I wasn't able to paint for a while because I had to rest my eyes—staring at a screen for hours while wearing contact lenses is a really bad idea, as I found out, lol. When I picked it up again I caught myself fearing that my hands would have forgotten what they had learned. As I kept going, it turned out to be rather the opposite. The painting process was a lot easier this time, although I hadn't practiced for a while. Maybe it's a good thing to take a break for a few days every now and then, to have some new "neural pathways" formed which enable one to get things done from a different perspective? However, above is the result, which I'm happy with, and I'm looking forward to painting more and more and more.
Painting has helped me a great deal in identifying my fears and thought patterns: there's just me and the "canvas", and what will happen on the canvas is a reflection of how I choose to think and act. I think I'll do a more detailed post on that—nonetheless, I want recommend a book that was very helpful on this path: Art & Fear by David Bayles and Ted Orland, which is also available on Scribd (if you have the subscription—if you don't know Scribd, it's basically Netflix for books).
I'll leave you with a quote from that book :)
"For you, the seed of your next artwork lies embedded in the imperfections of your current piece. Such imperfections (or mistakes, if you’re feeling particularly depressed about them today) are your guides – valuable, reliable, objective, non-judgemental guides – to matters you need to reconsider or develop further. It is precisely this interaction between the ideal and the real that locks your art into the real world, and gives meaning to both."