I'm making it a point to paint every day, no matter how busy or shitty the day is.  It's helping un-mire me from the bullshit mundane productivity.  Like, every day, I have time set aside to create something totally frivolous, whose only job is to be cool, and or interesting to look at.  It's a few hours of calm quiet time every day.

There's something distinctly satisfying about laying down strokes of color, and watching some meaningless little metal or resin chunk take form into a tiny little character with a story and a sort of life in my imagination.

I'm deeply satisfied seeing my skill develop and my techniques refine with each miniature.  I practice grounding and centering to become ultra calm and steady, every time I pick  up a brush.  It's both fast and slow. Painting something the size of a quarter requires an absolute stillness of self.  It's fast in a way, too. I can cover a lot of space in a small amount of time. I can see improvements from one miniature to the next.  Things slow down in details.   I feel like this really helps hone my focus.  Painting requires razor focus. Only in this hobby will I spend an hour perfecting inside the mouth of a creature whose head isn't even as big as my thumbnail. When people are talking to me, I fuck up.  When there's loud noises, I fuck up.  Hopefully, one day I can even focus through big distractions.

I started doing this on a whim a few years ago.  It's turned into a necessary thing, and I feel like the positive benefits of dedicating myself to painting every day, spilling over into the rest of my life.