Okay so I'm on the phone with my mom tonight, right, and she asks what I did today. And I genuinely could not give her a straight answer. Because the honest version is: I spent four hours on one 4x6 inch study of the same corner of my bedroom, repainted the shadow behind the radiator like six times, ate a sandwich standing up while staring at it, and then scraped it all off and started over. And I said "painted" and she said "for eight hours?!" and I heard the pause where she's doing the math on rent and groceries.

And I love her so much but man. How do you explain to someone that a wash you'll never sell took four hours and that time wasn't wasted? That the whole afternoon was just my hand learning how wet to make the paper so a shadow sits right. Like nobody clocks the hours that go into the invisible stuff. The actual painting is 20 minutes. The other 7 hours and 40 minutes is just... convincing the paint to do what I already saw in my head.

Anyway I'm not mad at her, I'm mad that I couldn't say it in a way that didn't sound like "I stared at a wet piece of paper for eight hours." Cause honestly. That's also kind of what it is. 😭

Anyone else have the "so what did you DO today" conversation with a family member and just absolutely whiff it?