and how to battle overwhelm
I originally wrote the title of this post as battling overwhelm, and an adorable fish but then realised that wasn’t terribly positive, and in the spirit of graciousness I reversed it. ‘Tis the season after all.
In fact, this IS an uplifting subject despite the heading, as we are definitely making progress with sorting out a lot of tasks which had not been tackled in a long while. I’m helping my parents (particularly my dad, who has run their household administration and finances for decades) deal with a backlog of files, folders, payments and subscriptions which have been complicated by changes of passwords and usernames and login details on various phones and laptops which so easily happens these days. All this while ensuring my dad doesn’t feel either shoved over, or in the other direction, unsupported. It’s confusing and disconcerting for anyone to forget details or get the dreaded “Username not recognised” when trying to access accounts, and my dad struggles with his memory a bit these days, as well as getting understandably anxious when things don’t go to plan. Anyway, suffice to say, the mists are clearing, and hopefully by next week the majority of changes will have been made and he can start regaining his confidence with the whole undertaking.
I can empathise with this, as I lived in a tumbledown rented farm cottage with my 3 children for many years after leaving my husband and 4-storey townhouse in Eastbourne, and while I threw myself into the life that this rural existence allowed* in order to offset the sustained challenges of that initial decision, it did mean I spent about 15 years feeling thoroughly overstretched.
*I ran a smallholding, at one point having 40 chickens, 4 ducks, 3 rabbits, 6 guinea pigs, 5 quail, a cat, a dog, and 20 beehives…
When my youngest was reaching the point of moving out, I started craving a Tiny Home, and followed content creators from this movement and investigated options for having my own small space. The decision to purchase a property with my parents and living in the converted loft room meant I could have that outcome I’d been dreaming about:
Everything I own I can see, and everything I can see, I own.
Hopefully reducing my parents’ duplicate/redundant/unnecessary household info will bring some comfort and be less burdensome as I know what that out-of-control overwhelming feeling is like, and it’s very draining.
Meanwhile, back at the adorable fish. I bought another Oxford illustrated field guide from World of Books, this one about vertebrates; rather an odd group to choose but it does of course mean there’s everything from bats to seals to foxes to, yes: fish. I found a page of Sea Bream so decided to paint some in my sketchbook. I then realised there is an endangered species called a Bogue which is a rare visitor to our south-west seas, and its Latin name is – wait for it – Boops boops. I kid you not.
Anyway, here it is, in its green-and-violet glory between a Red Sea Bream and a Couch’s Sea Bream:
All these fish are more brightly coloured than they should be as I squeezed too much vermillion (but who doesn’t need a happy splash of bright red-orange right now?) so I had to make the Boops boops more contrasty too. And it meant I could use the violet of the Bogue as the dark accents on the bream. I really enjoyed painting these.
