I’m one of those highly sensitive ones.

They say a lot of creative people are. That it is helpful, because we see the world slightly different, and that different view makes our art relatable, refreshing. I agree.

My high sensitivity makes me see, feel, hear, smell a lot. And I mean: A LOT. As in: too much, actually. Nearly every day it leads me to be overwhelmed. By noisy places, other people’s moods, the little stresses of being an adult, to do lists, plans changing, nightmares, my cats getting sick.

In an ideal world we try to balance the amount of overwhelm we can handle, but you know just as well as I do that we do not exactly live in an ideal world.

So I nap. Napping is my lifesaving strategy. I come home, completely upset because I saw a dead animal on the highway, I grab my plaids and I nap. I get off the phone with yet another instance that can’t help me, I call my cats and we nap. My to do list keeps growing instead of shrinking, I nap.

You get the gest of it: I nap. Often.

When I wake up from my nap, I feel like I literally slept it off. I eat something, and feel new. Next I ask myself: what do I want to do now?
The answer is the same, every single day: now I want to paint.

Of course it takes up a lot of my time, all that napping. My productivity is low, my social life carefully balanced, and my house not the tidiest.

But hey, if it keeps me able to paint, I’ll nap.

So I nap. I paint and I nap. But most importantly: I paint. And that does not overwhelm me. It makes me happy.