Spring

I have a habit of counting the days 'til spring. I know, in a way this is kind of weird because I ignore the beauty of the days that I am in the midst of. I am always looking forward, instead of enjoying the present moment. I just love spring. It is wonderful watching the trees come into bloom and watching everything turn green and pink and white. The many shades of green are so beautiful to look at. Fall has its own beauty, the colors of the leaves are so brilliant. But these soon drop off and leave barren tree limbs. And then cold weather sets in and for someone prone to melancholy, the difficult waiting period 'til spring arrives. One would think I would find something to do that helps minimize the effects of the dark winter months. So far I haven't. Though there are times when the chilly weather really is special. There is nothing quite so lovely as a cardinal streaking across a field of snow on a brilliant sunny day. I saw this years ago and I have never forgotten it. I suppose there is a way to get through winter without getting depressed. Perhaps the secret is to fill your days with activity. To find something that requires you to get outdoors. I am fortunate in that I live close to parks and there are many forms of wildlife there. So many varieties of birds and other animals like deer and beaver and foxes and opossums. There are so many forms of life that one can run into them without fail. A trip outdoors is all that is required. Something to be said for that.

Check in

Just haven't had much opportunity to write lately, kind of a low period. I have not been creating much either. I took two works down to the place where I sell my work, this has been the extent of my output for the last several months. My depression keeps me from really creating as much as I like and it frustrates me. I wonder how a professional artist does it. I do have an idea for a still-life and I have done a couple of small watercolor sketches which are pleasing. I just received the most recent "Artist's " magazine and there was a wonderful article about scratchboard in it. This is something that Iwould love to try and I would like to visit an art supply and see what I can find that relates to it. My community is not a great place to find art supplies. There is a Michael's and an A.C. Moore, but they probably don't carry what I am looking for. I will have to travel outside my community to find what I am looking for.

Wrestling With Old Demons

An old character defect of mine is allowing myself to get too isolated. Spending too much time alone is old comfortable behavior. There is an old proverb that goes : In order to be a friend one must be friendly. I guess that maybe it begins with picking up the 1000 lb. phone and calling someone. There are people online to talk to, but that means I can get out of an intimate conversation and opening up to someone. Something that I like to avoid. I can talk to my better half and we can have a nice conversation, but sometimes it is good to touch base with one of the guys. Are all guys like this? Getting older can be part of the problem. It is easy to just kick back on the couch and watch tv. No commitments to get together, no talking about more than the everyday stuff. When you get older some things just don't seem as important. Sometimes it is just too easy to avoid talking guy stuff.
I just bought a bike and I am anxious about getting on it. I need to get some exercise and I love to ride. My last bike I dislocated my kneecap when I was getting off it. I ended up in the E.R. in a lot of pain. Since then, every time I get on the bike there is a little part of me that remembers that injury. I have been on the bike a lot of times since that injury, but there is still the nagging fear that it will happen again. I think that I just need to warm up a little before getting on the bike. The last injury happened because I hadn't ridden for awhile and I was out of shape. Sort of like now. I guess I need to learn from that last injury.
Depression is something that I know well. More than I care to admit. It is a comfortable old friend that fits me like a glove. Kind of like the isolation I wrote about, except moreso. Depression is where you can't bring yourself to leave the house. Where everyday is just like the day before. Depression is my disability. My depression keeps me from moving ahead with my life. One gets used to staying at home and vegetating. Grocery shopping is the only time one leaves for the most part. Maybe a thirty minute outing to the library to get more books. Reading memoirs is a way to see how others are leading their lives. Tiring routine.

New Ideas

Sometimes it is so very hard to come up with new ideas. Nothing motivates me. At times it can get frustrating. I was reading a book about cartooning and the author made the comment that seventy percent of one's time is spent coming up with ideas. That is a lot of time. I am not a cartoonist but I spend a lot of my time generating ideas for projects. It didn't occur to me that idle-time is productive time with the right frame-of-mind.
Sometimes people say dreams are a source of inspiration. But I'm unsure. I have always felt that dreams might be a source of inspiration with the right motivation and discipline. I have heard that dreams can be significant sources of direction. Yet I have never found myself actually tapping into a dream for any type of guidance. The inventor of the sewing machine had a dream tell him how the design of the needle was to be constructed. Another person had the shape of a molecule come to him in a dream. The Bible is full of examples of people who used dreams as a way of understanding how to proceed. Joseph, the husband of Mary, was directed as to where he was to go when presented with conflicting ideas. I wonder if there might be truth to these stories. Or are they just stories?

Gratitude

Doing a gratitude list on a daily basis to combat depression is a difficult proposition. I have battled depression for the last fifteen years or so and this makes gratitude a demanding pursuit. I heard that some people of the Jewish faith are asked to do a list of 100 things to be grateful for every day. Imagine. Sometimes I can do it. Sometimes it is easier than others. Today I struggled to find 10 or so things that I consider a blessing. Today was my grandson's seventh birthday. I had to drive twenty miles to my daughter's home and the traffic for a Friday afternoon was minimal. There were showers, but they waited 'til I was at my daughter's home. My grandson was well-behaved for the most part and I only said something to correct him one time. He ignored me. I think I must have been the same way when I was seven so it wasn't a big deal. Still, it did irritate me a bit.
Miracles. I have sometimes thought that it is an amazing thing to be here. Life is amazing. I find myself making an effort to thank God for each new day. I am fifty-six years old and it is becoming clear to me that I cannot take anything for granted anymore. I have lost a lot of people to death the last few years and a lot of them were my age. Cancer took a few of them. Others just died for no particular good reason. So being alive is a big deal. It is a miracle. I don't know where I came from and most of the time I am not sure where I am going. I believe in God, but I think that God allows me a lot of free-rein. He doesn't say that you must do this or that to be on my good side. He allows me to get off-course before he does anything. I am diabetic. I gained a lot of weight and had a pretty crappy diet. So I got diabetes. I struggle with the reality that I must eat a certain way and that I must exercise. I don't do it so there will come a time where God is going to rein me in and it will not be in a gentle way. This is my belief system. If I get too far out there, there will be consequences. God is gentle with me and my behavior shows it. Still, like my seven-year-old grandson, I sometimes want to push the envelope.

A Miracle

One of the things that captures my attention lately has been the idea that we are all miracles. Picasso said that it is a miracle we don't dissolve in our bathwater. I read somewhere that as part of a daily spiritual regimen we are to focus on all the ways we are blessed. Do a gratitude list of 100 things every day. Sounds hard until one tries it. What is hard though is to practice it consistently. I have not been able to do it for more than a couple days. Still, it can be done. Divine intervention in day-to-day affairs is hard to see. At times we just miss the obvious because we are too interested in getting from point a to point b. Today I had to run to the doctor to pick up a prescription. I had to stop at the store on the way home and I was just interested in getting home. One thing I did not notice until today was the amount of trees along the route to the doctor. There was one section that looked like it was a forest and I had not noticed it until today. It is so easy to miss beauty when focused on getting things accomplished. A couple of days ago I walked my dog in a local park. We stopped for a moment and sat down in the grass. I noticed a firefly on one of the blades of grass. Several inches away was a oddly colored ladybug. It is so easy to miss beauty when in a hurry. It is nice when some internal mechanism kicks in and says, slow down. Why is it so hard to see how blessed we are? There is a Native American saying that I like that goes, I am involved in self-pity and all the while I am being pulled across the sky in majestic clouds. ( Paraphrased.) It would be nice if there were a way to open oneself up to that reality.

Filling the Page.

Started reading "The Artists Way" again . Just frustrated with my creative block, Julia Cameron's book has always helped me to get unstuck. A creative block according to a lot of artist's these days does not exist. A dream of mine has been to someday be an artist like many others. But I just don't like to draw or paint. Quite a dilemma. I read "The Artists Way" many years ago when it first came out. Back then I was more creative. There was a lot of energy in my life back then... Now I struggle for ideas. A lot of time I just write. It seems much easier than painting. A favorite artist of mine is Chuck Close. One of the things he says about creative blocks is they are for amateurs, a real painter just gets to work. This makes sense, but I'm still stuck. Writing is just so much more relaxing. Perhaps there is some thing that I am better at than drawing and painting. I used to do little watercolor drawings with inspirational quotes on them. For a long time these were fun to do, but somewhere along the line they turned into a pain. Has anyone found themself in a similar situation-where art turns into a drag? It just seems that there was a time when I loved to create. Then I started thinking. I started thinking about all the artists out there who are better than me. I thought about how my work did not look like other's work. I thought about if it would make money. I thought about how it would look on a wall, and I forgot about how much fun it was to create the work.
The book The Artists Way is about doing writing exercises that are designed to make a person more creative. It works, it really does. Perhaps all the writing gets you to be a writer like Cameron. She is a great writer, no doubt about that. Perhaps if one becomes more creative with writing that is a good thing. Perhaps if we put expectations on what we want to become is asking too much.