Snow (really written on Monday)

The only other sound's the sweep,
Of easy wind and downy flake.

Why is it that snowy (or rainy) weather and a migraine can provide perspective that sunshine and feeling healthy cannot? I knew it snowed yesterday, but I didn't really pay any attention to it; I had the shade pulled and was in bed. I tried looking out at some point, but it was too white, too bright, too much for my scrambled brain. By the time I'd reached the headache hangover stage, it was getting dark and I couldn't see much of the snow.

It's snowing again today, though, very gentle flakes, enough to keep everything white. The sidewalks are covered with a thin layer of downyness. That and the quiet made me think of Frost's poem. Those two lines perfectly convey the feeling of this kind of snow - soft, gentle snow with no wind, enough for a light layer of whiteness over everything.

I've absorbed some of the quiet, taken it in. That, combined with gratitude for being pain-free, have made me happy to be in the world, and have helped me see how much I've not really been in the present lately. My migraines don't have a single trigger. They're usually a warning that I'm not taking care of myself, that I'm not eating right, not drinking enough water, not sleeping enough, not letting stress go, not exercising enough, not paying attention to the here and now basically.... I could claim all those things at the moment. It's what I do when I'm waiting for the future. And right now, I am waiting, my whole life is waiting. I'm waiting to hear about jobs, to find a place, to move, to BEGIN.

How do I balance here and now with waiting to begin? That's what I'm pondering this week. My original plan was to stay very temporarily at my brother's, to find a job relatively quickly, to move, and to BEGIN. Beginning has been postponed, though. I'm not sure how long it will take to find a job. Living in a postponed state isn't working for me, either, or so the migraine would indicate. So my life requires looking past these two fixed states of waiting or living, past the black and white into something else.

I've joined the Creative Everyday Challenge. I'm hoping that I can use creativity to find ways to balance both waiting and living in the present. Originally I had thought that the challenge would push me to create physical objects - beadwork, stories, whatever. I'm sure that will happen, but I think my focus is not on making creative things as much as it is on trying to apply creativity to my life. I want to find ways to live here and now in a temporary situation that involves lots of waiting, lots of uncertainty. Being open to uncertainty will be a big part of the puzzle. I would so love to make a decision, any decision, rather than sit with uncertainty. Maybe uncertainty and I can become friends, or at least declare a truce.

uncertain, a. (from the Oxford English Dictionary)
1. a. Not determinate or fixed in point of time or occurrence; that may happen earlier or later.
b. Not determinate or fixed in amount, number, or extent.
c. Having no regular shape. rare.

2. a. Not certain or determined in respect of occurrence; dependent on chance or accident.
b. Devoid of, lacking in, certainty or settled character; liable to change or accident.

3. a. About which one cannot be certain or assured; subject to doubt.
b. Of ways, etc.: Not clearly leading to a certain goal or destination.
c. That cannot be relied on to produce a particular result.

4. a. Not known with certainty; not established or proved beyond doubt; doubtful, dubious.
b. Without clear signification; ambiguous. Phr. in no uncertain terms, emphatically, very clearly indeed.
c. Not clearly identified, located, or determined. Phr. of uncertain age.
d. Not clearly defined or outlined.

5. a. Not certain to remain in one state or condition; unsteady, variable, fitful.
b. Of persons: Variable, fickle, changeable, capricious.

6. a. Of persons: Not fully confident or assured of something.
b. Const. how, what, whether, etc.: Having no clear knowledge; in a state of doubt.
c. Undecided; not directed to a definite end.

7. into uncertain, at random. Obs.

8. quasi-adv. In an uncertain manner.

Shifting

I've been drifting this week, not doing much outside of my head. I got a definite rejection on the only potential job option I've had so far. That's colored the week; I've been spending time reviewing and reevaluating my job options and job search strategies. I've also been seriously thinking about my life - what I want, what I need, where I need to go.

I found a mission statement I'd written - probably about a year ago. It's a nice reminder of purpose. The whole job/job search - it so often focuses on more superficial parts of ourselves. It's hard not to let those job skills or our jobs themselves define who we are. People don't ask, "who are you?" They ask, "what do you do?" Finding my mission statement was a good reminder to not focus so much on the external. Yes, I do need to find a job, but my whole worth is not wrapped up in the process (or even the product) of that search. I have a life outside of that. It's time to give that part of my life some space. I'm not sure how that works, being that I have very little physical space at the moment. I'll just have to approach this creatively.

The mission statement:
My mission on this earth is to stay open to new ideas and experiences, to work through the discomfort that comes with true and deep questioning, and then to translate these thoughts and processes into creative works. Through my contributions of writing and the physical manipulation of objects, I will put something unique back into the world in place of what I have taken from it. These creative processes will allow me to communicate and connect with myself, with others, and with the spiritual/natural world. Writing for the joy of writing is my primary focus, and I will structure my life so this focus is supported and sustained.

Intentions

I've been poking around on the interwebs, looking to see how other people might cope with creating while transient. In my travels, I found the Creative Everyday Challenge, and spent some time looking at the blogs of people who are participating. It's wonderful to see so many people creating, to see all the beauty being added to the world. I'm debating joining the challenge. It would be nice to have a committment to something outside myself; that might keep me going at points where it would be easy enough to curl up around myself and shut down.

As with so many other things, though, looking at all the drawings and artistic things makes me feel a bit inadequate. This is one of the challenges I've faced over and over and over in my life - to be visible, to participate fully in my life, in life in general. Being visible is not just being seen, it's having the potential for being judged. And still, in some corner of my mind, being judged is not a positive thing. It's to be judged and condemned, judged and found lacking.

When I'm tired, when my energy is low, my brain resets to the default, which is to believe the negative voices from my childhood, the voices that still whisper, "fat, stupid, ugly." The positive voices are harder to hear. I have to keep myself healthy and strong and energized to keep the voices balanced. And it's hard to keep myself re-energized when I'm living in someone else's house.

On the Creative Everyday blog, I found an idea that's very interesting. Instead of New Year's resolutions (which I hate anyway), someone came up with the idea of setting an intention for the new year, and choosing a word to represent it. I thought about visible, but I've decided that open is a better choice for my situation for this point in my life. I need to keep myself open to possibility, keep my heart and brain and soul open. By being open to everything around me, I can find the path, the job, the place that I need to be.

To me, being open means being able to take risks, take chances, experiment with things that may not work out as planned. It's being open to playfulness and pain, to ups and downs, to the full specrum of life. It's being able to quiet the judging voices, not silence them. It's staying open to all the feelings and thoughts I have, both positive and negative, and accepting them as part of me. When I can do that, just be who I am at the moment, then life is good. So, OPEN is my word, my intention for this year of changes and challenges.

Limbo

With my life in limbo lately, I've been postponing everything until I'm more settled (i.e. until I have a job, and my own place, and know where I might end up). Even though it's only been two weeks since moving into my temporary lodgings and four weeks since graduation, I'm coming to the realization that the job seeking process could take more time than I would like it to take, especially in the worst economic climate in 30 years (woo hoo, who says I don't have timing?).

So what happens in the meantime? I put my whole life on hold until I have my own space? Experimenting with beads and words and color and fiber, etc are important to me. The process grounds me in a way that nothing else does. I need all the grounding elements I can find in my life at the moment. That's where this blog comes in to play. I'm hoping it will function as a virtual room of my own, a place where I can post pictures of my experiments, where I can share my thoughts on the process. I hope it will be a place that will help me stay open to life and all the challenges/opportunities coming my way.

My instinct is to shut down, pull back, to curl into a protective ball when I'm feeling off balance. So not only will I experiment with a variety of mediums, but the experiment extends to keeping my heart open under stress. Since most of my life is packed in storage in Indiana (while I'm in Iowa), the challenge will be to see what I can do to play and experiment in very little physical space, with not a lot of materials, either. This should be a most interesting experiment.