You can’t teach a young dog old tricks
Yes, you read that correctly. You can’t teach a young dog old tricks, because any form of cheating/trickery/bribery or coercion only leads to bad habits. And we should know; we’ve just brought home a 9 week old Sprocker Spaniel puppy and it feels like we have a new baby in the house! We are exhausted. I’ve never been so tired in all my life….well, except when our own children were born.
It makes you realise how much this little puppy is looking to you for leadership and direction as it literally knows nothing about living in a house with four people, where there are boundaries and rules and polite conventions. Leaving a puddle in the living room is not polite convention.
It takes discipline - our own discipline and self-control - to train a puppy to behave in the ways we want it to. And that puts a burden of responsibility on my shoulders I don’t think I really considered when we said yes to getting him. You see, I’ve got plenty of ‘stuff’ going on at the moment, not least the fact I’m going through a season of artist’s block where I am struggling to get the creative juices flowing, with little motivation or inspiration to break out the brushes and don my painting apron. One of the drawbacks (though obviously a blessing too) of being an artist is the solitude - no office politics, no deadlines set by others, no friendly chats in the office kitchen, no work parties…..I think I might be missing some of that actually! What it does mean is I have to be disciplined in my own personal development. I have a bookshelf full of art books about various genres, movements, groups and styles, and yet I’ve never really read ANY of them all the way through, and tend to only flick through a small handful from time to time. What I’ve discovered over the last couple of months is that my own lack of discipline and perseverance in learning and feeding my imagination over the last eight years has resulted in this stagnant period. It’s my own fault. I could see it coming a mile off, but did nothing about it, and now I’m moping about like a grounded teenager.
This brings me on to the reasons why I’m writing about this; the only person who can lead me out of these doldrums is myself. I have failed to be my own strong leader, failed to inspire myself to create, failed to show myself the leadership I know I need to keep improving, to keep painting and to keep being inspired. I have worked for some amazing bosses in the past, men who gave me the confidence to push myself, learn new things, take responsibility, and right now that’s who I need to be, for myself. I’ve taken my eye off the ball recently to fact that it’s an incredible privilege to be an artist working for myself, able to have the time to sit, sketch, paint, read, write and generally be my own boss all in the knowledge that this is my job and I love it.
And so as I type this out I can hear our little Bramble asleep behind me, completely at rest and safe in the knowledge that we are here to look after him, keep him safe, feed him and show him how to be a good boy.
Perhaps I need to be more like Bramble? Perhaps this old dog can learn some new tricks?
Take care
Jamie