Learning from doing

I once determined to stop painting. It was never going to come right. I lasted about three days before being drawn back in because, what would I do if not this, day after day. It's a place to learn; if not words, then substance. Something that is hard to talk about but that is known accumulatively. It is a place where one measures oneself against oneself.
I admire the facility of portrait painters for instance, the skills learnt, the very look of it, the verisimilitude, the grace of image making. It seems worlds away from mine where I feel the thing must be forced into being against its will. Obstinacy is a part of it. The oily substance resists me and I must fight both it and myself until we both begin to bend and even then it can be sulky and obfuscatory. It is only a substance however, only oily mud. One must work it into something else.
When I have to stop, because I have stopped, the time spent on this will be what remains of me: something that says, I was here and engaged with this and every day was new.