Apoplexy and the soothing nature of art

I'd like to be able to tell you that my panic has lessened, my general disquiet has abated, and that my innate uselessness has been successfully challenged. I really would like to be able to tell you that.

Unfortunately I can't, because I am seemingly just as computer-illiterate as ever. I have just given myself near-fatal apoplexy trying to get a newsletter subscription box onto my website. Fairly basic, one would think. People do it every day. But not this people. This people avoids that like the plague, and then builds such a fine mental block around it that it is never going to be anything but ridiculously painful and fraught.

And so it was.

I now, however, finally (!!) have a subscription box, just on the home page of my website. I have some ideas for a monthly newsletter that don't seem to fit into the blog - mosaic news from around the world, technical bits and pieces, project updates and so on. Also, some special offers only for subscribers. And as part of the Grand Plan - the grand, yes-I-am-a-professional plan - I apparently need a newsletter. If you would like to receive said newsletter, please go ahead and click the button.

On the plus side of my knowledge gap, as an antidote to my near-technology-induced fatality, I have been to go to drawing classes this week. I haven't been for nigh on 30 years, not since art school, and, man, I had a great time. I seem to have forgotten a lot of things that I thought I understood, but I also found it almost achingly familiar at the same time. It felt wonderful to be in a room full of creative people, all merrily scribbling away and exploring the possibilities of 'The Mark'. So very different from me by myself placing my bits and pieces in their very precise positions. It's like the yin and the yang of my artistic expression, and it feels very good. Balanced. Definitely something to shoot for in life, I think.

A comment from Jane last week noted that with all the thoughts crowding my head and the time spent blogging, facebooking, Pinning, Linking In and so on, it is amazing that I find the time to work on my mosaic. It would be amazing if I had actually found the time last week, but I didn't. I think I spent a total of two hours in my studio the whole week, and most of that was cleaning up the mess I had left the time before. Now that I have, apoplexy aside, a slightly better handle on the social media side of the equation, I hope to be able to streamline those times a bit more successfully and get back into my studio where I belong.

So, unfortunately no updates on the mosaic this week, but news on the duck front. I found a duck buddy for our duck, from out the back of Lismore. He is a Welsh Harlequin - a real beauty, and, like ours, was growing up all by his lonely duck-self on a farm. I got a boy, not knowing what sex ours was, and the day after I brought him home and introduced him to the gang, our indeterminate duck grew two curly feathers on its tail and announced that he too, was a manly type of duck! Must have been the smell of the testosterone that got him going. So, we now have two drakes, and it has been lovely to watch them waddle around the orchard together, diving in the paddling pool and splashing like little kids. Best of all has been listening to them quacking quietly to each other as they investigate the bananas or dig their beaks into the wet mud looking for goodies. Contented duck friends.

Perhaps one day I'll get them some girl ducks.