A Little Help From My Friends

I have spent a good portion of the last 4 days painting.  Not creative, artsy painting; just regular old house painting.  The unusual thing about this is that it wasn't at my house.  Rather, I was helping friends paint their daughter's room.  They are expecting an exchange student tomorrow and were under some time pressure to get the room painted before her arrival, which is why I volunteered to help.

I am a pretty good painter.  I have painted many rooms in many homes so when the topic arose, it seemed natural for me to offer my assistance, which was gladly accepted.  When I offered to help, I did it out of the old-fashioned goodness of my heart.  I didn't expect anything in return, other than the joy of helping out my friends by lessening both the work and the stress.  Which is why I was so surprised to find that I actually got so much more out of the last few days than I ever thought I might.

It turns out that painting is very therapeutic.  As we all know, there's a lot going on in my life and the last month and a half have been particularly topsy-turvy and emotionally challenging for me.  Painting allowed me some much needed alone time.  Obviously I was not entirely alone, as my friend was also in the room.  But we were in there without children, who also knew enough to only interrupt us if absolutely necessary.  Sometimes my friend and I talked: about relationships and things that really "mattered" and sometimes about other things that didn't matter quite so much.  Sometimes we didn't talk at all and I was able to be alone and muse over the torrent of thought constantly running through my head.  But sometimes - and this was best of all - I thought about nothing.

There were times when it was just me and the brush and my little cup of paint and that was all.  I was focused on the painting and nothing else.  There were no thoughts, no distractions, nothing.  Nothing.  And I loved every second of it.