Chill Out

The paid workforce runs under stress and duress. That’s why workhorses need to chill out or go nuts.

This I can say with authority, having gone through an incinerator called corporate world for over two decades, after which I said, “Enough.”

So now, every day is chill-out day, right? That’s overstretching it.

Even out of the workplace, one can’t run away from stress and duress in this chaos-filled world. Watching TV news and reading the dailies make one’s heart pump faster than it should. Chill-out day is here to stay. 

Mine is painting.

I could get lost in a world of colors and shapes with bottomless possibilities. All I do is dab, swoosh, splash, swirl, drip, smear, smudge, scratch, or fling paint (depending on how my feeble hands could manage it) on to the surface of the canvas. 

Voila! Images come as a surprise.

At day’s end, whether observers’ eyes (not mine) think they are passable or terrible is immaterial. I always paint over the original painting anyway.

“Oh, you changed your pink flowers to yellow?!” my friend G said when I showed her the image I worked on a day after she saw the beginnings of it.

“Where is that field of flowers you did last Easter?” Ate Vi asked while putting my canvasses in order at the end of my chill-out day. She was shocked when I told her it had become a solitary sunflower.

Hey, a chill-out day is supposed to be a cool, relaxing day, right? No pressures, no quotas, no inventories.

It was on one of these days when Tony was on a chill-out mode, too, reading a thriller a few yards from my work area. Without my knowledge, he took some photos of me and uploaded one to his FB page to show only me.  He forgot (or doesn’t know how) to adjust the setting to private.   

 

Next thing I knew, almost 300 of my friends made comments about the photo!   

“This is my most-liked post ever,” Tony said. I couldn’t tell whether he was complaining or bragging.

Then it was picked up by Metrocebu News. Below is a screen grab:

This is the image I was working on: unfinished, unsigned. I am posting it for posterity, because on my next chill-out day, it just might look totally different. 

Like clockwork, the exuberant colors of grace emerge to refresh me on my chill-out day.      

“This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.” Psalm 118:24 (ESV)