Share Your World 2015 – Week 12

This is Week 12 of Share Your World 2015 from Cee’s Photography. As always, thanks for great questions Cee!

When was the last time you sat on a park or garden bench for more than ten minutes? Describe the occasion.

I can’t remember exactly when, but I am pretty sure I know the “where” part. There is a park Hubby and I like to walk..or run in. It is a rather large park in the next suburb over. It has a pond in the middle a and a trail that goes around it. It is special to us because that is where he took me on our first date. He took me to see the fireflies in the forest there. It was breathtaking. During the summer months, we often go and walk around. If it gets really hot, we’ll sit on one of the benches by the pond and just chat. We did some jogging there last summer, I can’t remember if we walked and sat on a bench though.

Would you ever be interested in observing a surgery or do you turn away when the nurse brings out the needle? 

Both! If it is anything to do with me or someone I know and I get squeamish. If it’s a stranger though, I can handle it. I have always thought seeing an autopsy would be kind of interesting. During undergrad, I taught a systemic anatomy lab to other students. We used human cadavers and human parts. You get past the creepy/gross factor pretty quickly when you have to teach. The one part I never got comfortable with was the sagittal head section. It’s basically a head cut in half right between the eyes. They kept these specimen all together in a bin full of what we referred to as body juice. I’d try to grab one that was floating around with the skull portion above the juice. That part is easier to grab, less fleshy. You never knew though, if you were going to pull it up with the back of the head facing you, or the face side. The face side was always little unnerving, no matter how many times I’d see it.

Where’s your favorite place to take out-of-town guests?

I guess it depends on who the guest is. Some people would really enjoy going to a maple sugar shack which is in season here in Montreal about now, I think. Others, might prefer shopping trendy Montreal designers or seeing the Old Port. I think the one thing I like to do with everyone is go to the little village around the corner from where I live. It is really cute, especially at Christmas or in the summer. Not so much at the current time of year. The buildings are mostly historic ones and there are all kinds of little shops with different things in them. This is an old house that has been turned into a rather fancy restaurant.

The lake is only one street over too. The lake is best seen in the summer with the boats and the wind surfers out, or in the dead of winter, when the lake is frozen and the kite boarders are zipping around. Unfortunately, the kite boarders are done for the year. This is the lake at this time last year. There was less cold and white stuff last winter.

If you had an unlimited shopping spree at only one store, which one would you choose? Why?

Right now, it would have to be a local scrapbook store, Scrapbook Centrale. They carry everything I need for art journaling and drawing. I was there over the weekend and bought a few things; a book on portraits, some paper for art journaling, a spider web stencil, some portrait watercolour pencils and a funky science/steampunk stamp. I could have spent so much more in there!

Bonus question:  What are you grateful for from last week, and what are you looking forward to in the week coming up?

Last Week: Last week, I was stressed and my mood was really weird. There is less stress this week, but my mood still isn’t right. I guess I am just thankful last week is over.

This Week: I signed up for an art journal class next weekend at the store I mentioned earlier. I am looking forward to it, but I am also having some social anxiety over it. I’m hoping it will be ok once I get there and get settled.

If We Were Having Coffee….

If we were having coffee, I would ask you how your week was. I hope that it went well. My week was rather blah and unproductive. I’m not actually sure which came first. Did I start to feel low and that caused me to be unproductive? Or, was I unproductive and that caused me to feel low? Regardless, both states are here. I’m glad the coming week is March break. Not only will the university be shut down, but my supervisor will be away for a week. This will give me time to get my mood under control before it dips further (I hope). Hubby has the same March break. It will be nice to spend some time together.

If we were having coffee, I’d tell you the new Ph.D. student is no more. He officially left the program this week. I don’t feel so bad for him anymore. Leaving is the right thing for him and I heard through the grapevine that it wont affect his current job back home. He just wont get the higher position he was getting the Ph.D. for.

If we were having coffee, I’d tell you I haven’t had time to do any more art journaling or drawing. I set up a tumblr account for some reason. I think that is where all my free time went this week. Some of the themes are a little complicated. I still haven’t figured out how to get WordPress to publish over there. It might work this time, I think there was a glitch in the theme I was using. Social media eats up so much time if you aren’t paying attention.

If we were having coffee, I’d ask you if you copyright your photos or artwork? The art journal people in the Facebook groups I am in usually type some sort of signature over their work. I haven’t done anything like that with my art journal stuff or with the doodles I display on my blog. Should I? What do you think?

If we were having coffee, I’d tell you I’ve been having nightmares every night. Not scary ones, more anxiety provoking. They cause me to wake up a lot during the night and leave me exhausted in the morning. What do you do to get rid of nightmares?

If we were having coffee, I would probably apologize for cutting it short this week. I’m just not feeling myself. I hope you have a wonderful weekend. Here is a photo of my little Ewok to make you smile as you start the rest of your weekend.

(This conversational coffee post is part of a weekend link-up hosted by Part-Time Monster. Join in the fun!)

Letting Go…

The 2015 Art Project – Week 3

Prompt: Letting go to be free…

Week 3 was the first part of a two part (I think?) “Letting Go” theme. We were instructed to focus on worry. Worry is something we tend to hold on to that prevents us from relaxing, enjoying, being ourselves and essentially, being free. At least, that’s what is does to me. It can make me physically ill too. I do have a problem with worry. I know I over do it, but it just comes so naturally. Part of the instructions were to write down things that we are currently worrying about.

Let’s see….

• Hubby’s job situation
• Hubby’s happiness
• If he gets a job up North, should I go with him, or continue school?
• Forcing myself to go to work
• Finishing my Ph.D.
• Getting participants for my dissertation research
• Making time for everything that needs to get done everyday
• My mental health getting worse
• My mental health never getting better
• Coping with group therapy
• Deciding whether or not to have kids
• I can’t speak French and I live in Montreal
• I don’t exercise enough
• I can’t sleep properly
• What is my medication going to do to me in the long term?
• Financial
• 30th Birthday trip planning
• Doing a good job on everything I do
• Making everyone happy
• My sick friends (one has a brain tumor, one has fibromyalgia, one has cancer and one has a son with a bad heart)
• Touching base with family and friends often enough

Some may scoff at my list, thinking that’s nothing compared to their worries or they may think some of those, like planning a birthday trip, are frivolous and that’s fine. I get it. In the grand scheme of things, my worries aren’t nearly as dire as those who worry about starving or not having a roof over their heads. I am grateful I don’t have to worry about those things, but does that mean I don’t worry, or don’t have the right to? No. Worry is intrinsic in human nature. It stems from the fight or flight response which evolved to protect us from danger and although danger has also evolved somewhat from wooly mammoths and saber tooth tigers, it’s not something you can readily turn on and off. If you are having feelings of distress or anxiety in response to something, those feelings are valid. It doesn’t matter what it is. Worry is different for everyone, everywhere, in every situation.

That being said, it’s important to check if the reasoning behind these feelings is valid. I often react to something and my mind gets all up in arms and stressed before I get a chance to look at things logically and rationalize the worry. That’s what my art journal page is about this week. It’s a reminder to myself to to slow down, to breathe and to think it through with a rational brain. By simply taking the time to do this, I can exhale some of those worries away.

Some worries are more difficult to deal with. These are usually the situations I have no control over. Control is a big comfort. I like to have a path set out in front of me with the detours mapped out ahead of time. I’m not a control freak, I just prefer to know what to expect when it comes to the big, important things. This is not always possible in life. So, the final part of week 3 asked us to pick three worries we have no control over that we’ll take forward into week 4. I’m choosing Hubby’s job situation, getting participants for my dissertation research and my mental health. I know I probably should have control over that last one, but I really feel like I don’t.

Now, for the art stuff….

I gessoed (can that be a verb?) the background white and doodled a girl (me, sort of) exhaling her worries over top.

Next, I shredded magazine recipes into strips. I used Modge Podge to glue them to the swirls of air she is exhaling. I wanted the letters from the recipes to be visible, but not legible, representing the irrational thoughts causing her feelings of worry. Next, I painted the background and the figure with acrylics. I used a Walmart stencil to get the white swirls in the background and then muted them with watered down blue acrylic. The big swirls are outlined in activated Neocolour II crayons. The lettering was done with a black Fude Ball 1.5 pen from Ranger Ink. I was told this pen would write on paint (no problem!) and would be waterproof (haven’t tried yet) so that I could paint over it without it bleeding. The silver bits are from a Sharpie paint pen.

Here is the quote. I can’t remember who it is from. I got it out of one of my old journals, thought it was appropriate.

And here is the full spread….

Loving Yourself

The prompt for Week 2 in the 2015 Art Project was “Loving Yourself”. Just looking at the theme, I knew this week was going to be a tough one. I am awful at self love. I feel guilty nurturing myself. Lately, in order to improve the state of my mental health, I have been taking me-time. It’s definitely not without guilt, but I find if I do something I enjoy, like art, then I get distracted and the guilt of not working or cleaning the house doesn’t get to me so much.

This week’s exercise was one I am familiar with. It’s similar to one of the staple activities of cognitive behaviour therapy. The idea is to re-frame negative thoughts about yourself into positive ones. I find it helpful. It can also be applied to other things. I normally use this activity to deal with my anxiety or perfectionist tendencies. I write down my worries and rationalize the hell out of them. Here is my exercise from this week.

It was recommended to a double page spread this week, so that’s what I have done. We were to interpret the exercise and the loving yourself theme. When I think of love, I think of hearts, pinks and reds, so I’ve incorporated those into my spread. Loving myself is something I am working on and finding difficult, so I doodled a cartoon of myself looking skeptical and pasted that in surrounding it with question marks. You can’t really see it, but I used a stencil full of gears in the background. The gears represent the hard work that has to be put in learning to love yourself when it doesn’t come naturally. I filled the rest of the space with other methods you can use to learn to love yourself.

For the art folk out there, I started with a layer of white gesso, then scribbled all over it with gelatos. The big heart is also gelato. I used white acrylic paint to stencil in the gears. The smaller red hearts are stamped with ink. The writing was done using a Uni-ball Signo gel pen. Letters were coloured in using Sharpie paint markers. The same was used to draw the question marks and the white ruffles around the big heart. The figure was coloured with regular old pencil crayons and outlined in a Sharpie fine liner. I used Modge Podge to glue the figure in.

Does anyone have an opinion on Modge Podge? I got a whole bottle from my sister-in-law, but I’ve heard it’s no good for art journaling and I should be using gel medium. What do you think?

Anyway, on to Week 3! If you’d like to join the fun, you can find more information on Victoria’s blog, or join the Facebook group

Current Plan of Action and a Bit of Ewok

It is a really cold day! I’m in bed with a hot tea right now. Why am I in bed in the middle of the afternoon? Well, for one, it is THAT cold!! Second, it’s because I wanted to hang out with my cat, Ewok. Within the last few days, Ewok has discovered how comfortable it is to nap on soft cozy surfaces. Her spot of choice has been at the end of the bed burrowed into blankets. No matter how many times I bring her in the other room to spend some time with me…she ends up back in her burrow. So I have given up and decided to do things her way. So here we are in bed in the middle of the afternoon.

This may not sound strange to a lot of you, but it is definitely strange behaviour for Ewok. She normally doesn’t like soft spots, she likes to lie on hard surfaces. Even as a kitten, she would usually fall asleep on the floor or the coffee table, never the couch. We later found out this was because she was peeing on the couch. Poor confused kitten. Don’t worry, we were able to clean it! Eventually, we moved and got different furniture, but she still preferred hard surfaces. Her napping spots were usually the coffee table, a stiff carpet or on top of the printer. When she got older, she started sleeping by my head in bed, but only if I moved the pillow and blanket to make room for her. So finding her the last few days lying on the bed, sinking into the mattress surrounded by blankets has been a weird sight. I hope everything is ok with her. I think she’s fine, she’s eating and drinking and happily snorting away over there.

The reason I want to be around Ewok is because she is a great comfort to me. I’m not sure how to describe how I am feeling right now and listening to her snorting or purring or seeing her cute little smooshy face makes me feel better. I am definitely feeling better than I was in the fall. I’m not overwhelmed and not having the suicidal ideation, but I’m not great either. My sleep is so-so and I feel sort of paralyzed. I have to force myself to do everything, otherwise, I just get lost in my head. Thinking about work. During the holidays I was preoccupied with the dread of going back to grad school full time. Now that I know I’m going to start back part time, I’m not feeling panicky and having nightmares about it. I’m still dreading it though.

The plan is to go back two days a week. I’m going to make a detailed schedule for the next two months and have it approved by psych. When the two months are up, we’ll evaluate and see if I should continue as is or take on more. I think that is fair. Hubby does too. He thinks I always jump into things and take on too much. Maybe he is right.

I hope I can finish my Ph.D. I’m not sure if it’s the depression talking or not, but I think I hate it. I like parts of it. My supervisor is great, I’m learning a lot. I like reading, brainstorming, gathering information, sorting it, teaching it and writing about what I learn. I don’t mind managing students and volunteers either. It’s the constant trouble-shooting, working around barriers, asking for money, trying to find people who qualify to participate and then begging them to participate. When working with human subjects, research depends a lot on the cooperation of other people. It’s not that others don’t want to cooperate, they just don’t want to take on extra work (no matter how minute) or disrupt their routines. I don’t just mean potential participants, I mean doctors, receptionists, technicians, volunteers and other hospital staff. I am always friendly and polite with these people. I even bring them treats, but they are never happy to see me. I am a symbol extra work, change or disruption to their routine. It’s not a pleasant work environment for me. Research is also a lot of rejection and a lot of work for very little success or progress.

Now that I have gotten all these studies through ethics, all I am doing are the things I hate. Thinking of going in fills me with dread. I really hope I can get through it. As a more senior researcher (someone with a Ph.D.), I wont have to do this part anymore. I can send students (like me now), research associates and volunteers off to do it for me. I just don’t think I’ll ever get there. If there were an end in sight, I could probably force myself through, but there is no end. I have lost faith in my project and it feels like I will be a student forever.