Breaking out of your comfort zone can, surprisingly, be bliss

Every so often, I break out of my comfort zone and attend art classes. This is in an attempt to reacquaint myself with the artistic prowess I had once upon a time, and also to engage in something I can focus on for a couple of hours way out of my everyday routines and anxieties.

I’m hoping my regular reader is not remembering my piano lessons at this point. If you are, I’d like to make it clear that – as you will recall if you were paying attention at the time – my efforts to learn to play at an advanced age were not based on any previous talent, but on the tragic fact of having a promising plinky-plink career cruelly thwarted by breaking off a blossoming romance with the piano teacher’s son.

When it comes to the art classes, I do have qualifications. However, this earlier promise seems to fade ever further into my memory

recesses whenever I decide to pick it up again after a few years, leaving me with zero confidence.

Hence my fretful, obsessive preparations before my first class at the weekend. I knew all materials were to be provided, but that didn’t stop me from manically fixating on packing a pencil case – just in case. In scenes reminiscent of a child sharpening pencils on the day before school goes back after the summer holidays, I found myself turning the house upside down searching for instruments I knew I wouldn’t need, purely as a way of distracting myself from worrying about my lack of artistic practice. Over, er, the last decade or so.

Of course, the pencil case was only the tip of the iceberg when it came to displacement activities. What to wear? Obviously, something charcoal-proof yet exuding an air of artistic competence. Preferably without going the full smock-and-beret.

Despite myself, I got there. I put marks on paper. I spent two hours concentrating on something outwith my head. It was bliss. I can’t wait for the next one.

Which leaves me thinking how much time I wasted being nervous. Just off for a quick plinky-plink while I’m on a roll.