Greetings! How are you doing? How is the world treating you? How is your heart? The times, they are a-changing! Last week I had a video call with a psychiatrist and I received some diagnoses that were not surprising, but still rattled my cage. Last summer, driving home listening to NPR, I started figuring things out, but still- hearing it from the proverbial horse’s mouth (there is nothing horse-like about my doc) took some processing. While I was processing (depression, ADD, and PTSD)
THE PUPPY ATE MY COMPUTER GLASSES!
Instantly. NEW PERSPECTIVE! I could no longer see the computer or what I was painting!
I still have driving glasses that have distance, so I can still drive. There is no safe place to drive to but I COULD drive.The painting I began during distance socializing is five feet tall and nine feet wide. I love it!But I can’t see it now. To paint I stand with my nose nine inches from the canvas that is stapled to the wall. I a focus radius of about 24 inches. Beyond that, things begins to blur. Crazy new perspective.(link to fb live of me starting this painting.)The process I am using in the Marking Time series is a mix of working very close and then stepping back and seeing how the minuscule creates the whole. I am adjusting. The last twelve hours of painting have been sans glasses. I am painting beyond the clarity of my vision and trusting the process. Trusting that even though I can not clearly see what I am doing, I am doing it. Trusting my experience, instinct, muscle memory, and hoping for the best. Every sixty to ninety minutes I take a glasses break. What is a glasses break? I locate my driving glasses, gird up my loins, and turn to SEE what it is I have done. So far, so good.
Typing this is physically painful. Thankfully I have an IKEA table that goes up and down with a crank. (OKAY, PETER! I hear you making “old crank” jokes, not funny. Actually, though I loath to admit it, they are funny.) The adjustable table/desk is so much better than if it did not adjust. I am thankful. The table cranks up high enough so I don’t have to bend over so far and that helps, and I am only a little dizzy. Monday I pick up a new computer script from the optometrist and will get Forrest to help me order some single vision glasses online. I paint wearing my computer glasses. I have given up on being able to see to read, so I just hold the book really close to my face.
Does this story seem familiar? It is kinda funny. It is also kinda sad. It is life!
Things were rocking along and then there is a bump. We can’t know what is ahead. We make adjustments and do what we can do. Some of it is painful. Some of it we just workaround. We all are realizing how much we depend on each other.
(Yes, I just compared SARS-Corona19 to a giant puppy eating the world’s glasses. It is more than that, but sometimes you just gotta compartmentalize the size of what is happening to be able to process.)What is a person to do?KEEP. GOING. (time-lapse video of me working on the new painting)I am continuing the Marking Time series that I began on December 31, 2018. It had been a rough season. My dad accidentally called me in October of 2018. I was able to tell him I loved him before he hung up on me. Four days later he died. Over the next few months, I would discover that he had legally disinherited me. (That is quite a tale, but not here, not yet.) It was hard. Our relationship had cycled through ups and downs since I was twenty and bought my own wedding dress. (Another bizarre story.) He would punish me for months/years at a time by not speaking to me, then, magically, everything would be fine. We never spoke of the estrangements, why they happened, or why they ended. Looking back I see that when he was angry with my sister, he would make up with me. There seemed to be a one or the other thing going on. He did not seem capable of loving us both at the same time.
I hoped that was what was happening when he accidentally called, that we would begin again.
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I hoped that was what was happening four days later when I saw his number on my cell phone. It was his wife was calling me to gently tell me he had died. I was stunned. I did not know what to say or even how to respond. I thanked Sharon for loving my father.
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No more hoping there would be another chance to start over and pretend the estrangement did not happen. No more phone calls hoping he would answer. No more letters hoping he would hear my heart. As hard as it was, it was freeing.
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Over night my inner critic, who sounded suspiciously like my parents, stopped. For as long as I can remember, falling asleep has been traumatic. Cruel, critical thoughts would spiral around in my brain: You are a horrible daughter. You are a horrible sister. You are a horrible wife. You are a horrible mother. You are a horrible friend. You are a failure. Your children hate you. No one loves you and no one ever will… Fun stuff. The night my father died, the inner critic stopped screeching at me at night.
The next summer was when I learned via NPR that ADD looks different in women and girls and is usually diagnosed first as depression and anxiety. Oh, my, goodness. There is an inattentive ADD that is not hyperactive. It fit me and a few of my children. Wowzers! DING DING DING!!!! Winner winner chicken dinner. I drove home and started studying. New perspective.
Apparently, I had developed coping skills. Skills that worked pretty well until they did not. I did well in school. I have a BBA and an MBA in computers and statistics. The hardest part of school for me was reading. I am a S L O O O O W reader. It takes me FOREVER. The psychiatrist said, “Oh, the slow reading is the ADD.” I almost cried. A weight lift from my shoulders. Angels began to sing. LAAALAALAAAAAAAAAHHHH!
It is so much easier working with the known. And knowing that my brain works differently, not wrong – different – is empowering. I am not an abject failure. My greatest weakness is my super power. When I heard other artists speak of being tired after painting for four hours, of losing concentration, I would bite my lip. SHOOT! I am just warming up after four hours. Give me a 16 hour painting day and I am on cloud nine. (I really should have suspected something earlier.)
Now I understand why some parts of the art business have defeated me. I am hoping that armed with the knowledge of how mmy brain works, I will be able to develop ways to work around the ‘windsock spinning in the gale” feelings in my brain when confronted with the business side of being an artist.I am more prolific than productive. I make stuff. It is what I do and who I am. I am a maker. I am trying to wrap my precious ADD brain around the idea of MAKING a business. (I really need help, but until I find that person to help me, I am feeling semi confident that I can finally make progress on my own by harnessing my ADD super-power.) Just knowing that these years of struggle are not a direct result of character failure is such a relief. I always thought IF I tried harder, if I blah, blah, blah. And I have spent years punishing myself for NOT achieving. When you ___________ then you can have fun. WELL, ____________ was NEVER going to happen. Now I now why!https://gwenmeharg.com/collections/all/products/golden-hour-60-x-60-acrylic-on-canvas
A new perspective.
Isolating at home has been very good for me. I am no longer beating myself up for lack of productivity. I am being kind to myself. I am learning to befriend myself. I took a week off to just be and it has been healing.
I am learning to embrace SOMETIMES. Samantha Bennett, author of “Get It Done,” teaches the art of SOMETIMES. You are a horrible daughter. SOMETIMES. You are a horrible wife. SOMETIMES. You are a horrible mother. SOMETIMES. You are loving. Sometimes. You are kind. Sometimes. You are AWESOME! Sometimes.https://www.instagram.com/p/B_7rwJynnWD/
ADD probably explains my buckshot writing and conversation style. We ALL should have known. It also helps me understand my art. (And comments by other artists, “HOW do you do that? It would drive me crazy.”)The Marking Time series is my attempt to encourage myself and the world to keep going. My exploration of the beauty of doing the ordinary stuff day over and over and over. My celebration of ordinary in a world that expects the extraordinary.Yes, some of our essential workers are indeed extraordinary, the doctors, nurses, and scientists. But we are learning how essential the ordinary is. The janitors. The UPS/ Fedex/ USPS carriers. The clerks. The stockers. The delivery people. The fast food worker. The farmer and farmhand. The truck driver. The ticket taker. The migrant. All the INVISIBLE PEOPLE. All the minimum wage workers that the world can’t function without.The ordinary, it turns out, is not so ordinary after all.This pandemic has given us the opportunity to step in close and see in detail the value of the small and the ordinary. All those tiny marks are the foundation of the whole.The pandemic has given us a chance to step back and see the big picture. The beauty of insignificant marks coming together. The marks that are not perfect, but are essential.My perspective is changing. I am a fixer. I can’t fix this pandemic. I am learning to encourage. I can encourage (myself and) others to keep going. To search for the beauty in the mundane. Maybe you are changing diapers and wiping bottoms. Maybe you are delivering packages. Maybe you are cleaning and disinfecting. Maybe you calling friends. Maybe you are listening to birds sing. Maybe you are praying for the rest of us.
I hope you are asking new questions during this season of distant socializing. I hope you and yours are safe. I hope that you are treating yourself with the kindness and compassion you offer to strangers. I hope that my super-power brings you joy. I hope my transparency sets you free to embrace whatever your super-power might be. There is beauty in what you do. There is beauty in who you are. Step back and see how all the marks you make, next to the marks she makes, and all the marks he makes creates extraordinary beauty. Please, celebrate your mark. Thank you for bringing your heart and gifts to the world. You are extraordinary. Peace out, Gwen
PS
These two roses were picked in December 2019 and photographed in January 2020. Depending on how you look at them they were very late, or very early. I think they were right on time. And look at the surprise center of this rose. Yeah, it is not supposed to be THAT way, but isn’t it glorious!
Be glorious.