Today (July 4) is Independence Day in America. It is also the 27th anniversary of the death of Bob Ross. I think, by now, most people have heard of him—the soft-spoken painter with a blue shirt, jeans, and permed hair who ran a TV show called The Joy of Painting from 1983 - 1994. After school, I enjoyed watching him paint “happy little trees” and remind the viewers that “there are no mistakes, just happy accidents.”
In late spring, early summer of 2019, about a year before I started practicing, I suffered from a terrible bout of insomnia, the first ever in my life. Usually, I’ll have one or two nights a year where I can’t sleep (so far I have had 0 in 2022 and let’s keep it that way 
). But this… this lasted for roughly a month and a half. I feel really crappy enough not getting sleep for even one night. Ugh… this… this was…horrible! Many restless nights of only sleeping for three hours… if I was lucky.
My doctor prescribed me medicine to help me sleep. But it dried my mouth out and it made me so tired the next day. I tried setting a bedtime routine, but the anxiety of trying to get a good night’s would get the better of me. I thought that I was going to have to start taking anti-anxiety medication when YouTube recommended an episode of The Joy of Painting. And I began watching it for the first time in years with a cup of chamomile tea.
Bob Ross’s soothing voice, the sound of his paint brush on the canvas… it calmed me. Watching him, I began to think that everything would soon be okay. That this insomnia wouldn’t last forever. After a while, I fell asleep by the end of the episode and woke up the next morning! Eventually, I became too tired to watch him at bedtime and my insomnia finally ended.
It’s a huge shame that Bob Ross only lived to be 52. A kind and gentle soul who brought so much joy, like Fred Rogers, taken too soon. I had visited his grave in Florida years before my episode with insomnia, but couldn’t get a picture because it had started pouring! 
One of the items on my bucket list is to go back and take that picture!
I was hesitant to write my own spells because I was afraid of making mistakes, but I remembered Bob Ross’s words about mistakes… “they’re just happy, little accidents.” If you were painting and you made a “mistake”, you could always make that into something new.
I love all the oranges and reds in the sky and water. I could stare at it for days.
Hold on & I will find it:
Bet the paint brush looks neat and tastes sweet!