The sky was beautiful Wednesday evening. Greg and I snuck away to our favorite spot to take photos of the sunset.

Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under trees on a summer’s day, listening to the murmur of the water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is by no means a waste of time. – John Lubbock

Ever since the 30 in 30 challenge ended, I’ve been feeling completely burnt out on blogging. I’ve been seriously questioning whether I want to continue, and why. To be honest, I have been leaning heavily towards quitting for months now. I’ve even imagined the relief I’d feel once the blog was deleted. Ahh! I’ve been literally forcing myself to post.

Yesterday, I was ready to write a goodbye post. Then, I looked back at my old posts, and felt a little nostalgic. Oh, crap! Why’d I have to go and do that?? I was instantly torn. Something struck me hard..there is a HUGE difference between the kind of blogger I used to be, and what I’ve become. I used to be in the moment, real. Other than tonight, I don’t remember the last time I wrote a blog post in the moment.  

For so long now, I’ve focused on quantity in every aspect of my business. More is more. Super mega size is even better! There was a time where I played a game with myself called, how many paintings can I do today? I would then bust my ass, and knock out as many paintings as I could in 12 to 16 hours, always focused on breaking my own record. I think the largest number was 22. It was a fun game at the time. It got me a super huge portfolio rather quickly, and I’m immune to my ego now. I simply don’t care a fig about producing a perfect painting. Every single one is flawed, and I’m fine with that. Painting that much made me realize, a perfect painting is unattainable. I’m no longer hung up on being perfect, so I’m not sorry I took this approach.  

It carried into my blog. I started asking myself, how many posts can I get done today? Go! I got a lot of posts done in one sitting, and wouldn’t have to touch my blog for a week, sometimes an entire month. But, big deal. Who cares, right? It almost sounds like I’m bragging about how much I accomplished, and I was pretty proud of myself each time. But, here’s the thing about writing all your posts at once, it gets stale and boring because I never moved from my chair. So, I was always writing from the same moment in time without giving myself time to breathe, stretch, and experience life in between posts. Yes, I got a lot accomplished, but at what price? 

Lately, I’ve been craving quality over quantity. It’s no longer important to me that I paint 20 paintings a day or that I post a blog entry 6 days a week. Whoever dies with the most paintings and blog posts isn’t going to win anything. Things have to change. Is this the end of blogging? It’s the end of how I’ve been blogging, yes. Stick around. I think you might find the change as refreshing as I do.