Archives for posts with tag: walking my own path

I am sipping my coffee and feeling fairly comfortable with change, although somewhat uneasy. I got a call yesterday, late in the afternoon, that the A/C needs to come out of my window right away so that contractors can replace my front window – something I expected would be done in the spring. Caught by surprise during a busy work day, I felt overwhelmed, and I’ll admit it, frightened. No real reason. Generally, beyond the tantrums and the freak outs, I’ve got this. I am very adaptable, but I also find changes to my ‘safe space’, my  personal environment, my haven from chaos and damage, to be incredibly disruptive. It’s not so bad this time. I emailed my traveling partner, uncertain whether I would need his help, but knowing his counsel would be valuable regardless, and then gave the matter further thought.

In minutes, and with the help of a couple of deep breaths, and a perspective-providing reminder in the form of an exceedingly complicated spreadsheet I was contentedly in the midst of updating, I realized, again, “I’ve got this.” The panic itself is the bigger issue sometimes. Many times. (All of the times?) This morning I am calmly sipping coffee, and content that things are handled…and more than a little curious about the new window. Will it be much better at keeping out spiders than the previous window? Bonus! In the meantime, I have arranged to have the landlord remove the A/C, which needs to come out for the year, anyway.  (Now I just have to figure out where the hell to store it over the winter – space is limited here.)

Still, the whole ‘replacing the windows’ thing pushes my issues with having my safe space disturbed into the foreground. I think of it as only an issue with changes that are imposed upon me, rather than selected, but experience suggests otherwise, and the “consequences” are not always immediate, and sometimes linger for some days or weeks until I feel settled into whatever was changed. New windows and a new patio door may change the ambient sounds of the apartment, and if so, may tend to affect my sleep, or sense of safety, for example. I don’t predict or expect it these days, but I know the risk is there, and I observe as the experience unfolds.

Small things matter; it irritates me to see a stack of paintings now in a view of the room that generally includes the fireplace, but instead now shows off how many of my paintings are not hanging. lol I often just don’t look to the corner of the room where those paintings usually sit. I find myself irked with my own irritation; I could choose to deal with the surplus paintings quite differently. Should I be looking at my budget with an eye on climate controlled storage? Fuck life is expensive sometimes. “Less clutter would be good…” I think to myself with annoyance. Recalling that the ‘clutter’ is art, paintings that I don’t have room to hang, grates on my nerves. For a prolific artist, there is no living arrangement with enough wall space to hang everything. I take a moment to sooth myself with the recollection of past delight with being able to rotate my displayed art with the changing seasons, or rearrange it for holidays, and how lovely it is to be able to hang work that reflects my mood, or changes in life, and how much I love it when I sell a piece that was hanging – and can easily fit something different into that place on the wall. I’m okay. I’m just having my windows replaced. 🙂

Today I'm not making this complicated.

Today I’m not making this complicated.

Change? I got this. Today that’s enough. 🙂

I take pictures. I take a lot of pictures. My camera goes everywhere with me, although to be fair that’s not a challenge; I use my camera phone as my primary camera. Sometimes that’s obvious, since as cameras go, it’s still a phone. I don’t consider myself, creatively, a photographic artist first; I am humbled daily by the images shot by any number of other photographers – including my 16-year-old niece, who recently took up photography, and has since shot any number of outstanding images of insect wildlife, dog facial expressions, and life*.

I take pictures of squirrels.

I take pictures of squirrels.

I take a lot of pictures without worrying much about whether or not I am ‘good enough’ to be ‘a photographer’. By definition, a photographer is one who shoots photographs. I’m that. I’m a lot of other things too. What sets me apart from any professional photographer (who earns a living taking photographs with a level of technical ability worth paying them for), or an artist who works in photography as their medium (who, whether they earn a living or not, takes wonderful photographs, images that capture something about life and the world, that people want to see), is The Ratio [of great shots to wasted ones]. I am a student, an amateur, a woman with a camera phone; I take uncounted pictures to get one great shot [maybe] – and am quite willing to make use of pictures that communicate something to me, personally, but which are not particularly skillful or extraordinary pictures. A professional would take potentially many pictures, and get many that were precisely what they were looking for, and a professional would be unlikely to make use of poor quality images. An artist might take more pictures – or not – but would likely have many more shots that capture something quite extraordinary. The ratio of great shots to ‘why did you bother’ shots is very different for someone just snapping pictures along life’s journey, and someone who is skilled, studious, gifted, or driven by artistic purpose – or all of those things at once.

A favorite floral shot; some pictures capture something that lasts.

A favorite floral shot; some pictures capture something that lasts.

One lovely thing about life is that practice is a thing; I could become a more skilled photographer with study and practice. (My photography has improved quite a lot over the past couple years.) I could become a captivating artist with a camera, with more study and practice. (I occasionally take some amazing shots even now.)  There are all those verbs involved, and results that vary based on choices and opportunities – and inspiration. With practice, the ratio of great shots to wasted shots would change in favor of great shots – because we become what we practice. Yep. Some things are exactly just that simple. I can’t actually see any particularly obvious dividing line between ‘dinking around with my camera phone’ and ‘I’m a photographer’ – Only a ratio of great shots to crap shots, a ratio of meaningful images to trite images, and a ratio of great pictures taken to all the pictures taken.

Sometimes I don't quite capture what I was going for.

Sometimes I don’t quite capture what I was going for.

Having said all of that, I’ll add that I’m not certain the ratio has ‘real meaning’ or value beyond words; I love taking pictures and don’t care much whether I am ‘a successful photographer’ by any definition but my own. I enjoy taking the pictures, and in some cases even those that ‘didn’t turn out’ capture something of value, or are meaningful to me in some way. I could definitely grab hold of the ratio as an idea and beat myself down for not being ‘good enough’, or not growing fast enough – instead, this morning, I just observe that it’s there, as a thing – maybe – and that there are differences among us. My young niece has far more talent and aptitude with a camera than I do; it shows in the pictures. Happily, life is not a competition; I am free to enjoy her photographs alongside my own.

It's a journey. Each step I take is my own.

It’s a journey. Each step I take is my own.

Today is a good day to see the world with new eyes. Today is a good day to enjoy beauty and wonder. Today is a good day to be who we choose to become – by practicing. There is so much freedom to choose who we are, and who we want most to be. The labels are less important than the verbs. There is a whole world to explore on this journey.

*I am choosing not to use any of my nieces images in this post, although I am thinking about her work, and have it open on another tab of my browser, where I can look at it while I write. My choice to use only my own work in this post is based on my Big 5 relationship values; I have not been given explicit permission by the artist (my niece) to use her photography in my blog. It’s irrelevant that she is 16, or that she is my niece; she is the artist, and her images are her own work, owned by her, and using them without her permission is a theft of intellectual property. Yes, I’m serious. Please be considerate of the work of artists, get permission, give credit, and don’t seek to profit financially from their work without authorization – in advance. It’s just common courtesy.

I am sipping my coffee slowly; it’s too hot to drink comfortably. I’ve got my favorite playlist on, and it’s late enough in the morning that it is unlikely to disturb the neighbors, but I’ve got it turned down a little lower than I might later today; it’s the more comfortable choice for me, right now. It is a weekend morning, and I spent yesterday painting. I have plans to do so today, and I am finding it interesting that I feel no urgency or pressure to cram as much creative work as possible into these days and hours. I could as easily choose other things to do today, without any sense of being deprived or disappointed.

My home, my rules, my way - my time.

My home, my rules, my way – my time.

This is my place. I’ve set it all up for maximum personal comfort, personal convenience, and in celebration of my own aesthetic, ensuring my sense of emotional comfort, too. No more having to contemplate how and when I will get everything cleaned up and put away – before I even get started painting. I can live with the work in progress easily – and comfortably. This is new and wonderful.

I got close last October, when we all decided I could move upstairs to the loft (no, not really, and it didn’t happen)… or at least paint up there quite comfortably (well, for about three months, until the work space was rather unexpectedly filled up with things out of the attic on the assurance that an attic project would be committed to and wrapped up promptly… it wasn’t). I’d never gotten closer to real space to paint than those promises…until now. My previous experience has always been that my work, while valued, was in the way (“Oh, hey, I really like that one – when are you going to be cleaned up?”). My paints, canvases, my easel, the room it takes for canvases to dry…to hang…all very much in the way of everyday life – for everyone else. I got into the habit of scheduling time in advance, cleaning up quickly, and apologizing frequently for the inconvenience, and pretending not to notice when others lacked time or interest in viewing and celebrating new work with me. Every relationship offered some version of substantial limitation-setting on my freedom to work creatively. It hurt, and over time it slowly became a big deal; being an artist is a substantial part of who I am. After decades of it, I really needed something very different…and one of those things I needed turned out to be taking myself more seriously, and making my needs my own high priority.

There are moments when I really feel how much living alone lacks the intimacy and warmth of living with love…I definitely miss easy access to sex every day (and yes, at 52 I still very much want sex every day)…and hugs. I miss hugs a lot. I miss shared laughter, and touch. I miss kisses good-night, and good-bye, and welcome home. I miss someone being there for me when I’ve had a nightmare. But…there are things I don’t miss at all. I don’t miss being treated as an inconvenience. I don’t miss starting something beautiful artistically and having it completely derailed over OPD (other people’s drama), or some bit of household stress, or someone else’s needs of the moment. I don’t miss being interrupted for some mundane something or other while I am painting (or writing). I don’t miss not being able to play the music I love when I am painting (without also listening to a lot of bitching). I don’t miss living with bare walls, and paintings stacked everywhere begging to be hung (I don’t even get how that’s a thing, honestly). I don’t miss having to plan around everyone else and hoping that inspiration holds out until it is convenient for them for me to be painting. I love this space – I am wrapped in pure inspiration, undiluted by stress, drama or game-playing. I feel…artistically fearless. It’s lovely. (I still miss hugs.)

Enough.

Enough.

This morning, I slept in, woke easily and exchanged a few pleasant words with my traveling partner regarding the possibility of getting together at some point this weekend. I can comfortably finish my coffee, and pick up a paint brush…or not. Whether I paint is now dependent more on whether I am inspired than any one other factor. I am comfortably at home with myself, and with my work. It feels a little bit amazing…and for just a moment an icy sensation of fear and insecurity cuts through my soft easy mood…I look over my shoulder at the completed installation on the west wall; the sight of 17 paintings hung along an artistic progression in theme and color, inspired by my love of flowers, and the way light plays with color are enough to put those feeble demons to rest this morning. I smile as my gaze sweeps across the newly hung paintings and I think of love, too, and smile as I recall how much a few observations made by my traveling partner untangled my vision for that space. There are few things as powerful as a good partnership.

"Communion" 24" x 36" acrylic on canvas w/ceramic and glow. 2011

“Communion” 24″ x 36″ acrylic on canvas w/ceramic and glow. 2011

So little of life is truly an entirely solo effort – even when I paint, I am often ‘walking hand in hand’ with a love or trusted friend, in the depths of my heart, in the corners of my thoughts. (More than any other, my traveling partner is my artistic muse.) I am inspired by people – by the experience of being human – but that has often also been quite uncomfortable, as inspiration goes. Having a place of my own to work out the challenges, to linger in the arms of inspiration, to deep dive what is hidden within the shadows in my soul… it makes so much sense to live alone, in so many practical ways, as both a writer and a painter; these are not easily shared experiences.

Shared experience or not, I had a big hurdle to clear to get here, to this beautiful place. I needed to put me at the top of my list, and I needed to stop compromising my long-term needs for the convenience of others. It’s hard sometimes, even now. Living alone nudges me into first place on my agenda day-to-day, and that does make it much more difficult to undercut my own needs with needy bullshit sourcing deep in the chaos and damage. I still catch myself trying now and then. Incremental change over time requires both time – and practice. I am getting plenty of both, living alone. I miss the hugs, though… and sometimes it feels as if I miss them enough to give up painting and writing… only… that’s not at all the true truth. I would suffer greatly if I made that kind of choice. (Been there, tried that.)

"Sunset Meadow" acrylic on canvas w/pen&ink, gold, and glow 11" x 14" 2015

“Sunset Meadow” acrylic on canvas w/pen&ink, gold, and glow 11″ x 14″ 2015

I am still a beginner. I am a student of life, with more questions than answers (by far). This is my journey, and I am my own cartographer… the point, though, is this; aren’t we all? Isn’t today a good day to make the choice that makes the difference? Isn’t today a good day to invest fully in the best within? Isn’t today a good day to change the world?

I woke with a stuffy head this morning – a cold? No, just a stuffy head. Allergies? I guess…maybe…or maybe my head is just stuffy? The morning I feel slow, unproductive, distracted, sluggish. How human! My attempt at iced coffee doesn’t have enough ice…the coffee ice cubes melt down, and the result? A tepid coffee…taller than usual. Not really the desired outcome…but it was an after thought, midway through making coffee. As is often the case with whims, the lack of planning, the inadequate preparation, and the lack of focus result in the sort of hit or miss outcome that, in this instance, is clearly farther along the ‘miss’ end of the spectrum. I’m having to invest in a positive state of being a bit more actively than usual.

I put on music that keeps me moving and puts a smile on my face. My sleep wasn’t especially restful. In addition to the stuffy head, I woke feeling sort of… desiccated, and headache-y. My traveling partner has indeed been traveling, and we hung out last night, it’s possible I got exposed to a head cold virus…but it doesn’t really feel quite like that… Why am I fussing over it? There’s more value in the awareness, the acceptance, and dealing with it – the why is sort of pointless, isn’t it?

Needing a moment of joy in the temple of my heart.

Needing a moment of joy in the temple of my heart.

I am thinking about the evening, hanging out with my dear love. Emotions come and go – my volatility is off the charts this morning, and I don’t understand that, either. Cuddling together on the love seat, hanging out, talking, and just being together, it was wonderful celebrating the profound connection we share; I miss living with him. I don’t miss the niggling little bullshit arguments that crop up when we live together, and seem oddly important in the moment – those I am happily doing without. I don’t miss the two of us tripping over each other’s baggage, and aggravating each other’s issues. I don’t miss those peculiar moments of doubt when I look into his eyes and wonder, just for a moment, if I actually understand what’s going on at all…or the look of doubt in his when some moment is seriously affected by my injury, and he wonders whether he can make love work with that.  (Yes, I can see it.) I definitely don’t miss the challenges around living with the mismatched assorted others in our experience that aren’t a good fit for one or the other of us; I definitely find not living with the OPD an improvement. I miss living with his smile, though, and his touch, and his everyday utterly inappropriate humor. I miss his scent, and his aesthetic, and I miss his conversation. It’s hard to ‘get enough’ of any of that without living together…on the other hand… I’m enjoying me so much more comfortably without the constant self-consciousness, and self-doubt that crops up so much more when I live with other people.

It looks like we’ll be seeing more of each other; I’m really settled in now, and this is a comfortable space to hang out, to be, and to enjoy each other. It’s a drama free zone. I look over my shoulder at the fireplace and imagine a crackling fire in autumn, feet up, arms around each other… Yes, Love, I am happy here. This works for me. This is my home.

Home.

Home.

This morning, though…I’m moody, irritable, and potentially a walking negative outcome waiting for the wrong moment to become real. What’s up with that? Freaking moody human primates! Who needs this bullshit? This morning I am working at the task of ‘defusing the bomb’; it’s less than desirable to go into the office teetering on the edge of having my temper flare up unexpectedly – at work it wouldn’t matter whether the context seemed ‘reasonable’ or the reaction ‘understandable’ for the circumstances. People are uncomfortable with strong emotion in the work environment, generally. This morning, I practice the practices intended to boost my emotional resilience – also those that tend to reduce it. This morning I am taking time to meditate. Then more time. Then another time. Then some time while I boil water for coffee. And after my shower. And when I got up. And a few minutes from now… yeah. It’s like that today; chasing stillness while the worst of my volatility simmers in the background, likely to go off without warning.

So much of life is about love and loving.

So much of life is about love and loving.

Al Green begins to sing to me about sexual healing – a light bulb goes off in my head – is that all this is? Am I a bitch in heat, grumpy and frustrated, and without a ready outlet to meet that need? I chuckle with gentle sympathy for myself, out loud, shaking my head – it’s a lifelong challenge managing my libido and my injury. Together they add up to a sex drive that no partnership but one has ever satisfied, and even that only survived the endless need for about a year. I am learning to go without more graciously. I am learning to accept love’s delights less demandingly. I kind of have to – real life, in this area, doesn’t manage to feel like ‘enough’. I am at least learning to accept that I will be drowned in enthusiastic hyperbole in every new relationship as potential lovers assure me they can easily meet my needs, and assurances that they too have a crazy high sex drive… It’s almost impossible to communicate successfully that we’re talking about very different magnitudes of drive; the disappointment each time I face that moment in a partnership when the truth of it becomes clear is always a bitch to deal with.

My thoughts stray to the approval of flibanserin – a drug intended to boost female desire – and I gotta wonder, if a person doesn’t want sex, how is that ‘disordered’? If level of desire can be a disorder… then what about women such as myself, where my level of day-to-day desire creates problems because it seems – to my partner(s) – excessive? I assure you, if feels perfectly normal to me.  Am I to be expected to take a drug to make me want sex less? I could see taking an appropriate medication if my body’s response to desire wasn’t consistent with my psychological or emotional experience of wanting… but… to make me want, if I don’t? I don’t get that. It is, however, a very hard conversation to have to have with someone when they are not desired…particularly if the relationship has a sexual component. It happens. It’s even happened to me – which is damned awkward. Still… I think having the honest conversation makes more sense [to me] than taking a mind-altering anti-depressant class of drug to force oneself to feel desire, when desire doesn’t exist. Maybe those honest conversations could result in people taking steps to create desire through action (the Big 5 is super helpful there)… or move on to a relationship in which their needs are more easily met? Seriously. If the sex matters that much (it does for me), and I can’t get what I need in a relationship, there are other choices than ‘going without’ (or ‘enduring what is not desired’), or ‘taking a mind altering drug to become more what the partnership requires’…but a lot of those options do involve investing in additional relationships of some sort. Inconvenient. Time-consuming.

Yeah. I’m feeling cross and bitchy today. I’m feeling critical of myself, my mood, my writing… and I’m betting that if I do something as small as just easing up on myself this morning, it’ll be a much better morning straight away. I’ll just set this one aside right here, today, and move on with the morning, taking the very best care of me that I can.

Stick with the basics - it's a great place to start.

Stick with the basics – it’s a great place to start.

Today is a good day to avoid taking my own bullshit too personally. Today is a good day to treat myself gently. Today is a good day to remember that we’re each dealing with our own bullshit – and we’re all very very human. Today is a good day to invest heavily in kindness – it’s free, and there’s an endless supply – and it might change the world.

This morning I made a very nearly perfect cup of coffee. It’s not really remarkable; my coffees are generally quite consistently very good. I have practiced this particular method of brewing, now, for 89 days, amounting to a minimum of 178 coffees, adequate practice to reliably make a good coffee. I’ve made a couple of really terrible coffees along the way – usually because I stopped paying attention at some point during the process, having gotten distracted by something else. I enjoy my morning coffee greatly, and I enjoy the practical self-sufficiency of making my own, precisely the way I prefer it, without any imposition on someone else in the moment. I enjoy being able to fully rely on myself to take care of my needs in this small way. I enjoy feeling knowledgeable, and competent.

My thoughts followed the feelings of ‘being knowledgeable’ and ‘being competent’ along other tangents while I sipped my coffee. I start wondering how much those feelings are actually tied to subjective experiences of knowing more, or having more skills, and how much they merely reflect my perspective how being able to apply the things I do know to my circumstances to achieve a desired outcome… without any particular connection of some noteworthy portion of knowledge of all the things possible to know. There are a lot of things to know…even about coffee. I don’t claim extraordinary knowledge of coffee… I know enough to make a good cup of coffee in the morning, one that satisfies my own expectations of ‘a good cup of coffee’. It’s enough… but there is more to know, and I could choose to pursue that knowledge, or not.

I keep following my thoughts down this particular rabbit hole and find myself wondering about this ‘body of knowledge’ that is my own…all the things I have learned in a life time, all the things I “know” (whether facts or opinions), all of the information and experience on which my understanding of the world – and myself – is built… Isn’t the ‘source material’ pretty critically important? I find myself reconsidering all the books on all the shelves; I have a lot of books and I make a point of keeping only those that seem to represent important pieces of who I have become over time… I find myself wondering, this morning, if I am perhaps hanging on to some of my chaos and damage in the form of “knowledge” – fundamentals in my thinking that are not just erroneous, but built specifically on concepts or information that tend to prevent forward progress, or foster ongoing negative self-talk; it seems more likely than not, and I support that suspicion with the many volumes of “The Great Books of the Western World“, a product developed and marketed by the intellectually mighty Encyclopedia Britannica, whose online presence is rather costly, compared to the vastness of the internet itself, at one’s fingertips with a Google search.

I bought “The Great Books” when I was not quite 21, and eager to advance my knowledge of the world, and to become ‘educated’. A smooth talking encyclopedia salesman skillfully persuaded me that all the knowledge I could ever desire was within those pages. It was an expensive purchase – and my first payment plan. When they arrived, I marveled at their weight, and beauty…and I read them all over the years (or at least began them – I’ll admit Fourier kicked my ass, and a couple of the philosophers just irritated me well beyond wanting to read another word). Had I attended most of the liberal arts colleges of the time, my education would have been based largely on the works included in “The Great Books”…but the controversy over the collection existed as soon as the collection was published, and the 2nd edition, published in 1990, would have been a better fit for my own tastes. Neither collection represents the voices of women with any vigor or thoroughness (or, let’s be honest here, at all)…and sitting here in the cool of morning, it hits me that there is a fairly direct connection to the cultural thinking that fuels so much of my own very personal anger about how society treats women, and the willingness to slap a label like “The Great Books of the Western World” on a collection of work that largely just ignores women, even in the 2nd edition. I mean…seriously? It’s not even “Some Great Books…”, it’s held up as “The Great books…” Giving readers the impression that all the world’s vast knowledge and progress has been the knowledge of men, the progress of men, the thinking of men – and it’s not actually true.

Why wouldn't about half these books be written by women?

Why wouldn’t about half these books be written by women?

I look again my bookshelf for the voices of women… for the voices of my own experience… I feel a certain strange heartsick feeling that I, too, neglect the voices of women in my library. It feels like a great wrong, that urgently needs to be made right – and for me, making that right starts with a question. “Do I actually find that these volumes are “The” great books of western thinking? Truly? Who says? Based on what, exactly? Is Descartes more worthy, from my own perspective, than Simone de Beauvoir? Is Fourier more relevant than Marie Curie? What about William James? Has his work provided me more value and perspective on my own thinking than Gloria Steinem? I find myself feeling fussy – and ignorant. My education is lopsided, heavily weighted in favor of the thinking of men, the voices of men, the experiences of men… and it isn’t limited to dusty books on untouched shelves; this is a deeper issue that affects how children are educated, and what we see on television, and in theaters. This lack of women’s voices, this disinterest in giving us a seat at the grown-up’s table, or making our presence an everyday part of significant historical discourse is a disservice to human progress, and our sense of who we are – and it fuels the quiet seething anger that is so often a part of my experience; the lack of feeling heard begins with these books. Or so it seems over my morning coffee.

There’s something beautiful about choice, and perspective, and new understandings; taken all together, they make great things happen, they create an opportunity for change. There are verbs involved, of course, and I expect my results may vary. I have spent my life listening to the voices of men, and mostly being a pretty good sport about having my own voice silenced to allow some man to speak, erupting in uncontainable rage only now and then. It’s no wonder my anger has taken so many men I have loved by surprise; based on the books in our hands, surely their expectation has been that it is always ‘their turn to talk’!

It’s an uncommonly pleasant Monday morning. I am eager to make some changes in my library…if “The Great Books of the Western World” were all the voices of women, what books would I see there on the shelf? It’s time I include them. It’s time to change the world.