“Drill”, #inktober52, #inktober

 
I have been reminded of my blogging duties, especially as Mom said she thought I was dead or dying.  My apologies for dropping off the web this past month.  I kept trying to write a post, but I just couldn’t find the right words to say what I want to say.  I want to yell “Don is a bad boyfriend!”, and I’m pretty sure nobody wants to read my yelling.

Here’s the thing, I had a narcissistic husband.  I didn’t know anything about Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) and I fell for many of his tricks.  Since then, I’ve studied NPD (beyond my friends’ patience and understanding).  I’m like an alcoholic who quit drinking with it.  I want everybody to see the light and know the things I’ve learned.  After I started my studies, Don became the US president.  This really made me want to educate everyone about the dangers he poses – except one of the realities about NPD is other people really don’t want to hear it.  Do you see my conundrum?

Most people know Don is a bad boyfriend.  He cheated on his mistress right after his wife gave birth to their son.  We all know he’s a racist and misogynist.  We know he’s out for himself and hangs out with criminals.  We know he breaks laws.  His base forgives everything even if they say they don’t like him either.

I blamed myself for a long time during the marriage and long after my divorce.  I knew I was miserable, why didn’t I leave sooner?  But I valued the marriage commitment.  Sometimes I believed his lies.  Maybe I’m too stubborn, or too optimistic.  I tried to work out our problems.  I didn’t understand he didn’t want to work them out.  He enjoyed fighting and making me miserable.  He twisted everything around so I didn’t know which way was up, and he felt entitled to do whatever he wanted to do.  Live with it.

This week it came out Don doesn’t respect soldiers wounded or killed in battle.  Nobody is really surprised by this, are they?  Life as we know it is threatened by climate change.  Don wants to drill for oil in one of the last undisturbed places in the world.  He doesn’t care about the planet, nature, or you.  Take away Social Security from old people too.  He doesn’t care about you.  He’ll leave all of us to clean up his messes and heal our broken hearts.

My ex would do something nice every now and then.  Okay, I like getting flowers or going out for dinner.  See, he loves me.  Doesn’t he?  I’ll keep trying to work things out… but then he didn’t come home or show me respect or whatever.  Don is just the same.  He’ll throw his base a bone like nominating judges or giving the wealthiest people a tax break.  He says that’s what you wanted so shut up.

His opponent, Joe Biden, is by all accounts a decent man with a lifetime of government experience.  He and his running mate, Kamala Harris, both have centrist, moderate goals.  For some people, that’s just not exciting enough.  They aren’t turned on by the good man even though he’d make a better partner.  They want the bad boy even if the bad boy punches them out once in a while and might end up killing all of us.

I don’t know how to convince anyone Don is a bad president.  200,000 Americans are dead from Covid-19 because he either didn’t act or encouraged risky behaviors.  His actions have resulted in most Americans saying they won’t get a vaccine when it’s available because they don’t trust how it’s been developed and rushed.  You know in your heart that if Don was a good leader we’d trust the vaccine.  We don’t.  He isn’t.  Please vote responsibly.

"Brain 3"

I guess IF wants us to keep talking about brains since our leader neglects his duties of choosing new words.  I'm not sure I want to keep talking about this though.  As I said recently, "Sometimes I'm sick and tired of being in my own brain!"  The woman I was talking with gave me an incredulous look.  I asked, "Don't you ever get sick of your own thoughts?"  Nope.  She never did.  It was my turn to look incredulous.  I can't conceive of such a thing.

Another woman told me she's had a blissed out, happy life.  No problems at all.  Perfect family, perfect husband, perfect kids.  I was certain she was deluding herself, but our mutual friend told me that it's true.  None of her people has gotten sick or died, she's always had plenty of money, never been seriously emotionally or physically hurt, and has succeeded at whatever she wanted to achieve.  How is this possible?!  I want her life.

Except in my heart of hearts, I doubt I really want her life.  Well, it would be helpful to have some of her money.  Otherwise, maybe I'd rather live in my own irritating brain?

I've had more than my share of bad experiences.  Sometimes I give myself pity parties.  Sometimes I see the positives I got from those experiences.  I'm sure I'm more sympathetic, empathetic, and interesting because of the life I've had.  I'd like an easy life like that happy woman with the perfect world, but I'm not sure I'd want to trade my intangible benefits I've gotten from living through stuff.

Or, more realistically, I've already lived through those things.  I can't give them back without getting a lobotomy.  The choice is to find positives in what I have and to find gratitude for those positives.

I'm sad this week because Rand MacIvor died.  He was one of my first followers when I started this blog.  I know some of you met Rand this way too.  I don't know how he found me, and I was surprised anybody would want to read things I had to say.  He encouraged me when I needed it.  We happily bashed politics together.  He was often silly and we traded jokes and stories of working as commercial artists in the old days.  I looked forward to his messages.

I can be critical of the virtual world we live in.  Young people are glued to their phones and tweet and repost stuff that doesn't matter.  At the same time, I valued my virtual Canadian friend.  The web gives us the chance to meet people across the world.  I think this is especially wonderful for artists who work alone and spend too much time in their own heads, and in Rand's case, even more important when he couldn't do art himself anymore. He was failing for a long time so his passing wasn't a complete surprise, but I feel the loss.

So when I think of the woman with the perfect life who has never lost anyone special to her?  Well, that's nice for her.  At the same time, I'm glad I got to know Rand.  I'm willing to have today's sadness because it's a sign we actually connected in a meaningful way.  And to all my other blog buddies, I value you too.  Thank you!

"Brain 2"

I got a project this summer with a vague deadline of "Sometime before Christmas".  Great!  I even started the 4 paintings in the summer but I ran into an obstacle.  I needed to go back to a previous project and take photos so old and new paintings would go together.  But you know how it is.  There was always something better to do, more urgent projects, my growing resentment that these started paintings laid around my living room and nagged me to finish them

I procrastinated and started writing a blog post about motivation.  I saw the irony.  I abandoned the effort to motivate others and can happily report I finally finished the before Christmas paintings, but maybe some of the following points can help you motivate too.

1. Make yourself responsible.  For my project, I know I would've finished it sooner if I'd set a better deadline.  I could've told a friend about my procrastinating and requested a friendly nudge in a week.  Knowing myself, I'd get it done before my friend would have to nag me because that's only considerate.  I'd call and proclaim victory instead.  I could write a deadline on my calendar.  You may figure out a way that work better for you -- then do it.

2.  Show up and set a routine.  When I went to work every day I worked every day whether I felt like it or not.  Maybe I chatted with coworkers over a cup of tea first, but I'd buckle down at some point.  An object in motion stays in motion.  An object at rest stays at rest.  If you want to accomplish things, do something.  Even the masters had days when they were just grinding out the day's work.  The grind work pays off too.  You get better at it and it becomes less of an obstacle on future days.

3. Don't get ahead of yourself by thinking into the future or hoping for a masterpiece.  Every project starts by picking up a pencil, opening a file, or some other very easy action anyone can do.  In the case of my delayed project, I didn't want to work on it because I knew it would to take a lot of time to do.  I quit thinking about that and opened my reference photos.  I just did a bit of the task before me.  After that there was less to do and that was less intimidating.

I'm pretty sure all of us procrastinate from time to time.  The point is we need to find ways that help us do the things we want or have to do.  What do you tell yourself when you're dragging your heels on a project?  I'll be happy to learn more ways to kick myself in motion when I need it.

"Brain"

I managed more than 1/2 of the Inktober list which is more than I've managed previously so I'm counting it a victory.  Congrats to everyone who played!  Are we all more creative and disciplined now?

I always remember my great grandpa's advice, "To keep your brain you have to use your brain!".  His was working great even in his late 90s.  He learned new words from the dictionary, studied encyclopedias, read the Bible, and happily debated anyone who'd indulge him.  I adored him.  I snuggled against him, held his hand, and listened to anything he wanted to teach me.

I don't know if Great Grandpa was right about fighting senility.  Maybe?  Probably?  What I know for sure is there was a long period of my life where I wasn't very mentally challenged.  My friends talked a lot about diapers and school schedules.  I spent a lot of time focused on the bumper in front of me in my daily commute to work.  You know, all the basic stuff in life that doesn't really stretch us very much.  I had creative jobs, but even that's routine after a while.  I didn't notice my brain had gotten mushy.

National Public Radio (NPR) has existed since 1970, but I didn't discover it until much later.  Beyond politics, it has hour-long programs on subjects I didn't know about or care about.  One day, a host announced the subject was corn.  He said he didn't know how to fill the show with such a limited topic, yet the following hour was fascinating with history, selective breeding, farming, chemicals... I had no idea I wanted to learn about corn until then, and I was disappointed my friends didn't want to hear about it too.

Corn needs rich soil to grow.  Brains are like that too.  I didn't know my brain was mushy until I dated a guy who actually wanted to talk about the corn program.  It was like someone plugging in the Christmas lights.  Look at all the colors!  Look at all the other interesting things we can learn about and discuss!

My friends eventually got their kids housebroken and quit being sleep-deprived, diaper-obsessed zombies, yet some of them still didn't care about discussing corn or whatever topic was interesting me at the moment.  That's okay.  They laugh at me and we bond over other things.  I had room in my life for more friends who do enjoy NPR topics. 

I thought my brain was safe from mushiness until my boss died several years ago and I had to instantly learn how to do her job which included math I hadn't considered since I was in school.  I had to learn computer programs.  My brain hurt, I mean literally.  It actually hurt.  I think it was shorting out and I was the sleep-deprived zombie.  I self-pityingly repeated Great Grandpa's maxim in my mind as I fought senility with math.  I realized that while all learning is good, learning new things in new ways is even better.

The point is we aren't set in stone unless we want to be fossils.  We can teach old dogs new tricks.  We don't have to accept a 3rd grade teacher's assessment of our intelligence as a mandate for our entire lives.  It can be good to make ourselves uncomfortable in order to grow.

I drew the thistle for Inktober's "injury" because I pulled thistles out of my garden without putting on gloves.  Duh!  Clearly, I am not that smart about some things!  I picked thistle slivers out of my hands for a week.  Maybe I've learned to use gloves next time?

"Mindless"

Doodling my brakes and calipers on an estimate for brakes for "Tread"

"Prepare"

We can do the best preparations in the world, but if our brains aren’t in the game, that preparation isn’t going to do us a lot of good. It’s hard to consider follow through on action plans when my brain feels like a bag of gray worms hibernating for the winter. Maybe this recent train of events might explain a bit of my frame of mind lately…

My tea kettle had a plastic trigger to open the spout, which I broke at some point. I got some wire and twisted a new trigger for it since the whistling part was still working. The wire could get very hot while boiling water, but I figured I’d solved my immediate problem.

Mary Lou came over and didn’t understand the new rules for pouring boiling water. I tried to explain the proper method, but she opted to buy me a new tea kettle for Christmas that year. Life went on. Many pots of tea were brewed. Some eggs were hard boiled in it too. All was perfectly functional in the realm of tea kettles until the day I set the water on and then spent a couple of hours in my studio. I went into the kitchen to refill my glass and dimly wondered what the odd smell was in the kitchen, but PhotoShop was calling me. I didn’t have time to worry about odd smells when I had IDEAS that needed creating.

Sometime later, my glass needed refilling again, and the odd smell seemed stronger. PhotoShop was still calling me, but I absent-mindedly looked around the kitchen to discover that the stove was still on high and the tea kettle I had put on hours before looked something like a crashed UFO, with the plastic handle oozing a toxic lump into the cracks between the burners. My puppy Penny looked up at me with a doped up, questioning look about why I was making such a malodorous art project on the stove. I looked at it for a while before feeling an external, imaginary poke in my back to turn off the burner and get rid of the toxic waste.

Oops.

After much scrubbing and windows open in winter (again!), my house seemed safe for human and puppy habitation once more. The aloe plant sacrificed another limb to salve my burnt finger when, of course, I picked up something I knew was very hot. Sometimes I don’t feel very connected to the mundane things of this planet. Did I mention I had IDEAS? Who needs to think about “hot” when there are important things to get done?

When life had returned to a shade of normal, I did the natural thing and called Mary Lou to tell her the tea kettle bit the dust. I offered to share responsibility with her for its demise, but for some reason, she seemed to think I needed to shoulder the full responsibility myself. She didn’t see the simple logic that I couldn’t have melted the tea kettle if she hadn’t given it to me in the first place. Some people just try to duck blame no matter what, though it was nice of her to give it to me in the first place.

I found the old tea kettle in the basement and boiled some more water. The special knack required to open it seems to require a skill that I’ve allowed to rust in the intervening years, but I have tea again. The old kettle is polished up and pretty on the stove, and I’m choosing to see my wire handle as a sign of my can-do problem solving abilities. Or… maybe I should switch to Kool-Aid? Wait! Kool-Aid, colors, IDEAS!!!

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BTW, my apologies if you've left a comment that didn't appear on the screen. Blogger is trying to protect me from people I like and choking when I try to see those messages. I appreciate everyone's comments!