Find the Beauty - 03

This is turning out to be a difficult month for me and for many of my friends. It would be easy to focus on that and get mired down in the muck but I decided to spend a few minutes today listing some of the bright spots that are helping me through. 

• Lines and Colors. This blog proclaims itself to be "... a blog about drawing, sketching, painting, comics, cartoons, webcomics, illustration, digital art, concept art, gallery art, artist tools and techniques, motion graphics, animation, sci-fi and fantasy illustration, paleo art, storyboards, matte painting, 3d graphics and anything else I find visually interesting. If it has lines and/or colors, it's fair game."  I just think it's beautiful. Even when the art isn't to my taste, the talent and skill are amazing to behold. I call it my daily dose of museum without having to actually travel to a museum.
• Belkin customer support. After my Internet started working again, my wireless router needed to be reconfigured. I've had three wireless routers over the years but this is my first Belkin. I will never use another brand again just for the quality of their customer support team alone. The router itself has never had an issue but I have had to call them a few times over the past couple of years because of outages on Comcast's side. Each time, I have reached someone knowledgeable, courteous, patient and genuinely concerned about resolving my issues. The gentleman who helped me this weekend was superb and made the whole inconvenience a lot less stressful. Kudos, Belkin!
• Summer fruit and vegetables. Being a vegetarian, and one who actually likes fresh fruit and vegetables, summertime is the best time of year, especially in this climate that doesn't allow us any locally-grown produce in the off-season other than apples and squash. The other night I spent all my grocery money and didn't even get out of the produce section. I came home with peaches, plums, blueberries, cantaloupe and watermelon, tomatoes, Vidalia onions, sweet peppers, broccoli and kale. It makes spending time in the kitchen even more fun when everything's so colorful. 
• I Know You Like a Book. I stopped in this sweet little bookstore one night last week and it completely melted away the stresses of the day. I also bought three books so now I get to put three others on my pile to give away so that worked out well for someone else, too. 
• Kiva. I have two loans open at the moment (the others have all been paid back in full) and I just received an email that the woman in Rwanda that my money is helping just made another payment. It feels good, especially when you're not exactly feeling happiness in the every day, to know that you're helping someone in need. It also puts petty problems in perspective and makes you a bit more grateful for all the blessings you have.

I hope you're having a better month than I am but even if you're not,  there must be some small bright spot in your day. Care to share?

Happy

Today is my birthday. I would like to say that it started in some out of the ordinary, once-a-year way but it hasn't. It has started with multiple expressions of love and kindness and generous wishes for all that is best for me from my friends and family here and around the world.

So, yeah, pretty much a normal day. 

Am I incredibly blessed or what?  :D

* * * 

I spent a few extra moments in bed this morning, thinking back over the year. Two things stood out to me and for which I am incredibly grateful.

• Last year I was happy on my birthday because someone else told me he loved me. This year I'm happy because I love me. The difference between the two takes my breath away. And who knows? Maybe next year I'll have both.
• This has been a year of incredible loss for me. Between the break-up, the break-in and the loss of friends to cancer and other causes, I have lost more than I would have thought I could bear. But what I've gained has been even greater. My perspective and priorities have been forever altered and I have a core of inner strength I didn't have a year ago. 

I was trying to decide what my birthday wish for the next year was going to be but I thought, would I have wished for the year I've had? Never. But even with it's darkest moments, it's been one of the best years of my life. Maybe it's best to just wish for the wisdom and strength to always be able to make the most of what comes my way, good or bad. There is no other choice.  

NaNoWriMo: The Mid-Point

Can I just tell you how much more I’m enjoying NaNoWriMo this year than last year? There are many factors but the most important is that I love my story this year. The inspiration for it didn’t even come to me until the day before NaNoWriMo began so I jumped into this with no real planning, no back stories, no “world,” but I knew the conflict I wanted to portray and I’ve just been building on that. Right now, I have the first half of the story fully outlined so I know how I’m going to get to the pivotal point of the story and then… well, then the characters are going to have to lead me to the ending. I have no idea how it’s going to end and that makes me giddy. 

I love how the story has matured in the first fifteen days. Going into it, I thought the story was going to be told from one character’s point of view but now I know it is clearly the story of two people. Right now, one character is the primary focus and will be up to the crest of the story arc and then the other will take the focus as the story works toward resolution.

Another reason I’m enjoying it more is that I’m not as alone as I was last year. Not only do I have a larger band of cheerleaders on Twitter this year, I’m also attending the weekend write-ins of the Peoria-area NaNoWriMo’ers. I get to sit in local coffee shops with amazing fellow writers and feel spurred on by all the inspirational writing energy in the room. We also have our own Facebook group so we can connect outside the write-ins and it’s been great fun. They are good people.

The final reason is my own attitude. Last year, I was in a do or die mood, I wanted to get the story written, cross the 50,000 word finish line as quickly as I could and move on to something else. My only goals last year were to see if I could do it and see what 50,000 words looked like. This year, I’m enjoying the process of writing. I’m enjoying not knowing where scenes may end up or how my characters are going to react. I’m enjoying not even caring if I “win” or not. This year it’s all about telling this story that I need to tell, learning more about my own writing style, meeting others who share this passion and having fun with it. So, from that perspective, I’ve already won.

At the mid-point of the month, I had wanted to have written somewhere around 25,000-30,000 words, just to make sure I was pacing myself correctly and not going to feel stressed at any point during the month. I am currently at just over 35,000 words so I should be on target to finish the month without any late-night writing cramming sessions, which is great. Not that I would do that anyway, because the goal isn’t to win but to enjoy, but it’s nice to know I should be able to do both.

Wishing much luck to my NaNoWriMo’er friends and sending my heartfelt appreciation to those of you cheering me on this year. It’s great to have you there when I lift my eyes from the page. It means so much to not feel alone at something that is very much a solitary activity. Thank you!

Jumbled

My brain feels like the junk drawer we all have in our kitchens. There are a multitude of interesting and silly and misplaced and memorable things jumbled up in there, but I can't get a single idea untangled from the rest to examine it and write a proper post about it.

I want to pull each of them out, one by one, and let you hold them while I tell you the stories of how they came to be but I don't know that I'm ready. Just know that many wonderful things are happening, beautiful people are in my life and all is good. 

For the first time in... five years, maybe?... I feel something deep within that is letting me know that I am just where I need to be, doing exactly what I should be doing. I know without a doubt that things are going to turn out better than I've even dreamed. For the first time in my life, I can say the words, "I am enough," and not only mean them but own them. 

I feel like me again. 

It is all very good. 

Living In Mudville

I am not enjoying life. 

That was a hard sentence to write and an even harder thing to realize but it is true. My days are chaotic, stressful and unrewarding, full of conflict and anger. My nights are solitary, emotional and restless. My weekends are a blur of sleep-deprived furious energy moving towards targets: writing x number of words, exercising x number of minutes, cleaning out x number of items… all which are supposed to bring me a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment but only just leave me exhausted.

I need joy.

It was not that long ago that the majority of my days were happy ones. Dark moments would pass through but overall, I was a joyful person. I can no longer say that. I feel like every day is something to endure, to get through, not something to rejoice in and celebrate. This is not the way I want to live. 

I sat down the other day and wrote about what an enjoyable day for me would be like. I was not interested in a ‘shucking it all and lying on a beach’ kind of day, I wanted to figure out what it would take to change the days I am living now into days that I want to be living: a new normal day. What I came up with was not too shocking. I found I need more fulfillment and purpose in my career, and I want to easily find time for the other things that matter, writing, running, spending time with the people I love. The isolation I feel at work and being alone outside work is wearing on me even more than I knew. I wake with an overwhelming sense of dread every day.

Before anyone fears for my mental health or well-being, I am looking at this realization as a positive thing. I have not been in this state of mind for long so I have every hope that I can turn it around in short order. Facing an issue is the first step in conquering it, and I fully intend to conquer this one.  

This is going to be my summer of joy. I am going to identify and work toward adding more light and relaxation and reenergizing activities and spending more time doing the things that matter, with the people that matter. It is obvious to me that things need to change. This is just my declaration that they will. 

Glimpses Through the Window

I was sitting at my desk, staring out into the sunlit backyard, when I had a vision of another life. It was as though it was playing on a hidden screen hanging from the trees and I was watching it like I would a film. I could see me, with time enough in my day for writing, running, friends and love. I saw myself pursuing a career that brought me great fulfillment and a sense of purpose. I was smiling as if my heart contained nothing but joy.

I closed my eyes for only a moment and the vision disappeared. 

Part of me ached to run into the backyard and find the vision, jump into the screen and be transported to that life. Part of me, the part that closed my eyes and caused it to disappear, hung back, afraid to get too close.

What is it about us that causes us to cling to that which is familiar even if we can see that by letting go, trying something new, pursuing our dreams, we may be so much happier? 

Why did I close my eyes?