Rebecca picks up her paintbrush and refuses to feel guilty about not doing the laundry

What do you do at the weekend? Head to the shops? Watch a movie? Go to the pub?

I usually spend the whole weekend dreading Monday which somehow only ever ensures that it comes even quicker. I’ve decided that I need to change this trend and have therefore embarked on weekend activities which oscillate between spending time at home and leaving Oxford to actually do stuff. Real stuff. Like visiting friends in London. Or swimming in the sea. Cramming into one weekend the life that movies have always promised me.

Last weekend I barely left the house but I did embark on art. I’ve always harboured a romantic, dazed notion of me, sitting at a desk writing novels. Or picking up a paintbrush and doing a Picasso. Or jewellery-making. Even squidging around that oven-baked clay would probably do, I told myself. Who knows how great I’ll be. I could sell stuff at craft fayres, I thought. Admittedly, these plans never come to fruition. Mainly because life – exciting or not – gets in the way. Or because there’s wine.

But often the reason I deny myself these artistic pleasures is because I sense that this is time poorly spent.

It’s not like one day I’ll pick up a brush and realise I’m Van Gogh. I’m no genius in waiting. I’m not even a Genie in waiting, with the power to make myself into any kind of painter. So this ‘art’ time suddenly becomes guilt time about all the things I could be doing instead. Like trying to relearn French. Or doing the laundry. Or exfoliating. Anything, really, that actively – and physically – improves my tomorrow. Speaking another language may – some day, who knows? – help my CV. Exfoliating makes me look shiny and therefore enhances my overall sense of self. And laundry... well that’s self-explanatory.

But a half-finished short story? A poem about an ex-boyfriend? These will not make tomorrow any better. They won’t even – ever – make me money. Picasso died poor. Van Gogh lost an ear. Sylvia Plath stuck her head in a gas cooker. Even if you are mildly talented as an artist, this does not even nearly guarantee happiness.

However, last weekend I committed. I spent one blissful Saturday listening to music and painting. Sure, my hunch was right: I’m no Van Gogh.

I’m not even that chap from Art Attack.

But – here’s the thing – the part of me that would normally ask whether I’d hung out the washing was simply stunned into silence by my lack of artistic talent. I was in the moment – I was so in the moment I wasn’t even thinking about the moment. I wasn’t thinking about moments at all as I tried frantically to paint a plain blue sky.

I even fell back into writing poetry. I may not be Wordsworth just yet, but there’s still time.

When it comes to art, just doing seems to be enough.

Forget notions of grandeur or fame. Even forget the craft fayres. And just paint.

Or – at the very least – whip out the oven-baked clay and have yourself an ugly brooch-making party.