Business mixed with pleasure

I'm blessed that I like to go to work. Most artists feel that way. It wasn't always like that for me. For awhile in New York, while going to Pratt Institute, I drove a cab. When I got out of Pratt, making a living as a artist in Florida was a long shot (for me, anyway). So I drove a truck during the day and painted at night. I wanted to be an illustrator but jobs were hard to come by. Things were bleak until Olive Garden called.
I was asked to paint a mural in one of their first restaurants. What started as an occasional pay check grew to be a monster assignment that required me to travel nearly every week for 12 years. I learned more about painting there than art school could have taught me in twice the time. It wasn't glamorous work, but it changed everything about what I thought it was to be a painter. And I remember that was when I started loving to go to work. But more about that later.
Today was spent doing little things that in total, seemed like a lot of work. Photographing paintings, titling and numbering them for inventory, e-mailing images to my webmaster. And my gallery owner stopped by to pick up something to pitch to a client. A large wet unstretched painting tacked to the wall. I finished it up and laid it wet on the rear deck of the SUV.
"Good luck! Dont let it touch your clothes."