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To have the freedom to do as we please isn't freedom, but to do what we love is. I'd almost forgotten how peaceful and settling it was for me to structure my day fully around the arts. It always feels like home... immersing myself in music while painting, and then immersing myself in writing, without forgetting to lose myself in research - and that research can vary from reading the dictionary for hours in search of new words and turns of phrases, to analysing novels (paying careful attention to other writers' way with words, devices used and style) or simply getting stuck in random books according to what I need to describe in a story. I've been known to borrow books from the library on trees, flowers, architecture, clothing and even carpentry just to get the vocabulary and feel to it just 'right'.
And these things aren't chores, they're the most wonderful pastimes one could have - at least to me. By the time I'm done doing all this throughout the day, it's already night time. But I stopped doing all this years ago as life got in the way. Of course, Life always gets in the way. But the truth is that part of me, no matter how much I knew what I loved, always seemed intent on letting herself be distracted. It's like... knowing exactly where home and fulfilment is and yet like a revolted child choose to wander away in defiance. And that I have done so much that today I realised how much time had passed away from 'home'.

Hesitantly, I retrieved the dusty brushes and paints from their dark corner, sat down on the floor, took a deep breath and... I started painting again. I thought to myself: "I'm so rusty..." The fact is, I haven't painted in almost 8 years. I decided to try my hand with one of my unfinished copies of masters (which I never dutifully copied to the letter). Before I stopped painting completely, I had started on two very different styles: one was a Monet, the other a Van Gogh. I decided to get back in the swing of things with Van Gogh, and my... I'd forgotten how special it was to try and copy his works. You can't be gentle, and you certainly can't be shy when it comes to the amount of paint needed. I started off shy, though, and then slowly my hand loosened its stiffness and I began to feel the same way painting had always made me feel - free to feel the colours, almost like entering some sort of strange trance where the mixing of colours becomes a quest to find the exact one needed... a ritual in itself where the brush is dancing and twirling from the wooden palette to the canvas. And you can't see the result at once! Oh no, you can't. You have to keep at it with the utmost sense of raw passion awakening within but contained in the bursts of colours dancing for you.

I have to admit I am no 'real' painter, but the art itself has always tapped right into the core of my emotions - the colours.

After my frantic dance with colours, I went to wash away the paint on my fingers and sat back down to focus on the writing, just letting it flow and seeing where it'd take me. No need to rush, I am very rusty. Alone in the house, with only myself and the burning passion within no longer distracted by the outside world, I immerse myself in my own bubble and forget everything and everyone. And that is I.

Unfinished business... and far from complete!