Strutting and fretting my hour upon the stage

Bonus points for you if you know that line.

I've been working crazy overtime since just after Halloween and mostly feeling pretty OK with the flow of the new routine, until last week – and then my mind finally got too full and started spilling over the top, and ever since I've been sort of just floating along on the river of mind sludge ... Finally, today, able to see the end of it, as we are scheduled to go to press by the end of this week. After which I plan to spend a solid weekend on the beach and in the ocean, letting the waves wash away whatever old words and pictures remain in my brain & open up some space to just let it rest there, empty, for awhile, on the sand.

The last three or four weekends I've done basically nothing but sleep the entire day. Well, I've been on a few good hikes. Yesterday I hiked about six miles in very steep terrain and that felt great. Today my muscles are a little sore and that makes me want to do even more. Soon.

It seems like I had something to say when I started writing this post ... Now, it turns out, not so much.

Maybe later.... [pause]

OK, I remembered what I wanted to write about.

At work there was an announcement a few weeks ago that my department would be hiring a staff writer – a content manager, actually, which is not so much about real writing but more about blurbage and keeping track of lists of the various features of things like industrial air conditioner ducting and pH testers and ten thousand different kinds of plastic nursery pots ... Anyway, I found myself struck feverish (literally sweating a bit, on my forehead) with jealousy that there might be an actual writer in the department, besides me – and at the same time I realized with a little bit of a shock that I really don't want to ever go back to working as a writer.

Somehow there is a part of me that thinks "being" a writer is better than "being" a designer. Weird. I think it's because I think you have to be smart to be a writer, and not as smart to be an artist or designer ... and being smart has always been a big part of my identity – the identity that was given to me as a kid in the gifted and talented program, who got to take special classes out of the school building and work on fun things like writing, casting and producing a puppet play, and making a super-8 movie, and learning Japanese bookmaking techniques, and going on field trips to hear political speakers in some huge colosseum ... while other girls were working on being pretty and popular. Which I secretly would have dearly loved to be.

Anyway, it was weird to notice that about myself. But it's true – my mind seems to be not what it used to be, these days. Maybe I'm getting lazy. Or maybe it really is just the effects of overwork. Or maybe I'm forging new neural pathways that look like pictures instead of words ... Creativity was also part of that identity, and I liked (and still like) that part more than the smart part, when I really think about it.

In any case, as it turned out, my even bigger concern about this position was that the new person might end up making more money than me. Shocking! But I am beginning to care about things like that. So I talked to my boss and offered to take on management of the big project that's been going on for-freaking-ever – which I feel I've already been managing unofficially, although I'm not sure the actual project manager would see it that way. Or maybe she would. I know she hates the project and will probably be thrilled to hand it over (I hope). A few days later my boss said he likes the idea, and that I will be getting a bigger raise than usual next month, to make sure that I'm getting more money than the new person.

Which seems like kind of an embarrassing thing to make a fuss about, but I don't care – I'm glad I asked, and I can use the money. And I'm glad I don't have to be a writer anymore.

The lovely dogs

Just briefly reporting that I am lying in bed, at the bottom of what I'm pretty sure is known as a "dog pile" and am feeling calm and mostly OK for the first time in several days. My blood sugar is suddenly going crazy high again for no reason I can figure out, and my mood took a nose dive also very suddenly so I'm back on meds - a new one this time - which is causing all kinds of weird nervous energy and intense hunger combined with a complete and utter aversion to food of any kind ... A strange combination of effects. The upshot being that I'm feeling really odd physically, and so of course decided to come here to document it. Although! I also have started a little therapy again and she agrees with me that this practice of journaling my anxious and upset emotions seems to have played itself out for me, at least for now. I've been using more moving meditations lately and that has been feeling like just what I need. There's also gratitude journaling, food blogging, art diaries and other ways of sharing my path with the world. Maybe later. Right now I just wanted to give thanks for the dog pile and make a note of the date. I'm hoping my physical state will iron itself out before too long .... I miss being able to eat and sleep normally!

The season of the uniform

Just a quick note to mention that my summer-long experiment with non-uniform dressing – wearing something different every day, mixing, matching, the whole thing – is now officially ending. I finally noticed this morning as I was getting dressed that I'm not really having fun with it anymore. I miss waking up and knowing pretty much exactly what I'm going to wear, and wearing it. Or actually not so much the wearing or the non-wearing, but more the peace of mind I feel when I can get dressed without having to THINK so much.

I've also been experimenting with becoming more of a morning person – something I've been working up to for several years. This year I think it finally took, and I've been getting out of bed at the unheard-of hour of 6 a.m. most days to run or walk the dogs. Maybe that's part of the reason why I'm longing for my uniform again; being awake that early, especially now that it's still dark when I start out, does not come naturally to me, and anything I can do to make the transition smoother feels like a good idea.

Plus it's time to start thinking about boots again. So there's that.

Creative output

So – where have I been? Off exploring ... I seem to have been seized lately by a wave of creative energy that is slowly taking me out to sea – meaning, to places I haven't been to before, that are new and strange and seemingly a bit possibly dangerous, but beautiful and exciting and emphatically demanding to be lived rather than documented in a pitifully neglected online journal.

Yesterday I got up at 6 and took Baby Beast to our favorite Plaza cafe for an early-morning olive and tomato frittata and iced coffee, followed by a walk around the square and then (as the day started to heat up) a leisurely stroll through the deep shade of the lumber warehouse, where I picked up materials to transform the inside of an antique armoire into custom storage for art supplies. Bea took a great interest in the whole excursion – since she was the one who chewed the moulding on the bottom of the armoire, I enjoyed letting her help choose the wood I was going to use to fix it up again. I'm also considering painting it, so she isn't tempted to chew it again; unfortunately she only chews raw, unpainted wood, the older the better – she also ate some of the gingerbread trim off the bottom of a fancy 150-year-old beaten up oak side table that I knew I should have kept varnished ...

The upshot is, my stuff is all organized and together in one place now instead of scattered in various drawers and cabinets around the house, and I've been daydreaming and drawing like crazy. It's been a long time coming. And it feels great to be actually making things, instead of just thinking about making them. I took a one-day workshop in reliquary making on Saturday and am really just bursting with excitement to make more, more, more of these beautiful little things. I was the only person in class who brought an actual relic (a long braid of hair from Tater's tail, which he gracious donated without his usual screaming at the sight of the scissors) to use in my assemblage, and since my stats tell me my readership is finally down to zero I'll go ahead and brag a little bit, and report that my finished piece was the only one the owner of the shop asked to photograph. Her assistant suggested I make more, to sell, and from her I took that as a huge compliment and a serious encouragement to maybe start thinking about finally getting down to business as an artist.

With all my health "issues," mental and otherwise, I think I've always sort of held back some ... worried that if I ever really started to go for it I would end up feeling overwhelmed by demands I wasn't strong enough or energetic enough to meet. From myself or others, it's never really been clear.

I'm tentatively enjoying this new burst of energy though and excited to keep going.

Maybe I'll post some pictures of my stuff on this blog sometime. Or maybe I'll start a new blog just for art, like so many other crafty persons seem to be doing of late. Or, maybe I won't. Right now I'm feeling like I'd rather make things than take pictures of them, and would rather give them to people I know than show them to people I don't.

Four decades of red shoe regrets, resolved

I've had a love hate relationship with red shoes for so many years ... stalking them, loving them, lusting for them, even buying them again and again, only to find myself unable to wear them because they're just way too red. There are at least three pairs stashed away right now in a box in the garage that I've never worn, even though part of me still loves looking at them. I even get them out to try on every once in awhile.

Anyway. Today I break my long blog silence to announce that the curse has been lifted: I've found some red shoes that I love, that I can actually wear. Check 'em out!

OK, so maybe they're not the height of fashion ... I actually worried as I was ordering them that they might look like clown shoes, or children's shoes. But they don't (well, maybe a tiny bit, but in a good way). I'm happy with them. They're red enough to be red, without being TOO red. I love the slight platform, the soft thick leather, the comfortable strap. And you can't tell from this picture but they're very wide across the toes, just like my feet. I plan to wear them all summer.

What else? I still think about blogging every day, but so much of what I think of saying seems kind of unnecessary to say. That's a spell that seems to have been broken lately too – my decades-long compulsion to document my experiences, rather than simply living them. I think that practice helped me, more than anything else I've done, to learn how to really inhabit my own life. Writing it all down – and paying close attention to myself, so I can be accurate in my account – has taught me to love it all. I read something the other day that rang true to me:

The great Japanese film director Akira Kurosawa once said, "An artist is someone who never averts his eyes." In 1923, the Great Kanto earthquake killed 100,000 people and destroyed Tokyo. Kurosawa was just 13 years old and walked amongst the devastation of human and animal corpses. When he tried to turn away, his older brother instructed him not to avert his eyes. As a result, Kurosawa came to believe that looking at the whole of life was a way to defeat fear.

That's a big part of what I've been doing until lately with this blog, and with journaling in general. Learning to defeat my fears. I can't say they're totally defeated, or that I expect them ever to be, but I do feel safe in my life and in the world right now, and that makes me feel generous and strong, like I have more to offer than this inward-turning exploration of my own ego. I guess that's why I'm not writing much right now. I'm feeling more like expressing myself in other ways.

While I'm quoting people, here's another quote I've been meditating on for awhile, that I feel I've finally internalized to the point where it's truly how I see the world. I have it on a little card on the refrigerator and have been painting it in calligraphy on little cards to leave around town ... just for fun, and maybe to share the blessing it's been to me:

Hm, what else? It does seem like a long time since I've written anything down. Just for utilitarian purposes, I'll go ahead and document some highlights, in no particular order.

1. I'm about half way done winding down with the antidepressants. They did their job for me again, and I'm grateful. Once again however they did cause me to gain weight – about 20 lbs since August – and that is not good for me. Actually, I don't think they directly caused the weight gain; what seems to have happened (again) is that they make me sleepy and hungry, and hungry specifically for carbohydrates, so that it's very hard to exercise and eat like I know I should. So I'm weaning myself off them and forcing myself to do what I need to, even though I really, really don't feel like it.

2. The job is still going great. I don't think it's possible to overstate how much I love it. This, too, I think, is a huge part of why I'm feeling so good these days.

3. Not that everything is perfect. I don't feel like cataloguing everything I don't like, though. It's all just normal stuff, no different than what most people have to deal with in one way or another.

4. We found out last week that Tater has diabetes insipidus. It isn't the same thing as diabetes mellitus ("sugar" diabetes – the kind I have) – it's caused by a deficiency of a different hormone, and isn't life-threatening; it mainly just means his kidneys can't concentrate urine properly so he needs to drink a ton of water, and pee a lot (that's how I realized something was going on; he was just drinking soooo much water). We're starting him on a medication that should help. Other than that, he's still doing great, enjoying his food, toys and walks, and even inviting Bea to wrestle with him every once in awhile, just like a big puppy. He'll be 13 on June 1.

5. Bea is just a wonderful, wonderful little dog. We're doing an agility class together, and she's also evolved into a major ball hound. That's fun for both of us and makes it easy to exercise her – I just throw the ball for her for 20 minutes a couple of times a day and that about does it for her.

6. I think I am officially turning into the nutty middle-aged dog lady. And I'm pretty much OK with that.

7. My latest obsession is finding the perfect underwear to wear under summer dresses. I'm pretty sure I'm going to have to figure out how to make it myself, and I have a plan. It's based on a pair of ladies' old-fashioned silk combination underwear from the 20s that I found at a vintage shop a few years ago, and is basically a full slip with a camisole top and a long-ish split skirt at the bottom, and possibly some kind of drop flap at the crotch (this is the part I'm still working out, how the crotch needs to work in combination with the longer legs. The piece I have is more like tap pants on the bottom, but I wanted something that will work better on a bike). The goal is to create something that is loose, cool and comfortable, with no clinging waist band or straps to fall down, and with two legs so you can ride a bike without worrying about the whole thing flying up over your head.

8. We've been putting up birdhouses all over the property this spring and as of this weekend we have over 90% occupancy.

9. My early morning yoga experiment lasted exactly one day, at which point I pulled a muscle in my back (in an un-yoga-related incident) and was out of commission for almost two weeks. By that time I'd basically given up on the whole idea of my spring practice period, and decided to just do what I can, when I can. I'm still going to my class at the gym and practicing a little bit at home each day. I want to do more and when I can, I will!

10. The early rising thing was not a total loss, however. I'm learning how to go to bed earlier and gradually it's getting easier to wake up earlier without such a struggle. Part of the problem, I've realized recently, is Mr. A's schedule – he's up between 3 and 4 a.m. every week day, and even though I sleep in my own room, with ear plugs, I always seem to wake up at least partially whenever he's up and about. Synchronizing my sleep schedule with his, at least a little, has helped some; instead of going to bed at 11 or 12, I've been trying to be asleep no later than 10 p.m., which gives me a chance to get into and out of one good solid cycle before he wakes me up at 3. It's not a perfect solution but I think it's better than before.

11. I got through the whole winter without knitting a single thing and am now getting involved in summer sweaters, and tiny little pink sandals for newborn babies in Japan. This is not just any baby, but the baby of my first true love from high school, who's lived there for almost a decade now and is having a daughter in just a couple of weeks with his adorable Japanese wife. Apparently nobody does baby showers or shares baby clothes over there, so they are having to outfit the entire enterprise alone ... Except, they're not really alone – I'm crocheting furiously .... Wishing I had had the time and inclination to do more of this kind of thing when my own nieces and nephews were being born, but I guess better late than never.

12. Speaking of family, I've been more homesick for my brothers and sisters and parents over the last several months than at any other time I can remember since I left home at 18. I'm not sure why. I just love them so much, and miss them so much, and wonder sometimes why I'm still living out here so far away ... except that I love my family here – Mr. A and the dogs, and my friends – and I love my job, and the landscape, and the plants and trees and beautiful clean fresh air ..... Anyway, I'll be traveling to Utah at least once or twice this summer, and possibly to a few other places too. Looking very, very forward to that.

P.S. One more thing – I'm on the lookout for an extremely wide-brimmed straw hat, for gardening. The biggest one I have right now is about 18" across and I would love to have one that is at least two feet across, or even wider. Almost like a parasol for the head! Oh wait – maybe this? I'm actually picturing something more a little rougher, more rustic ... Let me know if you see something like that, won't you?

Spring practice

So it's come up my attention ( OK, I googled it) that Lent starts tomorrow. I don't even remember if I did anything last year but this year I definitely want/need to. Forty days of yoga? Rising at six a.m.? Or maybe even five? Cutting out sugar? Meditating every day without fail? Walking two miles before breakfast every morning? Daily singing?

I have five hours left to decide. Just wanted to report that I do plan to do something. So stay tuned.

And now off to the gym.

Sent from my iPhone

On losing one's mind

Also wanted to take note of a hospice visit I had with a patient who has Alzheimer's. We had the same five-minute conversation at least 20 times in the three hours I was there and every time she was delighted to have it. At first I felt awkward about repeating myself so often but it wasn't long before I was able to relax into the situation and just enjoy her pleasure in talking with me. There was also a little pink pillow she liked, which I got to present to her over and over again. That too made her face light up every single time.

If my mind ever ends up stuck in a loop like that, I hope it's a happy loop. I'm not sure it really works this way, but it does seem like the more you train your brain to run in positive channels, the more likely it would be that your mind would roll back into one of them if it should ever happen to get derailed. Even if not, at the very least you'd still have spent a lot more of your life in happier thoughts than if you hadn't made the effort.

Anyway. Just something I've been thinking about.

Sent from my iPhone