Old Sport

Of all of my 180 goals I want to accomplish, I feel I put the majority of my focus in writing and painting. With writing, I have been trying to better the areas that are my largest faults. One example would be the passiveness of my sentences, something a number of my friends have observed.  It’s been said that I have a tendency to sound too factual in my tone and not very passionate in what I'm trying to convey. To fix this, I've been absorbing whatever material I can that will aid me in perfecting my written English skills.

One way that I have tried to sharpen my skills is by investing time in my trilogy that I hope to one day have published. Though it has been a slow process, I'm very proud that I have found a way to turn off the over critical part of my brain and just write whatever comes out. Whatever I create will need to go through a thousand revisions, so it's important for me just to focus on piecing together an entertaining story.

As for painting, a few months ago, I met a professional artist (lets just call him SV) through a poker group I'm associated with. After talking in length about painting with SV, he offered to take me on as a student for free; naturally I accepted. Though SV and I only met one time for art lessons, I felt disappointed in the experience. SV is a very political and religious man with no filter in either subject. He seemed almost helpless to restrain sharing his world views which I felt took away from the importance of my visit. However, I can not say that my time with him was a total loss. There were a number of tips and techniques that I learned from him to help my paintings become more pleasing to the eye and profitable. I wouldn't mind taking on another lesson from SV, but for now I feel it's best him and I meet when there is a specific area in painting I want to work on.

P.S., I would like to share that I finished reading “The Great Gatsby”. I don't know what else to say other than I loved it and could see why it's a classic.