I hate to judge something as arbitrary as a year, but – aside from a few bright spots – 2016 has been a bit sucky. Not a disaster. Not terrible. Though premature deaths of people I admired, political stupidity and callousness and awful things happening out in the wider world have certainly added to the feeling of gloom.

Sucky:
The new garage sitting empty for six months because the concreter never turned up to finish the job.

Sudden worsening of my back, perhaps due to a compressed disc in my neck.

Which meant I could only work an hour a day and delivered a book four months late.

This meant I couldn’t do more art classes before my teacher retired at the end of the year.

Structural edits for the book are, for the first time, not straightforward and likely to take until December to complete.

Ongoing drainage issues around our house.

Not Sucky:
Painting doesn’t hurt my back.

Only being able to work an hour a day means I can still go to more than the one art class per week.

My portrait of Lucy made it into the Moran semi-finals (but not the finals)!

The landscaping looks great and has improved some of the drainage issues.

If I was the sort to believe ‘the universe’ was trying to tell me something, I’d conclude it was urging me to give up writing and pursue a fourth career in portraiture. I’m not sure I want to, though. I’ve turned art into work before, by working as an illustrator, and it took a lot of the fun out of it.