illustration friday: hibernate

The words of Anais Nin are so true. It's what I do all the time. I'm busy all day with cleaning and shopping and playing and nursing and walking the dogs, and cooking and feeding and eating and gardening and when it's time to go to bed I say to myself: That was another busy day. And then I think: But there is one thing I didn't do and that's painting and that's the thing I really like to do, but I don't do it and don't know why there are allways so many others things that are in the way, and just before I close my eyes I say: Tomorrow I start painting. Tomorrow...

“You live like this, sheltered, in a delicate world, and you believe you are living. Then you read a book… or you take a trip… and you discover that you are not living, that you are hibernating. The symptoms of hibernating are easily detectable: first, restlessness. The second symptom (when hibernating becomes dangerous and might degenerate into death): absence of pleasure. That is all. It appears like an innocuous illness. Monotony, boredom, death. Millions live like this (or die like this) without knowing it. They work in offices. They drive a car. They picnic with their families. They raise children. And then some shock treatment takes place, a person, a book, a song, and it awakens them and saves them from death. Some never awaken.”― Anaïs Nin, The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 1: 1931-1934