Cutting it fine

Why do some Americans work so darn hard?

Best Buds, 12X16, $1449 framed

I don’t typically travel for fun in the summer, but with my Cody workshop cancelled due to the national car rental shortage, I had a few free days. Of course I filled them in with another trip. It wasn’t until I was unpacking my truck last night that I realized that I left my watercolor kit at my daughter’s house in New York. Oops.

 “Do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing, and you'll never be criticized,” wrote Elbert Hubbard.

In 1913, Hubbard pleaded guilty to six counts of using the US mail to distribute “obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy and indecent material.” He was fined $100 and surrendered his rights as a citizen.

Apple Tree with Swing, 16X20, $1623 unframed

Here is one of the jokes that earned him disgrace:

“The bride of a year entered a drugstore.  The clerk approached.  ‘Do you exchange goods?’ she asked. ‘Oh, certainly! If anything you buy here is not satisfactory we will exchange it.’ ‘Well,’ was the reply; ‘here is one of those whirling-spray [contraceptive] affairs I bought of you, and if you please, I want you to take it back and give me a bottle of Mellin’s [baby] Food, instead.’ And outside the storm raged piteously, and the across the moor a jay-bird called to his mate, ‘Cuckoo, cuckoo!’”

Another concerned “the new stenographer whose name was Miss Mary Merryseat. But Old Man Lunkhead, Senior member of the firm of Lunkhead Sons & Co., Ltd., never having taken a course in Dickson's Memory Method, called her Gladys.”

Owls Head Fishing Shacks, 9X12, $869 framed

Leaving aside his penchant for criminally-bad jokes, Hubbard was a busy man. He is credited with the aphorism, “If you want something done, ask a busy person.” He’s best remembered for founding the Arts and Crafts Movement called Roycroft. Based on the ideas of William Morris, it was a community of printers, furniture makers, metalsmiths, leathersmiths, and bookbinders in East Aurora, NY.

Roycroft’s creed was a quote from John Ruskin: “A belief in working with the head, hand and heart and mixing enough play with the work so that every task is pleasurable and makes for health and happiness.”

It’s the ‘play’ part that is frequently neglected by Americans. I found, during my four-day interlude in New York, that I kept falling asleep. That’s a sign of exhaustion, and it’s no way to do art or anything else.

Belfast Harbor, 14X18, $1594 framed

Why do we live like this? In part, it’s training and competitiveness. And in part it’s the culture. Americans have long been the hardest-working people of all the industrialized nations

The middle class bears the brunt of our work-mania. “The average middle-class married couple with children now works a combined 3,446 hours annually, an increase of more than 600 hours—or 15 additional weeks of full-time work—since 1975,” according to the Brookings Institution.

In 1960, when I was learning to toddle, only 20% of women with children worked outside the home. Today, 70% of American children live in households where all adults are employed. That means all the unpaid work of the household is now done by parents after work and on weekends.

I’m a product of my culture, so I beat myself up for forgetting my watercolor kit. I leave to teach back-to-back workshops on Friday. I need it, and there’s no chance I can get it back in time.

Had I stayed home over the holiday weekend, I never would have mislaid it. I would have opened my gallery and maybe sold a painting. I’d have finished projects to button up for winter.

And I’d also have missed my granddaughter’s sixth birthday party. Relax, Carol, and learn to play a little.

The Power of Ten

A strong work ethic is a good thing, but sometimes it gets in the way of our real work.

Soft September Morning, by Carol L. Douglas.

Everyone has bad weeks, including me, although I’m usually so annoyingly chipper that it’s hard to tell. This week was a challenge to my sang froid; nothing major (thank God) but a concatenation of little things.

I started the week feeling bloated and out of sorts from too much holiday. My studio is a mess. Then there are the usual stresses of the Christmas season. Like many of us, I suspect, I went back to work on Monday morning in a deflated mood.

On Monday night, I managed to drop my still life—a pie plate filled with water and warm wax—directly into my laptop’s keyboard. I turned it over and shook out the water. My students are smarter than me; they told me to stop our Zoom class and dry out my laptop. My long-suffering technical support department (my husband) disassembled and dried it for me. Other than the sound and mouse, it appears to be working. However, since both of these things are critical, I’ve got a new laptop in my near future.

Add five or six more tealights, then dump in your keyboard. It turned out to be a lousy idea in so many ways.

Of course, I wasted hours of our time. And that made me grumpy. It’s backed up, but shopping for a replacement and recreating a work environment is no simple matter. In the past, this might have thrown me for days.

The Power of Ten is a simple game I play with myself to overcome a bad mood, inertia or paralysis. If I’m facing a mountain of laundry, I tell myself I’ll fold ten items. If my dining room table is covered with papers, I tell myself to file ten of them.

Mess? What mess?

This is not a way to fool myself into doing more; I do stop at ten. It’s a method of staring down what gets in the way of my real work. Like everyone else, I’m the product (in part) of my childhood programming. A strong work ethic is a good thing, but sometimes it gets in our way. Mine tells me I have to finish my chores before I can paint. Doing just a little work gives me permission to ignore the bigger mess.

Taken into the studio, that means I pick up and put away ten things. My suitcase on the floor that still has stuff from my Tallahassee workshop? That counts as six items, once I’ve put them back where they belong. The pile of frames that Colin Page gave me? That will be eight of today’s items.

Over a week, of course, I’ve managed to put away fifty items. Imperceptibly, order is being restored. More importantly, I’ve not stopped and spent a day cleaning my studio; instead, I’ve painted.

My ten brush strokes took the form of branches on this canvas, which I keep around just for fun.

My problem Tuesday was not just disorder, but worry and distraction about my laptop. That can completely derail me. So, I applied a variation of the Power of Ten to my palette. First, I laid out fresh paints; that always helps. Then I told myself I could make just ten brushstrokes. Voila! I’d eased the transition to real work.

Ten brushstrokes is a great limit when you’re having trouble concentrating. It’s also helpful when you’re confused about how to finish a painting. It makes you stop and think intentionally about each mark you make. That stops you from noodling, which has been the death of many fine paintings. Limit yourself, and see how quickly your mind zeroes in on the real issues.