You’re Doing It

This painting is my favorite of this series because of how it turned out. I just did horizontal strokes with black and white acrylic, covering the canvas in various shades of gray. This represents how surrender is sometimes reached not from a peaceful place but from one of having no other options. That concept feels very gray to me.

I have several gray paintings in my room. Because everything is deep to me, I often think this is because I tend to feel down, and sometimes I can’t buoy myself up enough to paint something colorful. Sometimes the blah and bleak need the opportunity to speak. I’m still taking care of myself by creating, but I’m taking the pressure off by simplifying the color scheme.

One of my gray paintings got the response “I can’t tell if this is satire” on YouTube. I don’t think they were being mean, but it did make me feel insecure about it. Funnily, my youngest sibling told me it reminded them of a famous painter’s piece, which made me feel pretty dang good. We all know art is subjective, but if you ever see a piece that makes you think a kid could do that, let that encourage you. Creating art is therapeutic and beauty doesn’t have to mean complicated or only achievable by the highly skilled, educated, etc.

Pictured here: my painting on the floor, titled God, the cycles life takes us through.

This is the final week that I’m basing a painting on a song from my ep These Songs, out now. You can find that here, or today’s musical inspiration, This song is what resignation sounds like, in playlists on YouTube Music or Spotify.

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This was the last painting I did in this series even though there’s one more after this. I’d covered the pieces Maybe now the s**t you pull will be worth something in curved strokes of paint and surrender in upward strokes. But today’s painting, I decided, would have a circular pattern.

Other than black and white, I only buy bigger tubes of cyan, magenta, and yellow. This was not my original plan, but I love how, if I want any other color, I have to experiment to (hopefully) get the color I want. Even with Google’s help, there’s no guarantee I’ll do it. These circumstances are one of the few where I love that.

I treat my music similarly: I’m learning on my own and from other professionals but sometimes my voice cracks. Or the rhythm in certain parts isn’t perfect. Often I’ll make corrections, but I like to leave some mistakes in. If I were to perform live, you would not get a flawless execution from me; might as well share some of those imperfections now.

Pictured here: my piece on the floor, I’m tired of stewarding hell.

For the next couple of weeks, I’m continuing to base each painting on a song from my ep These Songs, out now. You can find it here, or today’s musical inspiration, This song is about me, in playlists on YouTube Music or Spotify.

Hey, I Hope You Have A Great Day is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

I’ve shared before how I don’t know how to paint for real. Meaning, I’ve never taken classes outside of arts in grade school where we used watercolors (BLEH). When it comes to some artistic endeavors, I’m afraid to learn the basics because I know that the part of me that loves rules will also cling to them and be afraid to break them (even though they say that the time to break rules is after learning them). Because of that, this is largely NOT a substack about painting education as much as just a place to process my experiences and showcase my pieces.

Okay, so now I want to talk about underpainting!

I was talking to one of my coworkers about our weeks. I’d shared how I’d finished a piece, Michael’s sales, and how I needed to buy another tube of magenta acrylic paint. She then said something like, “You should do a layer of underpaint.” And my mind exploded.

Because no, I’m not currently interested in taking a class on painting. But DO I LOVE hearing others talk about things that interest them. And I am a sucker for learning even random facts from anyone who is excited to share. So I asked her to explain, then Googled it just to be sure I understood how to do it correctly.

Pictured here:  magenta-painted canvas.

I also recommend you look it up or ask someone, but this is just taking a thin layer of paint. Then after it dries, paint whatever overtop. The point is that the bottom layer color will pop through. I fear I did not make the magenta underneath today’s canvas thin enough. And I’m typing this before I go to paint on top, so you will see below how I did.

Pictured here: today’s canvas, surrender.

The next few weeks I’m basing each painting on a song from my ep These Songs, out now. You can find it here, or today’s musical inspiration, This song is about a shapeshifter, in playlists on YouTube Music or Spotify.

On Fridays I’ll share a bit more about the songs themselves, which you can read about for $5 a month. Thank you for being here. I hope you have a great day.

Hey, I Hope You Have A Great Day is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

I thought mixing cyan and yellow with a little magenta would make brown. But Google informed me that I should’ve started with yellow and magenta. Oops. At least I got the two shades of brown that I wanted: one like red-ish brown dirt, one like poop.

Pictured here: my office and in the kinda far left hand corner, Crissi after her nails were just painted brown.

At first I had the idea to draw a smaller canvas and someone trying to paint with their feces. Yes, that’s disturbing, and I did not want a painting of that on my wall. So I just took one of my bigger brushes and swished it back and forth. Love. First with the red-ish brown, next with the other. Green and blue start showing through. And now this s**t is in fact worth something more than the stress and fear and exhaustion. I love this for me.

Pictured here: my canvas on the floor, Maybe now the s**t you pull will be worth something.

The next four weeks I’m basing each painting on a song from my ep These Songs, out this Sunday, September 27. You can pre-order here. On Fridays I’ll share a bit more about the songs themselves, which you can read about for $5 a month. Thank you for being here; I hope you have a great day.

Hey, I Hope You Have A Great Day is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

My mom taught me to clean a house. Even today, she’ll tell me about the chores and projects she does to keep her home clean. But I kept going in and out of consistency with my own cleaning habits. My husband does his part, and then mine are left undone. It was unfair to both of us.

But nothing worked. I tried doing a little a day. I told my husband and mom, to keep myself accountable. Made up schedules for myself. Finally I gave in to an idea that kept popping up: I decided to post 5 days a week on Instagram about my cleaning one room per day in our apartment. I figured the more public accountability would keep me persistent. I had two followers, and one was my husband.

Pictured here: my office closet a little messier and then a little cleaner.

But for whatever reason, it worked. Some days I’d wait til the last minute. Others I could only muster the energy to clean the mirror in the bathroom. But everyday I did a little cleaning— even on the days I don’t post about it. And because of a video about my new and slowly growing Pokemon collection, I now have 17 followers (as of my typing this).

So if you want some motivation to clean daily, I post about that everyday except (usually) Wednesdays and Fridays on my Instagram. I’m not sure how much longer I’ll keep it up, but I’ve had one person tell me they follow partially for those posts, so I am encouraged to keep going.

Pictured here: said bathroom mirror, dirty and then clean.

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On the Michaels’s website, this canvas is called an “arch”. But when I saw it, I saw a tombstone and wanted it. Though I wasn’t sure what I’d paint had died, I knew I wanted to with something.

Pictured here: the back of this canvas with its title “Here lie my hopes and dreams”.

And that sounds insensitive to me. Actual people die and are killed and it’s a tragedy. To make a fake tombstone for something other than a Halloween prompt seemed inappropriate. I’d waited weeks to do this one.

I was going to complete this painting after writing today and Friday’s post. But once I finished typing, it seemed fitting to leave it. While the death of one’s dreams was my muse (something I’ll share more about on Friday), I know future me will be processing other deaths— be them literal or figurative. So it’s being left blank in hopes to make room for future thoughts, healing, etc.

Pictured here: my canvas on the desk, “Here lie my hopes and dreams”

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I have been going through the steps in Codependent No More workbook, by Melody Beattie, for a few months now. Last year, I listened to the audiobook version (which breaks down what codependency is) and decided I wanted help putting what I’d learned into practice. In this workbook, she takes the 12 Steps that are known originally from AA and shares their version from Co-Dependents Anonymous.

Pictured here: my desk with the book Codependent No More workbook.

1. “We admitted we were powerless over others— that our lives had become unmanageable.”

This may sound defeatist. Admitting I am powerless? How does anyone change or heal or evolve if they don’t have any power? But for myself, I’m finding that admitting this is very freeing. My issue with needing to control everyone and everything absolutely leaves me powerless. For example, if I spend so much time thinking about how Neo said they would arrive by 4:30 but it is now 4:45 and they’re texting me that they’re just now headed my way, I can easily then think of how they ALWAYS do this: say they’ll be on time, say they’ll do this project, say they’ll do better next time— but they never do. Next I’m fuming because they are so unreliable and are always inconveniencing me with their unreliability. And as you can imagine, I go down this spiral every single time they repeat these habits.

Now, in this example, it’s not that I’m wrong, because I am not. And it is not that my feelings and thoughts are unreasonable; I don’t believe they are. But tell me, what exactly is my repeated spiraling accomplishing? Will my ruminating on their habit of not keeping their word change their behavior? Obviously not.

And here’s the thing: maybe a conversation will help, but at the very end of the day I CANNOT CONTROL THEIR BEHAVIOR. Someone is reading this and going, duh. And… fair. But that simple fact is revolutionary for me. Because when I allow myself to feel and think however I do and then MOVE ON TO MINDING MY BUSINESS and controlling the one person I can—me—that is when I can accomplish something. That is when I can move forward. That’s when my life stops being unmanageable, because instead of fixating on someone and something I cannot control, I am focused on myself and living my life.

Pictured here: my canvas on the floor, the first three steps of Co-Dependents Anonymous.

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As I’m staring at today’s painting, I am amused. So the bottom left color is what my hair was supposed to look like, and the top right is closer to what it does look like (except in the spots where it looks like the bottom left LOL). I bleached my hair over the course of 3 months, once a month. I always extend my bleaches out because I want to enjoy my hair at each stage. If I were to redo it, I might start doing it every two weeks. I am NOT an expert, so I’m not giving advice, just sharing my experiences.

On August 17th, I mixed two different shades of grey (first mistake) then left it in for way too long (second mistake). And so we have blue with parts looking like my hair is thinning (it could be) but what I think is just the grey being more visible (still looks like I’m thinning).

Pictured here: A flattering picture of me with blue hair and grey at the temples.

When I finished painting this piece on July 5th, it was not supposed to look the way it does. Which I think keeps happening to me with these paintings. I also learned that what I end up with may not necessarily make me happy but it also may not disappoint me. That’s how I feel about this painting, and even more about my hair. Because in addition to NOT feeling happy or disappointed, I do feel excited. I didn’t mean to paint such a boring piece, but it means so much to me and I feel excited to paint more. I didn’t intend to have blue hair, but now I feel inspired to continue experimenting with colors. And man, it is so nice to feel something other than anxiety and upset over things in life.

Pictured here: my piece on the floor “You don’t look away”.

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But this is my first attempt at a palm tree. Figured it would be simple enough, and it was. But wow, the efforts it took to get the color brown correct. A year-ish ago, a TikTok showed up on my feed about how red, yellow and blue are not actually the three primary colors, but instead they are magenta, yellow and cyan. (I’m not well-versed in this knowledge, so please feel free to correct me or expound.) I have this thing with rules: once I learn them, I want to abide by them for fear of punishment. From whom, I don’t know.

Pictured here: this fall colored bouquet that I found at Michael's.

So figuring out brown was a bit time consuming, but as you’ll see, I got there. I took my time with the island and the tree trunk. The palm leaves were very fun to paint. And then the border, which has become one of my favorite parts of each of these pieces. It surprised me to get the right shade of orange so quickly. Originally, the plan had been to make the fire different shades but I ended up liking this one just fine. Added some splatters because honestly I want to add them to every piece I do ever since threaded.

Pictured here: my painting Paradise in Hell.

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Just a reminder that I have a playlist with one song for each week of posting. You can find it on YouTube and Spotify.

A quote from my journal about how I pictured this piece on June 16, 2026:

I just see swirls of mostly lighter pink.

And that’s all I was supposed to do. I’d planned a bunch of paintings in advance and thought that it was time I paid homage to the color light pink. Once I began painting, I’d decided I wanted different shades of pink to be included. Each day a shade was added. In the end I hated it, so I did what I’ve learned can help change my perspective: I let it sit.

Pictured here: the back of this canvas with different shades of pink and scrapbook paper.

After a few days, I still hated it, so I decided to paint red and black over it (to represent what I’ve claimed to be my two favorite colors most of my life), then try to wipe them away with my hands so that the pink showed up underneath. I painted the red on too thick. The black I added more water to, so it wasn’t as opaque as the red. After wiping some of it away in hopes to reveal the pink underneath, the colors still were not doing what I wanted them to do.

Finally, with both hands mostly black, I just mixed the paint all over, allowing a little more pink through. Then I got some scrapbook paper and used my nails and a knife, and that is what got me closest to what I wanted.

Pictured here: my painting, “I just used my nails”.

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