‘In the zone’ is the term people use, if I’m not mistaken; the term I’ve been using is ‘stopping time’. That’s sort of a semi-secret I let jillafriends in on a little while ago, and when I did, I wondered whether there was any ‘serious science’ behind why it was so effective~for me, at least.

Turns out, there is, and I found out quite by accident quite recently through an almost completely unrelated channel (this Fast Company post, in case you were curious). Seeing as I was one of the last people on earth to own a mobile phone or get on social media, it shouldn’t be too surprising for me to be one of the last to find out how experts refer to my ‘stopped time’ as a ‘flow state’.

As it turns out, I’ve had to do a little impromptu reading today on flow states which very naturally roused my curiosity~considering the not unimportant part it plays in my ‘painting factory operations’. So I thought I’d look a little closer into ‘the state to be’~all the time, if it were up to me~at least, whenever the painting factory is up and running.

​My art and my ‘other job’ overlap in a lot of ways. For those of you who don’t know me very well, I’m also a writer ~ the kind that works at ad agencies, marketing departments and media (the publishing and broadcast kind).

I guess this overlap can’t be helped in that creativity is a requirement for both ~ admittedly, maybe not as much for some of the companies I’ve worked for. So I guess it also can’t be helped that my other job gets talked about here on the jillablog, like how I wrote about what happened with my ad agency co-workers once.

…that is, after working all day and without pulling an all-nighter. 😛

Anyone who knows me personally knows how I’ve led a *double life*, i.e. working as a writer during the day and *arting* at night, for a really long time. For good or ill, it’s been the only way I’ve been able to keep the *painting factory* going.

Thing is, the older I get, the harder it is to keep it going this way. But I want to keep it going ~ and I think I can, too. It’s just, I’m having to find other ways, other things to help me do it.

I’d like to share these six things in the hopes that they may help anyone who’s got art or anything they’d like to work on but can’t during office hours. These six seem the most viable to me now that end-to-end all-nighters for months on end aren’t such a good idea anymore. 😅

I mean I hate to admit it, but I guess even jillamonsters need sleep like everybody else. 🤣
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How do you keep going when (as half of that early 90s World) put it, you’re out of gas and you need a jacket? And the tyres are flat and the paint’s peeling ~you get the idea.

Obviously I haven’t been brimming with sunshine or handing a fistful of lollipops out to everybody lately ~truth be told I can’t remember the last time I had.

So what does the average monster do when they’ve got no one within easy reach radiating UV rays or spamming sugar on a stick? They look for it on the internet, of course ^^

These pick-me-ups worked for me when I got so low I hit the bottom of the mountainside the Grey Pilgrim smote the ruin of his enemy on.

Just to shake things up a little on the jillablog, you know? And maybe to point the way towards a little sun and something sweet ^^;

Better if you watch rather than take my word for it (cos what’s that worth really, right). But I will be taking some notes (for me as much as for you), and noting how I may not agree with everything these people say or do. But what they said here really helped me a lot <3

Seona is a German artist I met in art class who specialises in hyper-realistic oil portraits and whom I somehow managed to stay in touch with after we both *got out of school*.

Recently I discovered she’s begun to explore relationships in her portraits, specifically those between old friends. It reminded me very much of Claudia, this other German artist who painted a picture of a friend of hers who (if I remember correctly) wasn’t her friend, anymore. I think I only saw that canvas of Claudia’s once but I never forgot it.

So I’ve always been a fan of boredpanda~ not all of the content on there, you understand, but a whole huge hefty chunk of it ^_^ Not just for things like this ^o^ But understandably for things like this and this and this. Once in a while, I’m lucky enough to catch a video or two from them on Instagram.

So you’ll understand when one day out of nowhere, as I mentioned last month, I’m over our one natural satellite because someone from boredpanda asks if they can interview me for an article. I was happy to oblige because it was something I had rather marked opinions about and that I’d written about before.

You’ll understand again, I hope, when I tell you that I was happy to acquiesce to a request for an interview for a second article about delusional artists. The request came in the middle of the constant whitewater of my day-to-day about a week or so ago, but I couldn’t help answering on the spot.
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Back in a past life (as a copywriter), I’d heard tales of agencies that let their creatives play video games on office time. These agencies had a Playstation on the premises because they encouraged creative downtime.

I understand how it might be tough to rationalise creative downtime for the beancounters and human resource humans. Heck, I remember some of them had trouble enough understanding why the creatives (and some super trooper account execs) needed ‘flexitime’ to pull all-nighters to get ready for a pitch.

Seriously though. Turns out there is a thing to what looks like (but doesn’t actually amount to) ‘slacking off’ in order to, enhance one’s creativity, and even productivity.
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I’m sure you’ve heard people talk about this ~ about how art isn’t just something they might do for fun, or as a hobby, but something they sort of have to do because, well, it makes them feel better.

I’m no psychology major or anything like that, and I’m not even going to pretend I’m any sort of qualified to talk about trauma or therapy and stuff.

I guess what I’d like to go into in this jillablog post is how art has helped me to, you know. ‘Feel better’ or just get through, I suppose, whatever I needed to get through ~ some, unpleasantness or painful thing.

I’m not sharing any secrets or sordid specifics or anything ~ just sharing some ways my ‘scribbling and bibbling’ has helped me, personally.

Because you see at the outset I actually also had this idea of sharing a few suggestions for how you might do art as therapy, but you have to be certified and stuff to do that and I don’t want to do anything illegal or something.

But maybe my own experiences might give you a glimpse of how it might be helpful in case you or someone you know is looking for something to, you know. Help you feel better ^_^
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