No one can stop you but you

As found here. 

Pressure has stepped up at work, blah blah blah. More hectic than before, blah blah blah.

In the meantime, my children are suddenly both giants (Viva wears a size 9.5 women's shoe, Lord help us) and I don't know how that happened. I am trying to keep up with everything they're up to, in between making dinner and doing laundry. Sweet Dub is working nights right now on two different freelance gigs. Evenings are exhausting, just so much to do. I love my kids and realize how quickly the time is passing so I am trying my damnedest to be present -- to hear about their days, to know who is friends with who, check on the homework, know what field trips and food drives and music recitals are coming up, harass them into the shower after dinner, harass them out of the shower when bedtime is already past, open their bedroom door and shush them well after lights out. Let's not even get into the Sunday night hair marathon. My kids have so much hair. It needs conditioning and detangling and braiding or twisting up. It is not a low-maintenance blessing.

Well, and so, writing, you know? Not so much.

Right before Sweet Dub got the second night gig, he and I had come up with a new concept for a joint website to launch in the new year. We have not had time to work on it. I am hoping -- no, I mean to say I am PLANNING. INTENDING. to carve out time during the week between Christmas and New Year's to get it together. It must be done, else the time will keep unraveling away and we will be in the same spot. 

Time to get it done! 

Image found (where else?) on Pinterest.

Window Shopping

(Putting on my Andy Rooney voice for a moment:)  Have you ever noticed that when you are running low on funds, the universe bombards you with all kinds of beautiful things that you lurrrve but can't afford to buy? Have you also noticed the converse, in which when you happen to have some play money and want to treat yourself, you can't find anything you like?

I am currently in the former camp, and it is not my favorite place to be. There is a sort of workaround, which is the spectacular online pinboard, Pinterest. Oooh, I love love love Pinterest. The cool thing about Pinterest is you can pin something and then a few days/weeks/months later as you are adding to that particular board, you might realize you don't lurrrve something as much as you once thought, and you can delete it. It's almost like buying the actual thing and then having buyer's remorse, except that no cash has changed hands, and that is infinitely better for one's wallet. 

I originally got onto Pinterest to find ideas for kids' birthday parties, and then I got sucked into creating boards for home decor and recipes and outfits and hairstyles and such. It is kind of addictive, so I try only to use it from my phone. If I have a full-size screen to scroll through, I am a goner. Gah, so embarrassing. But having said that, I realize that my creative outlets at this point in time are: decorating my apartment; combining things in my closet in various ways to create new outfits out of what I already have; doing hair; and cooking. And as I realize that, I feel a little relief, because so often I mourn my lack of creative expression and feel depressed about it. I am just using different mediums at this moment, and that is okay. 

"As long as we're creating, we're cultivating meaning."

 - Brene Brown

 

Perfect Vision

Photo:  Eye Test, by John LeMasney, Creative Commons

My darling husband is in a bit of a funk. This is hard for me, because he is generally a positive person and he is always working toward something. He is having some moments of self-doubt, not sure of what direction he wants to pursue, frustrated because the hooks he is putting into the water are luring no big fish.

 
“I’m thinking we need to do a vision board,” I said to him this weekend. “You need to be able to really envision what you want. It can be very simple, but I think you need something to look at every day in your workspace so you can see clearly what you’re working toward. Even if it’s something as simple as what you want your home office to look like, where you’d store your cameras and video equipment – just something positive to move toward and look forward to.” 

Many years ago I was introduced to the concept of a vision board (sort of the Pinterest of its time) through The Artist’s Way. Vision boards are boards you create to graphically illustrate your hopes and dreams – what you want to see in your life. The process is designed to help you create a clear, very detailed picture in your mind of what you want for all aspects of your life.

When I made mine, I was close to 30 years old, single, trying to figure out what I wanted to be when I grew up. Oh, and my 18-year-old cat had died. I was doing a lot of soul searching and I realized I was lonely and kind of directionless. I found some lovely recycled deep purple paper, took a stack of magazines and a glue stick, and went to town. My vision board included a handsome black man, an adorable brown-skinned baby, a cat, a dog, a writing table, lots of pictures of nature, a cup of tea, and a beautiful woman with a gorgeous smile who to me just screamed “happiness” and “fulfillment.” I hung the board on the closet door in my bedroom.

Within a year I met the handsome black man who would become my husband, and 18 months after that had my firstborn adorable brown-skinned baby. I have no idea where that vision board is today (we have moved approximately 700 times in the intervening years), but Sweet Dub still teases me about it to this day. As a toddler, Viva looked eerily similar to the vision of the baby I had. He jokes that I dreamed her into existence.

I believe our success in life is in direct proportion to our clarity of purpose. After thinking about it, Sweet Dub agreed that perhaps visioning would help him focus. He has been trying all different kinds of things in an effort to create some income streams, which is admirable, but it translates into his energy going in a million different directions – some of which occasionally result in him getting paid, which let’s face it, no complaints about that.

We have decided we will each create a board and hang them in our bedroom where we will see them every day. It may sound kind of nuts, but I’ve already seen it work once. I’m interested to see what his will look like, where there are areas of overlap or surprises, if he wants a pet unicorn, etc. Have you ever done anything like this? What would yours look like?

Letting It Loose

Photo:  Creation of an Abstract Mural, Glass, by LaurMG, Creative Commons

I just wrote four paragraphs about creating art, and about how I put my creativity on hold when I was in college and never let it back out of its cage after that and how it has fought me ever since, and I read back over those four paragraphs and I hated them even more than I hate run-on sentences. So I used my conveniently placed “delete” key and now you don’t have to suffer through them.

What I want to say is this:  I feel an art project coming on this weekend. And I’m also feeling a very strong push to go back to school for some kind of artsy endeavor. I miss making things. And I want to explore how to coax that part of myself out to stretch and sniff the air.

How is that going to happen? I have no idea but I feel I am being called to do it, so I better figure it out. 

I’m thinking I may start with Bliss Habits, which is rolling out “Summer Camp for your Inner Child.” What the heck, what do I have to lose?

Twenty Thirteen

Okay, no more fooling around. It's time to get serious.*

Returning back to work this week after a simply wonderful long Christmas break, I received a memo which detailed our company's closure schedule for the year -- which holidays will be observed and which the company will pay for. Employees are being told we must take eight furlough days this year, for which we can either be unpaid or use vacation days.** I opened up my date book and started adding the furlough days, and as I did, everything changed. I started thinking, "If you write it down, it is the same as envisioning it is going to happen. You don't want to be in this job in October (Columbus Day) or even April (Cesar Chavez Day). Don't write it down! Don't write it down!" And suddenly I started to have a panic attack. My heart started beating wildly, and I felt like I was going to jump out of my skin. I felt sick. I took some deep breaths and went outside and walked around the block until I calmed down, but...yeah.

So...yeah. 

I have almost been in this job a year (two more weeks until my anniversary). It is time to get off the pot and get busy. I have tried to stay positive and focused on learning as much as I can -- and I have, as one does in any new situation. I learned that I can be the boss and it can be horrible at times, but that if I am tactful and respectful and retain empathy I can deal with difficult situations with staff. (By the way, I had to fire a volunteer yesterday. That may have contributed to my panic attack. Fun times!) But I'm not really being challenged here or branching out into other job responsibilities aside from leadership/management. You know I need to add to my skill set, mm-kay? (Stupid buzzwords. As soon as I typed that all I could think of was "swing set" and how much cooler that would be.)

Hey Ma! Look at my cool new skill set! All the kids in the neighborhood wish they was cool like me!

Anyway, added to that, I don't really want to keep doing what I'm doing. I recently learned that my old job is launching a brand new initiative and all I could think was "they're going to need [someone like me=me!] for that" and then I thought maybe I could negotiate a work from home gig with them. And I got a little excited about that but who knows what will happen. Because the future is, like, unknowable. But I will keep the lines of communication open.

I also spent some time around 2 AM today drooling over this site, which combines a lot of my interests -- i.e., writing, drawing, layout/design, and editing. Not sure who I'm more jealous of, the artists who get to create these books or the people who work in publishing and get to bring them to print. In an alternate reality, I would have about ten careers.

This morning at about 3:15 (yup, still awake and driven bonkers by monkey mind) I made a resolution to draw every day -- to take my sketch book with me everywhere and even if I have to sit in my car and draw at lunch, to just give myself that. I need to stretch my muscles a bit. Drawing for me is very energizing and meditative at the same time and I have not let that part of me have fun in way too long.

So for 2013 my mantra is:  Just Do It. And also, Make It So. So that's two mantras. I don't know, maybe it needs work, but you get the gist.

And you?  What do you have in mind for 2013?

*"You can pretend to be serious; you can't pretend to be witty." Sacha Guitry, French actor, dramatist and director

** Which is some bullshit, because (a) this is one more furlough day than last year; and (2) if you don't use your vacation time for these days, you don't get paid -- which for a majority of our staff including myself, is simply not an option. I am lucky because I get three weeks (15 business days) of vacation per year since I am a director. Other folks are not so lucky and only get ten days. So if they want to have paid time off, they are being told they have to use their vacation days at specific times - and then have only two vacation days that they can plan independently. In my case, more than half of my vacation time could be theoretically eaten up by furlough days if I want to be paid for those days off. In essence, I feel I am being robbed in many sneaky ways by this job. Oddly, this is not a good feeling.

Geeking Out

My first week back at work was rough, especially after not only being on maternity leave but having thoroughly enjoyed the holiday season. Okay, there were some moments where I thought I might lose my mind with so much togetherness, and here I must shout out a very belated note of thanks to Los Angelista: not only did Viva receive the SpongeBob Lego Rocket Ride set* in time for us to discreetly wrap it and set it under the tree, but she also received a SpongeBob Lego ER set. She literally played Legos for two days straight and refused to leave the house or change out of her pajamas. I know I said that she was crazy for both SpongeBob and Legos, but even I could not have predicted this extreme response. It was just a bit worrisome...

So anyway, as I say, going back to work was a bit of an adjustment. Cily is at a daycare center just five minutes away from my job and I’m actually pretty comfortable with her being there. I think Sweet Dub had more anxiety about it than I did, to be honest, because he hasn’t been there yet.

With going back to work and with the new baby, I’ve been feeling a little…removed from Viva, and so when she came home with the news that she had a science project to do – and then it turned out that in their science unit, they’re covering animals, and that the project involved creating a diorama and a mini-report – oh my God, do you even understand what a geek I am that I was so excited that we were going to work on this together?! (I am pretty sure that last run-on sentence was a hot mess, but hello, sleep deprivation.)

Viva told me the animal she’d chosen was a lion, and that she needed to create a diorama of the lion in its habitat and then write a mini-report about where lions live, what they eat, etc. I went to Target Saturday morning and along with new outfits for Cily, who is outgrowing all her clothes quickly, I bought a couple of lion figurines so we could get started. Of course, Cily was going through something this weekend, adjusting to childcare and then adjusting back to home, so her sleep has been all messed up and she was irritable, harkening back to her colicky days, and it seemed she just wanted to be attached to me 24/7.

During one particularly rocky period with Cily in the afternoon, at Viva’s urging, Sweet Dub emptied out a shoebox and they began work on the diorama (it’s due at the end of the month). Do you know they pretty much finished it?? It looks frickin’ great. Viva made a bloody zebra carcass out of Play-Doh and they printed out pictures of zebra herds and pasted them on the savannah background they’d already installed so it looks like the rest of the zebras have run away. She cut out long golden grass and stuck it here and there so the lions are kind of half-in and half-out of it. Viva ran to me to proudly display it.

“It looks fantastic, baby,” I said, and then to Sweet Dub mournfully, “I didn’t know you were going to do the whole thing!”

“She still has to write the report,” he said.

“That is not exactly the fun part,” I said. “You know I was geeking out about getting to do the creative part.”

“We still have to decorate the outside of the box,” he said in a conciliatory tone.

“Whatever,” I said. I had to console myself with reading one of the Junie B. Jones books all cuddled up with Viva. Her obvious enjoyment of the Junie B. series also pleases my inner geek. I gotta get my thrills where I can, people.


* Through a fantastic giveaway on the Los Angelista site! If you haven’t been over to Los Angelista’s, what are you waiting for? She posts just about every day and it’s always something interesting (unlike this space). So go, already!

Now With More Sulfites!

Viva update: Sweet Dub left work early yesterday and took her to the pediatrician. Diagnosis: no urinary tract infection. Not sure what to think. The doctor told Sweet Dub no bubble baths (which we don’t do anyway, because I’d read somewhere that can irritate the genital area), and no wearing underwear to bed. Viva seemed mildly disturbed by this, which is interesting, because she likes to frolic about in her altogether whenever possible. At any rate, she seems fine today. *

Lisa update: I feel like I have turned a corner. Basically I stopped taking my pain medication because it was clogging up my digestive tract (one of the stated side effects), and I started drinking wine instead. I know this sounds ridiculous. I am not a medical professional, and I doubt that any physician would recommend this course of action to you. But I was a bit desperate. Since I feel best in the morning, I wasn’t taking my Vicodin until the afternoon anyway. Yesterday, I had a half a glass of wine at 4 pm and another half a glass at 8 pm. Slept like a baby and my digestion is back to normal. Today, I feel great. I mean, relatively great. I still feel like I have paper cuts on the inside of my abdomen, and a general bloating and not being able to lift things, but in the overall scheme of things, SO much better.

Moving on: today, I’ve been working on photo albums. Ever since we got a digital camera, we’ve been lax about putting photos into any kind of order or even printing them out. Somehow in there, we stopped putting any photos in albums somewhere around the end of 2005. Oops. It’s kind of a big job, no? So I am organizing my photos, uploading them from various sources onto Flickr and I will then order some ungodly number of prints. Sweet Dub lost almost all of his baby/childhood photos in a fire – I mean seriously I think we have three pictures of him under the age of 10 – so he is rabid about documenting our life. This means that we have a very large number of photos. But for the moment, I have nothing but time. I’m not going anywhere, so I’m enjoying looking back over our photos. Here are a couple of cute ones from August 2006:

Will post more as I go along. Maybe.


*Better than my mother-in-law, who is old school and a bit freaked out by Viva telling her that her vag!na hurt. She couldn’t imagine where Viva had learned that word.