Filmmaker Makes Dinner
the simple life of a cook-from-home artistArchive for procrastinating
‘Draw Something’ Life Lessons
Hmmm. What does this remind me of…?
Oh, yeah. Replace the junk food with some carrot pulp crackers and a green juice and that’s just about perfect.
I’ve been playing Draw Something (a Pictionary-esque drawing game) on my iPhone for a few weeks now. It’s a fun, creative way to connect with friends across the globe for free. The only problem (aside from it being a potential time-sucking distraction) is that you only get the three primary colors to draw with until you buy or earn more. Now this is usually fine (as it was with one of my favorite drawings above), but it’s not fine when you need to draw an orange. I mean, come on. I have an MFA; I need to have standards. So if, like me, you started playing the game, you may have found yourself pining for those glorious secondary colors.
If I only had X, my life would be better. This sounds familiar…
Well, I have them now. I earned them through all my hard work hunching over that tiny little screen. Purple, orange, brown, grey—even green! It’s as good as I thought it was going to be. Life is suddenly free and easy. Everything makes sense. Now I can draw an eggplant or a carrot (I guess I’ve got veggies on the brain from all this juicing) or even a landscape with green instead of yellow grass—as I imagine spring everywhere else in the country to be. Amazing.
Now, keep in mind that as a minimalist, I’ve thought long and hard about the prospect of earning more colors. Oooh, I could have pink or gold or tan or burgundy or teal or navy. It can get out of hand pretty fast. It’s just like my wardrobe, really. I’m still purging excess after years of impulse buys and recreational shopping. Like those clothes I lug around from one house to the next and never wear, I don’t need any more colors. I’ve got all the colors of the rainbow—even an artist doesn’t need more than that.
And that’s a significant minimalist lesson: it’s not about sacrificing and living without the things you need; it’s about having exactly what you need without a bunch of extra baggage or clutter or choices (or colors).
