Journal Page #7
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Keep Life Simple
What the hell does that even mean?
I wish I had an answer or some profound advice to share with you.
I don’t.
What I do have is my stories and maybe that can help…
I’ve been writing for quite some time about my desire for a simpler, more intentional life.
I think I may have even written that exact sentence before.
Today, I am frustrated…
that the house is still a mess
that we are still in debt and struggling
that I always seem to have something to worry about
and that I seem to be making no progress towards my goal.
And yet, as I look back over this year’s posts at this (almost) mid-point of the year, I realize that I have done a pretty good job of sticking with my “motto” – being grateful and letting go.
I have become better about experiencing gratitude in the midst of life…even when it wasn’t easy. I am more grateful for what I have and more patient with dealing with the challenges than I used to be.
(most of the time)
I’m still not grateful for dog hair…lots and lots of dog hair.
I am grateful for my dogs (again, most of the time)
I am grateful that my dogs are not bald…that they have hair, but once it comes off of them…
Not grateful (at all).
I suppose if I took up spinning yarn I could use the damn stuff, but I suspect the fibers are too short and then what the hell would I do with the stupid dog hair yarn? I don’t knit or crochet and I sure don’t need any more projects…
Nope, not grateful for dog hair.
Maybe that gratitude will come with more practice.
I sincerely doubt it though.
And, as far as the house goes, I am still decluttering.
Sometimes, despite my best intentions, too much comes in.
But, I haven’t give up (totally).
Some days (weeks) I don’t even try.
But, some days I do a lot.
If I wasn’t decluttering at all, what a mess it would be!
Again, the journey continues.
I’m not standing still.
Although I’m doing a better job of resting when I need to.
So, it turns out that I needn’t be so frustrated today.
I’m doing an okay job of moving forward on this journey and letting go of that which is heavy and for that…
I am grateful.
Peace
Complicated Contradictions
“Every mind is a clutter of memories, images, inventions and age-old repetitions. It can be a ghetto, too, if a ghetto is a sealed-off, confined place. Or a sanctuary, where one is free to dream and think whatever one wants. For most of us it’s both – and a lot more complicated.” Margo Jefferson
I came upon this quote a few days ago while browsing for quotes to use on my art cards and such.
It has stuck in my head and bounced around in there and provided me with much fodder for thought as I pondered why I found it so intriguing.
Several blog posts about it have been started and abandoned since.
Obviously, more thinking was required…
Today, I realized, is Friday and I had promised my daughter that I would do a journal page. We actually mutually committed and challenged ourselves to create one page each week.
As I was working on this page (using stuff found on the floor of my studio)
all the thoughts about the quote came together and the meaning (for me) became clear.
You know, one of those “aha” moments when something perfectly obvious actually becomes obvious…
I’m complicated and a mass of contradictions…which does not make me unique because the same can be said of everybody…
But, I am a uniquely complicated mass of contradictions unlike everyone else in the way that I am a complicated mass of contradictions.
Yes, I know…complicated.
I continually struggle with reconciling the conflicting aspects of my personality.
Am I a minimalist or a bohemian when it comes to decorating? I seem to de-clutter and then re-clutter in an endless cycle.
Can you be a vegan who longs for bacon? I mean, can you really love Esther the Wonder Pig (www.estherthewonderpig.com) and buy an Easter ham for your family?
and so on and so forth…
And what happens when reality collides with the ideals?
When neither the minimalist room or the cluttered room provide a home…
when perceived open-mindedness is revealed to be less than true…
when dreams wither and are lost because perfection inhibits their development
Then form has become more important than function and appearance becomes more significant than the goal.
I am a work in progress.
I am a story still being written and a canvas still being created.
I am my past, my present and my future.
Sometimes I huddle in the dark, afraid and sometimes I embrace the light and move forwards and often take a wrong turn and get lost.
Who I am right now will not be who I am when this post is finished.
The journey I am on requires patience and grace and acceptance.
Patience with my inconsistencies and missteps,
grace for the fear and failures,
and
acceptance of my limitations.
We are all glorious creations who should find joy in this messy, complicated journey that we travel.
And I hope that we all, with patience, grace and acceptance, find peace along the way.
Normal
Today was a day. It was Thursday, to be exact…a thoroughly uneventful day.
This is the third blog post that I’ve tried to write in order to share my day. All the posts have been so boring that I’ve about given up.
But, since writing is often how I make sense of things, I’m persisting and am tapping away at the keyboard once again.
Please keep in mind that I have no idea what I am going to write about, and there are no promises that anything remotely interesting will result.
For foreshadowing, let me share that all the schoolwork is caught up and my sister is back home at her house. She’s not back to where she was before all of this started, but making progress.
So…
I got up this morning.
I went outside to let the chickens free from their coop.
I went back to bed.
My brief trek through the house on the way to the front door left me overwhelmed.
I lay in bed and started making a mental list of all that needed to be done now that life was returning to normal.
I thought about just staying in bed. I felt the anxiety start…
And then I said aloud, “Enough”.
I was tired of being tired. Done with feeling like I couldn’t catch up. Worn out from facing deadline after deadline. Sick of feeling like I was failing at everything.
So today there was no list. I didn’t try to accomplish anything. I didn’t have a goal. I didn’t plan to finish cleaning the house or even a single room. No expectation of catching up the laundry or the dishes or the dusting.
I just did some stuff.
I watered the plants and pulled off some dead leaves.
I washed, dried, folded and put up a load of laundry.
I emptied a couple of trash cans.
I sorted through my paper stash and thought about what I might create next.
I wandered through the house wiping away a cobweb or two and a bit of dust.
You can’t really tell that I did much of anything at all. The house doesn’t look all that different…or better.
But I feel different and better.
My actions may have seemed random, but they were intentional. I spent time in my home saying “hello” to my life…the life I had before it all started spinning out of control the first of August. I was reacquainting myself with the routines that I missed when other things took priority.
And now, I feel calm (or as calm as someone with anxiety can ever feel). I am looking forward to getting back to my “normal” life. Hopefully, I’ll remember some of the things I learned this month about what’s important and what’s not…about what needs to be done and what can wait.
All I know, is that a little routine and even a bit of boring sounds pretty good right now.
As I sit with my art journal watching a stupid movie on Netflix tonight, I’ll be thinking of those that are living away from their “normal” right now. And for those that are adapting to a new “normal” because their life has changed in a big way…
…for the friend who beat cancer but continues to battle the after effects of the treatment.
…for the friend whose cancer has returned and who is facing uncertainty and change.
…for the friend who adjusted to the new “normal” of Stage IV cancer and is now entering experimental treatment with an unknown outcome.
When life takes a crazy turn and we find ourselves in unfamiliar territory, it can be crazy hard. We find ourselves looking back at what was and we just want to go back to the familiar…the normal.
Going back isn’t an option. We are where we are.
Staying put isn’t an option. We have to go somewhere.
It’s not about courage or bravery. It’s not like we have a lot of choices.
The life we have is the one we live.
If we have a choice in the direction we can take, we make that choice…left, right, or straight ahead. And pray that it’s a good choice.
We cry, we yell, sometimes we pull the blanket over our head. We worry, we cope, we fail at some things and succeed at others.
We make a difference because we try, not because we did it all right.
And through it all we find comfort in the little things…
…in watering a plant and nurturing life.
…in wiping away a bit of dust or a few tears.
…in sorting through and thinking of what we might create with what we have.
And perhaps, most importantly, for finding something to be grateful for amidst it all.
Wandering
Warning.
This post may wander a bit. That’s a good thing. Today, I am wandering for the first time in many days.
I have no specific goals for today. Nothing that has to be done urgently. Nothing urgent at all really. (Happy sigh).
My sister saw her doctor on Thursday for the follow-up to her last hospitalization. His first words, “You really dodged a bullet.” There are a few minor(ish) things to clear up, but basically he told her to, “Go live your life.” She’s to increase her activity as she is able and not to worry about the blood clots. They should resolve in the next 3 to 6 months. It’s been a scary, hard month. We don’t know if she’ll get back to where she was health-wise, but time will tell. Life is good.
Barret the dog has had a relapse of his meningitis and is back on medication. We caught it very early so his prognosis is good(ish). I suppose that the recommendation for him is the same as for my sister…go live your life and take each day as a gift. He’s getting lots of treats. He’s still weird and dorky. That is good.
Today is my youngest daughters 13th birthday. My last teenager. Her school lessons are still challenging, but I think we are starting to get the hang of it all. I’m hopeless at the math, but I have an answer book! I start with the answer and work back to figure it all out. I’m not crying as much over the homework. She’s not crying at all. Good stuff.
I’ve started a new art card…
And I’m going back to work on this…
…the door makes more sense now. https://faithacrestudio.com/2016/08/27/doors/
And someday I probably need to work on this, my studio worktable…
Honestly, a lot (okay, all) of my house looks like this. Except for the parts that are really messy.
Today, I don’t really care. Everybody and everything that is supposed to be breathing, is. Family and friends are gathering for a birthday celebration.
The food is waiting to be prepared.
We’ll shove the mess to one side and eat off of paper plates. Nobody will complain. There won’t be many disagreements (it is close friends and siblings after all). Will have fun and celebrate.
It’s all good.
Walking
If I had to name the top 10 most influential people in my adult life, there is one person who would certainly be at the top of the list. She was a spiritual mentor, a life coach, an encourager (this word flags as misspelled, but I like it so it stays), and a partner in my creative endeavors.
She was a pastor at a church that I used to attend. As our relationship developed, she learned that I was an artist – although at that time I was just somebody who made stuff. She started sharing her sermon plans with me and I started to create art that illustrated the sermon. Some of it was pretty bad, but she hung it on the wall anyway. Eventually, it got better and she hung that too.
Sometimes she would come to me with a sermon and verse and we would find that I had already started the canvas that went with it.
I would sit and draw her sermons on Sundays. It’s how I learned that art is my form of worship…a lesson that I still value today. I did a complete book of sermon drawings for her. When I visited her a month or so ago, I saw that it sits on her hearth along with some other things that she treasures.
We rarely see each other any more as we live on opposite side of Austin. Though our lives no longer intersect as they once did something interesting is starting to happen.
I faithfully read her postings on Caring Bridge as she chronicles her experiences with metastatic Stage IV colon cancer. Lately, her posts are becoming more and more applicable and relative to my life – just as her sermons often seemed to be written just for me.
A couple of days ago she wrote something that inspired my post, “Doors”, which turned out to be one of the most popular things I’ve ever written here. Don’t worry, I’m not going to get a “big head”. By popular, I mean that more than 10 people read it. It’s all relative, right. I favor quality over quantity any day.
Today, she wrote about going through the interview process to try and get selected for a clinical trial of a new treatment. Although our situations are totally different and I would never try to compare my struggles with hers – when I read the words she had written about being overwhelmed, I could identify with her completely.
First, it put the circumstances of my life right now in perspective. I’ve reminded myself that the problems that I am facing are manageable and most likely solvable. The challenges to come are not insurmountable.
Second, her words helped me gain my footing again. She wrote that “sometimes people who are overwhelmed don’t do anything because they can’t do everything.”
She added that we should “acknowledge it (the situation) , pray, and just do one thing at a time.”
I can do that. I can acknowledge that while my situation could be worse, it’s still hard and I’m both tired and overwhelmed. And while I can’t do everything, I can do something.
So here’s what I accomplished today:
- I went to work
- I visited my sister in I.C.U and initiated a discussion about what her discharge plan might need to look like
- I spent time with my husband although I did forget to make his lunch
- We started planning what needs to be done to fix our second bathroom so that it is easily accessible for my sister as her recovery continues – I did not figure out how to pay for said renovations – that would be too much for today and would lead to feeling overwhelmed again.
- I am committing to filling one bag with trash as I begin to catch-up on housework. Some (most) of it will just have to wait.
- I took a short walk in an effort to get back to walking two miles a day so that I can lose the weight I have gained. A long walk just couldn’t happen. That’s okay.
- My daughter and I are going to do one math lesson as we work on getting caught up. It won’t solve the problem, but it’s something.
- I am going to sit and prepare the bag of worn out T-shirts into strips for my rug as I watch a stupid T.V. show and allow myself to rest. Oh, and by the way…here’s my efforts so far. Barret, the dork dog seems to like it just fine.
Perhaps most importantly, she reminded me that I’m not alone. I have friends that are thinking of and praying for me. I have people that I can call on if I need to (even if I’m too stubborn to admit that I need help).
Just because people are no longer physically present in our lives doesn’t mean that the lessons we learned from them, or the experiences we shared with them aren’t still valuable resources that we can draw from when we need to. Special people who have once been in our lives never really leave us. They become a part of us…often the best part.
Some Days…
Some days the world is a sunny place – regardless of the weather or the circumstances or the realities of existence.
Some days it rains – whether water actually falls from the sky or not.
On the sunny days, anything seems possible. I can handle it all. Bring it on world….taking care of a household, teaching an art class, figuring out Latin homework, relearning division, waving good-bye as my kids go out into the scary, bad world alone, training a spastic, brain-damaged dog to be sociable, working two other part-time jobs, being there for my sister as she recovers from surgery, laughing off the 20 pounds I’ve put back on over the summer and being a patient and supportive listener.
And then there’s the morning I wake up, and from the very start of the day, it’s all too much. The smallest thing triggers tears and the urge to crawl back into bed with the covers pulled over my head. Everything seems to be moving too fast and I’m moving too slow. I’d give anything for a “pause” button so that I could gain my footing.
When anyone speaks to me, I hear disappointment in their voice. Their awareness that I’m just not up to the task. That I’m falling short.
It’s not really their voice I’m hearing though, is it? It’s my inner voice. I’m disappointed in myself. Yesterday, I could handle this. Today, not so much.
What’s the difference in yesterday and today? Good question. My anxiety disorder? Depression? A good night’s sleep? I’ve got nothing in the way of an answer.
I’ve been told that I’m my own harshest critic. That’s probably true. Being kind to a stranger is pretty easy for me. Cutting myself some slack is much more challenging.
Maybe that needs to go on the list of things to do. Learn to be nicer to myself. Be kinder and more understanding that some days are harder than others. Tell myself that I’m doing the best I can and to take a deep breath. But not today. I’m not adding anything more to today’s to-do list. I’m done with today.
I’m going to go wrap up in a blanket and listen to the rain fall.
P.S. Just one more thing. Tomorrow, when you hear that little voice whispering that you messed up, that you haven’t done enough, that there’s too much to-do…when you feel overwhelmed…hear these words…
I think you’re doing okay. That you are doing the best that you can. And it’s enough. The world is a better place with you in it. And the sun will come back out.
I’m Still Here
Hello world.
I’m still here…at home ignoring the piles of clutter, cobwebs and unwashed dishes.
The laundry is caught up. That’s me – always looking on the bright side.
My sister’s recovery continues. We’ve been watching lots and lots of British murder mystery shows on Netflix and a smattering of classics like Columbo and Rockford Files. Variety is the spice of life as they say.
Youngest daughter just completed week three of school. All in all, we’re doing okay. We’ve fallen a bit behind on our Tuesday and Thursday work, but I’ve stayed in touch with her teachers and we’ll catch it back up. Certainly a lesson in prioritizing and learning that you can’t do it all. First things first.
Oldest daughter and son are moved into their new digs. I keep finding things left behind and have a box for each one that I’m dropping things in. I’m going to count that as a bit of decluttering if that works for all of you.
My life seems crazy hectic and absurdly slow at the same time.
Some days are filled with a doctor visit, and lengthy outing to the grocery store or a 911 call and subsequent visit to the emergency room following a slip and fall (my sister, not me) in the bathroom. Luckily no major damage done although a hip fracture was briefly a possibility.
Other days are quiet and restful with binge T.V. watching. I’ve almost finished a rag rug that I started ages ago, but never took the time to finish.
This month has been one of the hardest I’ve ever had to make it through. So much has gone wrong – much that I’ve not even written about for lack of time and the fact that I feel that I should only whine so much in public…
Let’s just say that our dependable old and paid for truck may be ready for hospice. The floor is definitely done for as the result of the air conditioner leak. There still isn’t enough money. You get the idea. All just normal life stuff, but added together just a lot.
As difficult as everything has been, I’m beginning to view August of 2016 as a blessing of sorts.
I’ve been dreaming of and longing for simplicity in my life. That’s hard to find in the midst of living. At least I was struggling to discover it.
This month I’ve learned that simplicity is always there. It’s discerning the simple that’s the challenge. There are always choices to be made. When life becomes too busy and complicated, I don’t believe that it’s because we’ve totally made the wrong choices. It’s that we’ve failed to make any choices at all. We’re allowing everything to rank as number one on the “got to do list”. That’s impossible and a miserable way to live.
Simplicity may just be realizing that some things must be done and some things can’t be done and being comfortable and at peace with what is. Constantly reviewing a list of things that are waiting to be done is exhausting. Trying to get it all done is even more exhausting.
Seems like such an obvious thought. Sometimes I can be hardheaded and slow. Maybe even stubborn. It takes me a while to catch on to the obvious. Maybe this is a lesson learned…
Sitting with someone who has no choice but to sit is important.
Finishing a rag rug is important.
Washing dishes is important.
Doing a math test is important.
Talking on the phone to someone who needs to be heard is important.
Some things rarely or never make it to the top of the list.
Figuring out which is which is simplicity in action.
And…stop.
Whew. I feel like I just finished a race. I crossed the finish line this afternoon and I feel like sighing the biggest sigh of relief everrrrrrr.
We got to school this morning – we we early (a full five minutes before assembly started), completely dressed, all of the proper books in the backpack, lunch bag packed (peanut free which I found out about late last night), and a hot breakfast eaten. I spoke with all of youngest daughter’s teachers after classes and they were all surprised that we are essentially “unschoolers”. She did that well in orientation, class discussions and syllabus presentations. One teacher expressed disbelief that it was possible to get to the age of 12 without learning cursive, but life will go on. The world will continue to spin and she’ll still get her papers written sans cursive. We’ll learn it as quickly as we can, but it’s just not that high on my priority list.
Best of all, she was sad when the day ended. She did beautifully. She handled the classes, got along with everyone, made some friends and wants to go back! Yea.
My Monday art class only has five kiddos in it which I will celebrate. Last semester I had a dozen or so. They were all great kids, but that’s a lot of art to teach with just two hands. Five students means we will get to do much more challenging projects. I’m so excited about that.
My sister is improving greatly following her surgery. That’s a huge relief also.
All the stressors of the last couple of weeks have come to a resolution and I am done – both mentally and physically.
I feel like a balloon with the air whooshing out. Not a terribly clever description, but it’s the best that I can come up with right now. The grammar in this blog isn’t so great either, but I think that I’m managing the spelling pretty well. I’m happy with good enough.
It’s been challenging and I haven’t always maintained the best attitude. There have been some short-tempered moments and more than a few episodes of self-pity and low self-esteem.
Okay, if I’m to be honest, I’ve been in a crappy mood and seriously wondered if I was going to make it to this finish line or not.
Now what? I don’t have to get up early tomorrow. There isn’t a mile-long list of things to do and organize. No more stuff we have to buy and figure out how to pay for. No big uncertainties to face.
Just normal life to deal with. After dealing with all of the stuff that’s been happening lately, my old challenges seem easy in comparison.
And now, to bed. I shall sleep soundly as befitting someone that has life totally under control.
Yea, we know that’s not the case, but just for tonight we shall pretend that it is so.
Life is good.
FaithAcre Studio | Kelly Barrow 