set of Ohuhu alcohol markers.

It is a LOT of colors, and I can do a lot with them. Ohuhu offers about 350 colors, and this is a 200 color set. so I could almost double the number of markers I have before I have them all. I could also use Copic markers with these, because I understand they blend well with the Ohuhu markers. Copic also makes three marker sets that are meant to be blending sets, so I can expand my collection that way as well.

I’ve found that these markers have a big learning curve, so it’s going to take some practice to get good with them. I learned, for example, that I should have started coloring the vase with the lightest blue I wanted to use, not the darkest. I also have learned that it’s best to color from the top down, so you aren’t transferring alcohol ink all over the page. It dries reasonable fast, but it’s easy to forget to let it dry before moving the side of your hand to reposition.

My second picture was a bit better. I got the color order right, and I did start at the top of the picture and work down. I also realized a day or two later, when I had a chance to watch several videos from various content creators, that it’s unlikely you’re going to get a really perfect blend of colors, to where it’s absolutely seamless looking. That is AI bull that rarely works, nor transitions nearly as good as people say it does. I am no artist, but I don’t see a reason to drive yourself mad trying to blend a couple of colors on a page that few people will see once it’s done. Doesn’t attempting perfection actually take something away from the “relaxation” of coloring, like … I don’t know … the relaxation part?

My coloring will never be perfect, but it isn’t like museums are lining up to buy anyone’s coloring pages anyway. I am finding coloring relaxing, and I would like to learn to draw. But if I never master either, what difference is it going to make?

As Theodore Roosevelt may have said, Comparison is the thief of joy.