Today I am a painter, tomorrow a carpenter and next week I will be a musician. These aren’t the things I claim to be, but these are the things that claim me.

If any of you guys actually knew me, I wouldn’t really need to explain to you how my life constantly goes through a randomly ordered cycle of “creative phases”. I say creative, but what that really translates into is obsessive.

Take for example one of my many cycles, Painting.

I can paint all day long, every day… for three months straight. During those months I am thinking only about painting. I can’t concentrate or focus on anything else.

All day my mind is painting.

Constantly, over and over in my mind. What should I paint, what materials do I have, canvas or wood? Colours. shapes. lines. Painting.

While I sleep, While I eat, While I breathe, it’s all painting.

During that phase I can’t not be painting. I have to paint. I get frustrated and angry and when life’s little distractions take me away from what I need to be doing.

And then one day I wake up and it’s gone. Well, it’s not really gone. It’s never actually gone. It just lays dormant for a while waiting, allowing the next obsession to take its place for a while.

And that next obsession could be anything. Music, painting, photography, carving, reading, building… anything at all.

Something inside of me is constantly telling me what I “need” to be doing  and when I need to be doing it. It makes its own calendar and sets its own clock. And if something sets back its schedule, no matter how hard I try, it makes me miserable and difficult.

And I know that I can be a difficult person to get along with sometimes, but I am trying.

So anyways. Buy a damn painting already. I’ll be nice.

chrisvalour@hotmail.com