Color therapy.

My Brother-in-Law gave me this book for Yule/Christmas a few years back. I have only finished one of the images in it. But I've decided that when I do my weekly half hour of art therapy, one time a month I will bust out my colored pencils and work on a page. It's going to take me a while to get through the book but it's brainless work. I suppose it lowered my stress levels some. I was a little frustrated that the half hour passed before I could finish the design element that I was working on. I had one more element to do before what I planned for the day was done.

Still, I am making progress on this. I tried out coloring books aimed for younger audiences and I got bored quickly. I am giving this one an honest shot. The details in it are interesting and can lend themselves to complex color combinations. I'm not attributing therapeutic meaning to the colors that I pick. I'm simply going of of aesthetics here. It's like the coloring pages they had me do when I was in the psych ward. Brainless work that just forces you to slow down.

Before, I did the green portions. I guess that was back in April. Then I set the book down and forgot about it. Today, I did the yellow and red portions. I was planning on doing some of the inner section in red as well, but I was  having a hard time choosing from my massive colored pencil collection. (I have been hoarding colored pencils since childhood because my parents were prone to confiscating them and my artwork. So I kept them hidden away in random places. Now that I can have them out, I've got them organized, roughly, by color and I've almost 100 of them of various brands.)

I'm not hypomanic, so I don't know how well working on this coloring book when I'm in that state would do for slowing my brain down. I'm just tired and mildly anxious about Cuddle Bear getting his braces tomorrow. This was an ok distraction from that anxiety. Now, I have a ton of housework to catch up on ranging from laundry to dishes to wiping down the bathroom. All the stuff that fell by the wayside during the hypomanic episode and the depressive episode that came before it. I wish my brain worked properly. Then I'd be able to keep up with stuff.