I’m in the studio this weekend. It feels good to do creative work. I loaded my “painting playlist” for my ears, and my “inspiration slideshow” for my eyes, sat awhile with my thoughts and feelings, then turned my chair to face the window (and my work surfaces) and got started. Yesterday was a solidly good day of painting, with 3 completed canvases, and one background that needed to dry before I could do the foreground work. Very satisfying.
Today, I sit down once again, early in the afternoon with the filtered light of an overcast day brightening the room. Playlist? Check! Slideshow? Check! Ready to begin again? Yes, I am.
Today there is chocolate in my coffee, and an image in my head pulled straight out of a recent nightmare. I “don’t have the words” for the feeling it conveys, so I have to rely on canvas and color to “find the words” for me. Most of the paintings this weekend are bold colors, contrasting details silhouetted over wildly colorful sunrises, sunsets and … this…
new work, as yet untitled
Who is she? Is that her reflection? Is she alone, or following someone else? Is this image a metaphor for a journey, or change? Is this even “finished” at all? Where is she going – and why? Is she passing through a portal to another plane of existence? My eyes come back to it again and again, wondering.
…Funny what gets our attention…
This other thing I have in mind is thus far just a glimmer of a shape, colors, an idea with it’s roots in a terrible nightmare, but on it’s own it’s just an image… a thought. Can I get it on canvas? Will it tell me something I don’t know? Will it help me communicate something for which I lack words? There’s no way to know until I put brush to canvas and see it take shape.
Long weekend. I slept in this morning. Enjoyed coffee with my Traveling Partner. Cooked a simple breakfast for the two of us to start our day on. He’s in the shop working. I’m… shopping? Running errands? Doing a bit of housekeeping? Finishing some chore left half-completed? Loitering in the living room hoping to hang out with my partner when he takes a break? The day started to develop down that commonplace path, in spite of having taken the day off (and planned the long weekend) with the intention of spending a major portion of that time enjoying creative time in my studio. A fairly typical outcome for me; I’ve got priors. lol I really do need this time for myself, spent creatively, and yes, also spent entirely in my own head, with my own thoughts, focused on my own needs and agenda. I don’t think I’m unusual that I struggle to follow through on time for myself and my own needs. It’s a pretty ordinary challenge for a lot of people (perhaps especially women, but certainly not exclusively women).
So, today I “held my ground” (with myself) and pulled my focus back to creative endeavors after breakfast. Well, after the breakfast dishes were done, and I’d updated a shopping list for later. Okay, and also after finishing a project I’d left sort of dangling. And, yes, also after I got a quick trip to the store out of the way. LOL See what I mean? This is a tough one for me. Self-care is often most difficult for people who most earnestly need to invest time in their self-care… which makes a lot of sense, if I consider that the reason some of us have this earnest heartfelt unmet need is 100% due to the lack of fulfilling it in the first place, rather chronically. I can do better. I need that from myself.
So, I made my second coffee and headed to the studio. Started up my computer, and loaded a file in which I keep a variety of inspiring images, and items that are likely to “tickle my imagination” and become new work. The slideshow slowly progresses on the monitor to my left, while I write. In the background, I hear my partner handling business with a customer on the phone. It “feels like home”. I breathe in and feel the sense of safety and security of “home”. I breathe out, smiling. It’s a nice place to find myself in life. “This too shall pass…” my anxiety ominously whispers in my head. I just laugh silently; I’ll enjoy it while it lasts, and count myself fortunate to enjoy it at all. The future is an unknown, I remind my anxiety, and I’m okay with that.
I sip my coffee and consider the blank canvas in front of me, and the images in the slideshow. Most of these images are appealing landscapes (mostly my own photography), colorful sunrises and sunsets, and bold flowers shot very close up, filling the screen with silky texture, interesting shadows, and brilliant color. I consider that thematically. Seems like I want to be painting landscapes more than abstraction, presently. I continue to drink my coffee contentedly. Is this “where I’m at” presently?
…My Traveling Partner sticks his head in the open door of my studio to share words about work. I listen, staying engaged and present. I don’t count it as a distraction; my door is still open, by intent. I’ll close the door when it comes time to focus, when I know I’ll want to be left entirely alone with myself. In spite of how badly I know I need that time, I’m also aware that my partner values my presence, and that “feeling rejected” entirely sucks, especially if that feeling is conveyed by someone we love. Finding balance between the shared connected time he (and we) need with the alone time that I need to be mentally well has one very important requirement; I have to make (and take) the time I need. There is a “sweet spot”… but actually doing the verbs is on me.
Self-care is so often almost comedic in its difficulties. I’m the one person I can also count on to be right here with me… and the one person who also knows precisely what I do actually want and need most. Counting on anyone else to ensure my needs are met, with those two details in mind, is… a bit crazy. So… I’ve given up on that. It’s lovely when my Traveling Partner meets needs I have. It’s splendid when my work environment and job meet some of my actual needs. Same with friends, with family, with circumstances… it’s wonderful when needs are met through happenstance or healthy relationships or mutual support, but… learning to count on myself to meet my own fucking self-care needs? That has had soooo much value (and so much less “crazy” to it). It’s too easy to be frustrated when some Other does not meet my needs… but it’s exceptionally foolish to expect them to in the first place.
So. Here I sit. Images and inspiration filling my thoughts, as I prepare for a day in the studio. It’s lovely. I’m glad I made the time – I need this for myself to feel entirely well and whole and complete. I’m even more appreciative that having made the time, I’m also taking the time, to do the verbs. Needs met? Looks that way…
Some years I’ve spent Valentine’s Day alone. That hasn’t been a problem for me. Other years I’ve enjoyed the companionship of friends, or in the embrace of a lover, or with my Traveling Partner. In the abstract, I enjoy the idea of a holiday celebrating sexual and romantic love very much. I still think it is super weird that card giveaways by multitudes of school children have anything at all to do with that. Just seems wildly inappropriate to mix all those things up together, is what I’m saying.
Last night my Traveling Partner looked over at me, “I didn’t get you anything for Valentine’s Day” he observed with a somewhat regretful tone. “I didn’t get you anything either.” I replied, rather matter-of-factly. I immediately felt that perhaps I should have – although most years we haven’t done anything much about Valentine’s Day besides love each other. Last year was unusual – fairly spectacular, honestly. This year I made plans to make a really nice dinner for the two of us, nothing exotic, just good cooking. I am even counting on myself not to be shy about romance and instigating some adult fun after work. My anxiety can sometimes get in my way, and the awareness of it alone can provoke it, but I’m feeling good about myself and the day, and my partner, and love generally, so… I have hopes for a pleasant evening of companionship, love, and romance. Expensive gifts are not a requirement.
It hits me out of the blue; intimacy needs presence not presents. I could have taken the day off and spent it in the company of love. Fucking hell. How is this only now something I think of? I make a reminder on my calendar in the distant future – a year away, minus a couple weeks, “Get Valentine’s Day Off!!”. Along the way, I notice the long weekend coming up with unexpected relief and delight; I apparently thought ahead to planning Friday off in advance of the 3-day President’s Day weekend. Damn, I hope I don’t blow it with my bullshit… we could really use a lovely long weekend spent enjoying each other’s company.
“Lovers” 1991
Love takes work. Not one day of cards, flowers, gifts, and chocolates – real work, every day. Real commitment. Real consideration. Real respect. Real caring. No faking it with love, either. Love sees through fakery pretty easily, in spite of all the “love is blind” shit we hear. Love can be hurt. Love can be damaged. Love can even be destroyed – how tragic that is! I take a breath, and think about love. I sigh out loud in this quiet space, and remind myself how many delightful wonderful experiences still take some effort, or some practice, to really “get it right”. I think about love for a few minutes, just sitting here smiling and sipping my coffee.
…I’m fortunate to be so well loved…
“Cherry Blossoms” 2011
I yawn and stretch, and watch the dark of night give way to the pale blue gray of a wintry dawn. I think about my Traveling Partner, still asleep at home, unaware of the snow that fell during the night. I hope his dreams are pleasant. I think back on all the things he’s done to make life better for us over the past couple of years since he moved back in with me… it’s been, what, about 4 years? December 2018, I think…? Wow. We’ve come so far together in such a short time. 😀
I sit here just smiling for awhile, thinking about this human being I love so dearly. I think about yesterday’s bit of writing, and better ways to demonstrate my affection day-to-day…
I’m sipping on a class of cold clean filtered drinking water. It’s pleasantly refreshing. I’ve been drinking a lot more water this year (so far). Pro-tip for the women in the post-menopause set; it’s incredibly helpful to stay adequately hydrated if you’re hoping to continue to enjoy an active sex life that may – at least sometimes – include natural vaginal lubrication. lol Lesson learned. Drink enough water, People – we’re made of the stuff!
…Coffee #2 a little later…
It’s a relaxed Sunday. My “to-do list” is relatively short and utterly commonplace. I’ll do some laundry, empty the dishwasher, tidy up here and there. Clean the bathroom. Ordinary stuff. I could resist, resent the practical workload needed to support our quality of life, bitch about it endlessly as I drag myself through these tasks… but… doing so represents rather a lot of wasted effort, doesn’t it? I mean, compared to just going about getting the things done that need doing, with a certain… accepting merriment? I’m feeling both accepting and merry, so I know which approach I am taking today.
Things are quite lovely with my Traveling Partner and I lately. Like, since we had our rather painful conversation “the other day” (more than a week ago?). Feels like we turned a corner on an important understanding of each other. I feel loved. He seems to also feel loved. We’re enjoying a lot more intimacy (and also more sex). We’re having a better time together day-to-day, and taking each other’s humanity less personally. It has proven entirely useful to have had that conversation… so I’m glad we did. I still have to work at some things, as a person dealing with another person. I think we both tend to take each other “personally” now and then over petty bullshit that isn’t personal at all… more to do with quirks in the way we each communicate and express emotion. Taking shit like that personally is a recipe for heartache. So… don’t do that. 🙂
“Inspiration” 24″ x 36″, acrylic mixed-media w/glow and ceramic details, 2010
Right now the two books on my shelf I find having the most day-to-day value in guiding my skill at self-care, and my ability to communicate with, and nurture, my partner, are proving to the The Four Agreements and surprisingly, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F***. It’s not that these two slim volumes are somehow “more correct” than some of the weightier tomes in my reading list (like Wherever You Go, There You Are by Jon Kabat-Zinn), which are certainly worth reading, it’s more to do with immediate practical utility and perspective. There are books that teach us deeply, and there are books that give us quick useful insights that we can apply right now with great results, and upon continued reflection continue to teach us.
…I won’t kid you about The Four Agreements, it has a loose sort of “ancient wisdom” style framework that very practical people may be inclined to approach dismissively. Do you. I’m not here to foist a religion off on you or suggest magical thinking. I simply find enormous value in the very basics of the four agreements discussed, specifically, and also the basic understanding of how our life and culture program us for certain problematic thinking or behaviors that we’d do well to at least understand more deeply (if not change outright). So… with that in mind, yes, I’m a huge fan of The Four Agreements. It “works” for me – I still have to “do the verbs” myself, and it’s not a given that my results are reliably awesome; sometimes it very much matters what folks around me are also doing, thinking, and believing (we’re all in this together, each having our own experience) – but it’s a helpful way to look upon the world. It was The Four Agreements that taught me the most about the importance of not taking shit personally.
The modernity and mildly humorous cynicism of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*** is different; it points out some seriously obvious things about why mindfulness does work – and how it doesn’t work (and why). It points out how very individual we each feel, and how “special” we are truly not (as individuals). Each of us having our own experience, and nonetheless all of us quite human, with all the baggage and bullshit that implies. It reminds me to take myself – and the world – a bit less seriously, at least now and then, and re-engages my attention on some of the paradoxes of living well and enjoying that experience.
I mention them both this morning because time and again I come back to them, where this is not the case with some of the other books on my list (which have tended to be “read twice and move on” experiences that provide value, but don’t gain more value with additional readings). In every case, though, I think of the books on my shelf less as “self-help” and more as “self-education”, and it’s with that in mind that I make my selections. It’s not necessarily helpful to just gobble up library books desperately seeking answers – that’s not how these came to sit on my shelf. It’s more to do with learning specific things about how my brain works, how emotions function, and how I can make use of what I learn about those things. Then I move on, working to practice the practices I’ve learned over time that help me build resilience, communicate more clearly, and treat others (and myself) well. Just tools in my toolbox. I’ve still got to do the work.
…Books that don’t demonstrate real value and worthiness don’t end up on my shelf; I just read those and then donate them (or return them to the library they came from).
I finish my water, and wonder “where this path leads?” I’m enjoying the journey. It’s nice to feel this way.
It’s a lovely relaxed Sunday. Maybe I’ll spend some time in my freshly tidied up studio…? It’s definitely time to begin again. 🙂
Sunshine and a clean work surface – like a blank page.
It’s been 10 years since I started this blog, and this journey. I mean, I suppose I could choose a lot of dates and say “I took my first step here”, but starting this blog and returning to therapy during a very dark time in my life was more significant than I knew at the time, and I’ve come farther, faster, I think, than I otherwise might have if I hadn’t taken those steps.
I lived in a different place, with different views.
10 years ago. I could measure that in jobs… it was 5 jobs ago. I could measure it in moves… it was 4 moves ago. I could count it off in hours, which is an impressive 87660. A little daunting if I think too long about how still needs doing. I could count it off in blog posts… 2512, an average of 20.9 per month, and more than 1 million words.
My first post was just an brief introduction. My second? It was about perspective. 10 years later to the day, and I’m still writing about how much perspective matters, and how to shift it in a more positive direction.
The first book my new therapist recommended to me, and an important step on a profoundly healing journey.
10 years ago I started reading, and building my reading list. I turned 50. I started keeping an aquarium (which I kept going until just last year). I began an intensely creative period as an artist. I bought new hiking boots and started walking a lot more, and I started making solo trips to the coast to make time for healthy self-reflection.
The beginnings of a piece on the theme of perspective.
I was in a rough place emotionally when I started this blog 10 years ago. At the same time I started this blog, I started an art project on the theme of perspective and experience, and the subjective nature of memory vs lived experience. I used two large glass containers, and into one I dropped dark stones, black glass “pebbles” and mementos of sorrow or grief, and small amounts of black glitter representative of darker moods. Into the other, I dropped light colored glass “pebbles”, glow glitter, and things reminiscent of joy and day-to-day moments of pleasure. Not so much “good vs bad” as pleasant vs unpleasant. I wanted to gauge “how bad is it really?” in some visible way. I kept it going until I was ready to create “Perspective” on canvas, some 6 months later.
“Perspective” acrylic mixed-media on canvas, 16″ x 36″, 2013
As difficult as my day-to-day experience sometimes felt, and as much as I often struggled with my experience, emotions, or circumstances, it was clear that even with “my thumb on the scale”, things were more often pleasant than unpleasant. The ratio wasn’t even close. There was more light than darkness, more joy than pain – and this is true even now. (I say that because it’s been quite a difficult morning and was a weirdly challenging weekend emotionally, and I’m definitely feeling that.) This particular art project opened my eyes to the importance of perspective in building and maintaining good mental and emotional health; if my lived experience felt unpleasant but was objectively better than I was feeling it to be, I figured there had to be a way to correct for that. I mean… I wear glasses because I’m near-sighted. What could I be doing to correct my sense of perspective on my own life? This became an important focus for me from then on.
…As it turns out, there are a number of different ways to gain or restore perspective… You could read Viktor Frankl… or take up meditation… or get therapy… I did all those things and found them each helpful in their own way. There are a lot of other things a person can do to shift perspective.
This morning I am sipping my coffee and thinking about the weird weekend from the perspective of having had a restless night, and being abruptly wakened (too early) by my Traveling Partner’s frustrated plea that I please work in the office today so he could get some sleep, himself. (I don’t doubt my snoring was keeping him awake, which sucks, and my office is adjacent to our bedroom and this manual keyboard is noisy, and my typing tends to reflect my emotions… I get it.) I was seriously looking forward to working from home this morning. I wasn’t set up to leave for the office at all. It wasn’t exactly a pleasant “wake up call”. I didn’t sleep well, myself so I just got up immediately, dressed, and “left for work” – hours before my work day even begins. I thought about just parking somewhere and napping in the car. I wasn’t actually properly awake when I left the house and possibly should not even have been driving (I was pretty groggy, hadn’t yet had my coffee, and was functioning on “auto pilot”, and feeling hurt to be asked to leave). I was feeling pretty “unwelcome in my life” – which is a shitty perspective to take on one’s own experience, honestly, and skewed hard away from the demonstrably positive real life experience I actually live day-to-day. I started the morning moody and emotional, and vexed with my partner. Bleh. I feel rather fortunate that I happened upon the awareness that this blog is now 10 years old, almost to the day (yesterday was the actual date of my actual first post). It’s given me new perspective on my perspective and a chance to write about perspective, generally, which tends to shift my focus from my own perspective to… perspective as its own thing. lol
The tl;dr is that perspective matters – and you can change yours. (Your results may vary.)
…I’m not “in a better mood” or any more well-rested than I would have been without the opportunity to reflect on and write about perspective, but it is much harder to just wallow in a shitty mood over the crappy start to my day once I take the time to slow down and reflect on some positives. I feel myself starting to let that shit go.
The weekend was actually pretty wonderful. We got some things done. Celebrated some achievements. Loved each other thoroughly. We also found ourselves dealing with a couple unexpected moments of strife. Predictable. Human primates are emotional creatures, and barely domesticated. I try not to get hung up on those, although now and then such moments find me reconsidering my life choices, if only for a moment. :-\
I stare into my coffee lost in my thoughts. Often.
10 years. This year I’ll be 60. Another opportunity to begin again.
Evening Light 