changes

I'm thinking about it. Changes, I mean. To my approach. In a very broad sense. But I'm me, and it's all tentative, as usual, so I won't sing about it, out loud, quite yet. I need to flesh those bones a little, first. And it could all well end in the bin, too ;) But to celebrate the idea of new thoughts anyway, here is an unusually quick sketch for you!

Yesterday being a national holiday, we drove to Volendam. Yup. Not quite sure why, the idea struck on the road elsewhere, but it was okay. It was nice, for a quick visit.

Note to self: quite a bit to draw there, architecturally, if I ever feel stuck, and not unimportantly, so inclined ;)

On the road, off to IKEA for a quick and cheap Swedish-meatballs-and-fries meal out (that idea had been stuck in my brain for days, so it had to come out and happen at some stage!), we saw a double decker bus somewhere, sparking imagination - me and Squirt came up with a million ideas to make it fun to live in one :)

When we got home, I needed to get some of the ideas onto paper quickly, and so did Squirt :D He drew! Double, tripple, quadruple deckers :D Which is awesome, since his stuck Theme has been 'a Dragon with Three Heads, a Volcano, and a Brachiosaurus' for weeks now - in whatever medium he gets his eager and quick little hands on ;)

Here's his version - the middle bus has a tent on its roof, the rest of the tents are in front of the wheels, and the bus on the right has a cannon per deck. Of course. We need to defend ourselves against the meanies, don't we?! ;)

Squirt drew outside his box (after a little coaxing, telling him he 'can draw busses, I'm sure of it!'), and I drew outside mine. Quick sketch, bamboo dip pen and Zig brush markers for colour! And I'm posting it on my blog! I've long been thinking about - adding to my can-do, too. About a need to learn to be quicker, dirtier, different - just and especially for fun! To shake things up a little, branch out! This process started after taking Koosje's awesome Just Draw It! ecourse (I'm totally endorsing!), was reinforced by my latest (S L O W) sessions of drawing outside, and definitely inspired by my blog-reading catch-up and especially Koosje's versatility.

Like most things, doing something different is in the doing. Not in thinking about it; not - although it's always inspiring - in looking at how other people do it; but in getting the darn pen and paper out and get DOING! If you wait long enough, think long enough, you're giving yourself ample opportunity to come up with all the reasons why you shouldn't, and then some. Trust me, I know ;)

Now to be honest, I did this quick sketch to - work it out later... To make it into a Bus to Live in, my style. And maybe I still will. There's nothing wrong with my slow but trusted process, I still like my own 'signature style' :) But I really appreciate that I did it like this, first, and I published it, too. Here's to first steps and flaunting them :)

Need inspiration? Why not draw your version of a magical place to live in? :D
Please let me know if you do!

everybody

It's blustery outside today. Storm, sunlit, with the fresh feel of Spring on its tail. The type of day that could blow the cobwebs out of your head if you'd just open up wide enough. Hope, and doable like scraps of paper, blown out of reach, but there, to see - and some days, that helps.

I've got no idea how to get started. It's been so long since I sat down and took myself seriously enough to be here. I've been rattling around in a life that seems too big for me for way too long now. I used to fill that space! I even overflowed it, on really good days!

I want to explain, I want to make sense of it - I want to get over it and get out! Part of me is screaming IT'S TOO SOON - YOU'RE STILL WAY TOO CLUELESS - TOO MANY LOOSE ENDS TO MAKE SENSE OF THIS!! And part of me, the quiet part, the little girl, she knows it's time. She knows I need to open up. She knows that this pain feeds on quiet - because it gets to be the only voice inside my head, keeping me in check. She knows the last bits of clean & sane know-this-about-me will mould without light. She knows I need air and wind and being naked. Yes. She's wise. And she's still there, so there's hope. (there's always hope, she says to me. she never tires of repeating herself when I'm off and deaf. she's plugged in, she sees these things much clearer than I do...)

I want to be poetic about it all - make it beautiful where it really stinks, but she tells me not to worry about how it sounds; and once again, she's right. Worrying about how it all sounds is what gets me here in the first place. It locks the door on me. It cuts me off from my gut, and from sanity, to put it dramatically, and that's always the beginning of the end.

This crap loops all through my life. I'd really love to say I'm getting better at handling it, but I'm not - not visibly, not obviously. And the time to get angry about that isn't - now. It's never. It isn't about getting angry, frustrated at what I'm doing to myself, although it always seems that way for the longest time; just kick your own butt, honey! that's all you need - a good whoopin' and you'll be right as rain. If you'd just get in gear and fit in, you'll be dandy and the world is right!

I'm scared of sounding too dramatic. I'm dead scared of being misunderstood. I'm scared of feeling like the only one who gets like this! I'm scared to throw myself out here, naked again. Really, really scared! But I need to. Because all this starts with feeling like I don't fit in, like I'm not good enough, like I'll never get it right - oh yes, elusive it, indeed! - and my first answer always is, to pull out. And I'm starting to think - okay, the little girl inside told me - that I'll never find glu for repair if I don't come out and show myself again.

Basically, it's really simple. Undone of pretty and sliced open, I was raised by a mother who Knows. I'm not here to vilify my mother. It doesn't help. Lessons learned are lessons learned, and in the end, the only thing that really counts is - how you learn to make up for it - how you learn to cope. I'm not here to excuse her, either, but I do know she wasn't out to get me. She meant well. She was - and is - just never flexible enough to realise that I needed to be right, at times, too. Because what I'm left with now is a broken compass. And way too much stock in what a fabled crowd of Other People think.

What I grew up with is this warped blueprint of how the world works: you do things right, you're good. You do things wrong, and this includes all versions of not-quite-right, you're no good, really. There is no manual for Good. There is no manual for Wrong either, but you catch on pretty quickly. You can gather it from a look, a word, a nod. There's a lot of disappointment involved, and you learn to apologise, because it's the quickest way to get on with things. And if you apologise this much, there must be something wrong with you to start with. That gets ingrained. Deeply. That feeling lasts. You hear 'I didn't say anything!', but you know that look and you don't need the words anymore. You weigh looks and gestures and you know. (have you ever considered you interpret too much? she asks, and yes I have. I have with hindsight. I know NOW. and it isn't necessarily too late to change - to learn to ask, but it's so hard to stop the damage mid-sentence, because I'm afraid I'll hear I was right; I'm wrong, and I really don't want to hear the words out loud...)

If I were asked to describe my way in this world, I'd go with tentative vulnerabilty. There is a lot I don't know. I know we all come from different families, different biographies, different circumstances - not to mention cultures, so I don't feel equipped to weigh and judge. And I don't want to weigh and judge. I like the surprise and the sense of wonder. I like making things up as I go along. I don't like carving things in stone, not being able to revisit, to re-examine, to try a different angle. I like to think, to analyse, and I like to brainstorm, to toss things into the air and see how they land. I don't know what was there first - finding a way to cope with being wrong pretty much anyway, or an innate curiosity, but this is what I'm left with. I'm tentative, I'm vulnerable, and I don't really know. I'm vulnerable because I talk about not knowing. I talk about not being sure. I talk about being wrong, re-assessing, trying again - I talk about that all the time. I talk about how hard life is at times, and how I don't know what to do to make sense, spin meaning, and I always hope for 'me, too!'

But I have quite a few People who Know in my life. People who are Sure. About a lot of things. They're sure about their parenting decisions, about what they'll eat tonight. About their politics, the colour of their underwear, their hobbies and how much time spent on those is reasonable. They're sure about their talents, their skills and their abilities. They know how to measure up, and how not to stand out in a crowd. They're awesome, they're good.

These are good, solid people, and I'm not here to vilify them, either. I know no one is that sure. I know that at least part of it is what I hear them say - because I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop, to be wrong, as I expect to be, at the bottom of things - and in part it's a - cultural thing? A contemporary thing? That we need to be seen to be sure? To show the world we know what we're doing? To have and hold opinions like they're our armour against change? I'm not sure (haha), all I know is, me and my open vulnerability, my lay-it-on-the-table attitude - when my solid ground starts sloping - I'm no match for their Knowledge.

I'm vulnerable because I expect to be wrong. And because I don't have a lot of worthiness in my back pocket on the best of days, let alone the slippery sloping days. I wasn't taught to carry myself, I was taught to - whatever you do, get it right. Without a compass. I don't have goals to fall back on when things start coming apart - meaningful stuff that will drag me out and up and into the light, because what I swallowed all those years ago was - life isn't about meaning, it's about not putting your foot wrong. It's about doing what's expected & about Knowing - being sure. I grew up thinking People Know. Hoping one day, I'd Know, too. Because Everybody Knows. Only really sad, silly, broken people - flawed, faulty, incomplete people don't know.

Some days - more and more days, longer stretches, it's important to remind myself of that! - when it's me and my gut and my brushes and my je ne sais quoi, and things are in place - I'm soaring with the best of them. I don't give a rat's ass about Knowing - knowing that I already do know on an instinctive, intuitive level that I'm alright, I'm okay, flying with my warts and who'll stop me?! But my gut gets clogged. It invariably does. Because I'm not necessarily heading somewhere - shouldn't I be headed somewhere - and shouldn't I Know?! As soon as I try to control being okay - hell, being Fabulous! - as soon as I try to tentatively, vulnerably explain it - as soon as I look up to make sure People see that I'm doing alright...

... that's when I see those looks, those gestures again. That's when I hear People telling me what to do, how they Know, how they got it covered, how their ducks are in a row. These People do a lot of their talking in my head. I talk for them. Inner mean chick does. She knows the drill. She knows when I'm ready to listen, and she takes no prisoners. She dresses like Everybody and digs in. I lose faith in myself and my gut, like I've always done in the face of Everybody, and I literally, physically pull back from the world. I stop seeing friends, stop answering emails, stop drawing, stop hanging out on Facebook, stop reading how everyone seems to have got it all figured out, and I don't want to hear about it either. I lock myself in with the one person who can make it all even worse: me.

For the past two months - give or take - I've been tearing strips off myself, reducing me to something not quite fit to feed a stray dog. All while fighting it, of course. It's been a war zone here - fighting myself for fighting myself for fighting myself. I've been playing footy with irritable bowel syndrome too, for the first time in my life - which is less than helpful when you're trying to trust your gut - but it's told me some truths by joining the party.

When you try to find your gut, your intuition, your I-know-a-few-things-about-me? Don't adjourn into your head. It's what I've always done - that's where the austere room lives in the world - but for the first time ever, I got feedback! It didn't help, and it still doesn't help just to know, but it's a serious clue about how to get out! And clues are good!

There are huge, gaping holes in this story. There are the things I don't know, things I'm not sure how to add up, things I don't want to drag up again, some good juicy examples of things that were said, and a good stack of things that would make this a book, as opposed to a long-winded blog post. One of the biggest holes is probably - why don't I throw everything at fitting in, if it matters that much?! All I can offer is - I think I tried that. Way back when. And it didn't work. I didn't get it. I didn't know what I was supposed to do, or what getting it right was meant to feel like - so I gave up. I think I decided at some point that it's - easier to come in from left-field, the element of surprise and all that - than to try and come in all dressed up, facing disappointment and a need to apologise. At least this way I could always claim they just didn't get it - even if it never really helped for long. Same fight, different coat - but it's how I 'coped' and I can't go back. At the bottom of the whole thing, it's always been about fighting the unfightable. Fighting myself for my sanity. Because it's about what I believe about myself, in the end, now that I'm all grown up. I'm not entirely clueless anymore, but I don't know everything. Ah. Elusive. I'm just not Know Everything-material. My personality can't handle it, my gut knows, but my head is stuck in the sand, ostrich-style. Or something. Holes, huh?

What I do know for sure, is that it's time to go out into the world again. Naked. Tentatively vulnerable with all I've got. And my brushes. I actually know at the bottom of all this - it's okay. I'm alright. I know more than enough. And the only way I can prove it to myself is if I go out in this raging storm out there and stay upright. One street corner at a time.

Do I like my personality? Do I want to change? Is it comfortable, not-knowing, and is there some sort of comfort in the falling, too? Some peace in knowing the enemy? I don't know. I'm forever much too close to this whole thing to claim clarity. What I do think is - I should get me one of those fabled Tribes, a gathering of Soul Sisters to keep me honest and on the straight-but-not-narrow - a new and improved Everybody to hear in my head and change my life! I LOVE reading about those, come across them all the time - great idea, too! Just one question: where do you get one?!

My story isn't all that unique. I don't come from unimaginably terrible things - I just live with a lot of harsh glaring lights and struggle, at times. So why do I get naked and share, anyway? Because I've been really lost, and really lonely lately. It helps, to write it down. It sort of feels like a fresh start, an opening to slip through - or the promise of one, at the very least.

And because I want to tell you - because we all need to hear it at times - 'oh yes, I get that. Me, too, sweetie. Me, too.' You don't have to say it, if you don't want to. I just want you to know you're not alone!

sensitive

I'm still upside-down. Picasso-esque. And I still think I see light ahead. But I haven't exited the tumbleweed tunnel quite yet. I'm vulnerable, still. 

Mostly, when I get here, my intention is to get things straight for myself, in the first place. Writing it down, as if trying to explain it to someone else, it helps. A lot. I gain clarity and insight from pouring the chaos in my head into a story line - knit beginning, middle and ending to what unwritten remains - mayhem. And I really, really appreciate the comments - more than you'll know.

But I don't have the courage nor the head space to write a blog post today. A huge part of this half of my personality - yes, dramatic; the shoe fits - wants to turn on the apologetics. She wants to blog about fluffy clouds. Not blog about that, per se, but be about that. While I know I ain't about fluffy clouds even on good days. When I know deep-down that I wouldn't want to be about fluffy clouds, especially on good days. But that's the extend of it right now. This is where I was, this is where I still am, and whether I kick and scream or fight it, this is what I have to wait out - whether I want to (I don't), or not.

But enough. I don't have the words to make more sense of this than I did before, so I won't try. I'm here, because I want to share something that almost made me cry this morning. And maybe when you read this, it might help you too. I hope it will. It makes sense to me, and I know I'm not the only one who gets like this. It sounds wrong, but it helps me, to know that. To know that you know what I mean when I hang out, when I feel tied up where I'm not. 

I'm reading a book. And it's eye-opening. I'm not big on labels and conditions, but I want to get a grip on this crap. Desperately. So while the title of this book put me off for the longest time, eventhough a very trusted close friend recommended it to me, I finally dove in. And it's - just so true. It's hard work to get deep with it, and I'm not getting that exactly right, quite yet, but when it comes to naming the feelings I've lived with for so long, when things get bad and when I'm on an almost unnatural high - it's spot-on, and I feel so... understood!

The book is The Highly Sensitive Person, by Elaine Aron, and while I'm not ready, at all, to bend it to words for myself, let alone here, I really want to share this (in my edition, soft cover, Element, HarperCollins, 2003, it's on page 62-63). It's sort of a - note to self from the inner child. And it's precious. If you're anything like me, it might touch you, too... 

1. Please don’t make me handle more than I can. I am helpless when you do this, and I hurt all over. Please, please, protect me.

2. I was born this way and can’t change. I know you sometimes think something awful must have made me this way, or at least made me 'worse', but that ought to give you even more sympathy for me. Because either way I can’t help it. Either way, don’t blame me for how I am.

3. What I am is wonderful - I let you sense and feel so much more deeply. I am really one of the best things about you.

4. Check in on me often and take care of me right at that moment if you possibly can. Then, when you can’t, I can trust that you are at least trying and I won’t have long to wait.

5. If you must make me wait for my rest, please ask me nicely if it’s okay. I’m only more miserable and troublesome if you get angry and try to force me.

6. Don’t listen to all the people who say you spoil me. You know me. You decide. Yes, sometimes I might do better left alone to cry myself to sleep. But trust your intuition. Sometimes you know I am too upset to be left alone. I do need a pretty attentive, regular routine. But I’m not easily spoiled.

7. When I’m exhausted, I need sleep. Even when I seem totally wide awake. A regular schedule and a calm routine before bed are important to me. Otherwise, I will lie awake in bed all stirred up for hours. I need a lot of time in bed, even if I’m lying awake. I may need it in the middle of the day, too. Please let me have it.

8. Get to know me better. For example, noisy restaurants seem silly to me - how can anybody eat in them? I have a lot of feelings about such things.

9. Keep my toys simple and my life uncomplicated. Don’t take me to more than one party in a week.

10. I might get used to anything in time, but I don’t do well with a lot of sudden change. Please plan for that, even if the others with you can take it and you don’t want to be a drag. Let me go slow.

11. But I don’t want you to coddle me. I especially don’t want you to think of me as sick or weak. I’m wonderfully clever and strong, in my way. I certainly don’t want you hovering over me, worried about me all day. Or making a lot of excuses for me. I don’t want to be seen as a nuisance, to you or to others. Above all, I count on you, the grown-up, to figure out how to do all of this.

12. Please don’t ignore me. Love me!

13. And like me. As I am.

Chicken soup for my troubled soul. Wise, wise words. Will you let me know if they touch you, too?

smile

First day of the first week of Isaak's School Kid Carreer. Courageous kid. He feels it, too, of course. This really is momentous for both of us...

So I came home to an empty house and time. I'd promised myself I'd fill it with something. Something meaningful - as far as I know what that is, right now. Move past the guilt that claiming this time as mine and pristine brings up. Trying not to waver in my resolution to make this time count - for something decidedly not chores of any kind. Nor entertaining distractions, no matter how they whisper that they're easy and instant and will cure all that ails while I let them. I need to start as I plan to go on.

Here's what came up;

autumn comes & shines with an in-your-face beauty that silently SINGS

I'm smiling reluctantly & in spite of myself
letting my bones warm
guilt isn't made to hang on to
especially not the kind we pour over ourselves
masked grief needs colour
light
air
healing does start here and now...

In the end, it all starts with permission. Giving yourself permission to smile, to enjoy, to embrace, to really see what we're given to play with. And to play then. Especially when that's the hardest thing to do. Sometimes the only way to take a first, scared, clueless, hesitant step onto the daunting road ahead is to allow yourself to play with what's here, now. So that's what I did.

healing continues, here and now.

Will you give yourself permission to play today? Do something, anything - just because you know deep down that it's good for you! Chocolates - to help swallow the guilt - are on me today :)

slack

Slak is the Dutch word for snail. Where spelling mishaps turn lethal ;)

It's what I've been doing already, really, cutting myself some slack, but I'm making it official: I'm taking a blog break for the Summer. I could make it huge and tearful, but the truth is - while there have been things I wanted to blog about pretty much daily, I just haven't been able to make it happen. Time... It's all about the constraints of time and everything I want to do. And where those two clash, that's where my blog has been. 

I've been feeling guilty about it - of course - and I'm not promising things will be better soon, necessarily, but I mean for things to be better soon. I mean to find a way to make it all work. In fact, I bought a book called Making It All Work, it's written by David Allen, and I intend to read it. In pockets of time ;) Because it's a recurring theme in my life, really - the fact that not all really works... 

I will be back, because I love sharing my stuff here, and I really love that you guys are out there - reading and telling me what you think. I'm missing it. But I can't keep asking for your attention when I've got nothing to say - there's too much of that going around in the world anyway. So I will be in touch when I've got things - a little more - under control... I'd love to see you then!!

Meanwhile, have a great Summer! Rain, shine or heat waves, I hope you find a way to enjoy what this season brings! Thanks so much for being here & out there!

character

I'm going to share myself as a chair.

I knew you didn't see that one coming :D

Pikaland Make Your Mark assignment # 5, finished about a month ago.

Draw the chair you think you are, artistically. I think I made it more about me in general, but that's okay. I'm okay with that. It's fascinating either way, and I was surprised at what came up & out! 

Me as a chair: black & white as instructed for part one - brutal honesty as a personal touch.

Part 2: chair, coloured. Yes. It's quite possible you recognise this chair. Three drawings in one week, people, it was hard work! So I cut a corner. But only a little one. And one that's quite fitting, when you think of it ;)

And finally, my chair against a background without white. I love this one. It involved watercolour, photoshop, micron pen drawing, more watercolour, some gouache and coloured pencils, more photoshop, actual printing, cutting and pasting (the cushion), lettering and scanning! It was an exercise in getting out of my comfortzone, while still ending up with an illustration that's me - both in style and punchline :) 

On a different note, my wrist is still not back to what it should be. I know what's wrong with it - stress, from my head into my shoulder muscles, down into my wrist to settle there. I've had it before, but never this long or quite this severe, and it's been getting me down and optimistic, pessimistic and back up again. I've discovered that I need my wrist for pretty much everything I love to do, as well as for everything I sort of have to do, like cleaning and chopping veggies. While it really is no hardship not to be able to cook healthy family meals or chase dust bunnies for a while - it is a b**ch not to be able to fill all that lovely downtime with all the things I complain I never have time to do more of... Ouch.

I am when I write, when I draw and paint, and when I blog, read blogs + comment and spend time on Facebook being amazed, amused and touched. I am not so much when I can't. It's a lesson. A big, overwhelming one. One that leaves me kicking and screaming until I tell myself it will pass when I stop fighting it. Do I believe that, to the core? I do. I have to. Because this is what I reinvented myself to be when I started cleaning out my closets back in 2010. And I really don't think I've got the stomach to go back in! Sorry for the dramatics. Just thought I'd let you know where I am these days. While I'm there. I have absolutely no intention to stay here, much longer!

Anything you're ready to kick to the curb?! I'd love the perspective right now!

semblance

Yes, a semblance of something moving here ;) I haven't been here, but I feel like I've been pretty much everywhere else, lately - in my flesh and bones life. And then I sort of crashed, which was inevitable. Or that's how it felt, anyway. But it was good, in a self-help-book sort of way - it was needed. Another reassessment of things and stuff and priorities.

That's all I have to say about it, for now. It isn't much, but at least it's a semblance of something happening ;) As is this drawing! My first in over a week. The stress bit my wrist and my wrist sulked. Is still sulking really. Drawing hurts. But I was sick of it! So there! And, so, ouch...




this is for sure the worst post I wrote in a long time! then again, this is the first post I wrote in a long time. I'm forgiving myself for it. my self-help books say I can ;)

voices

Perhaps the best way not to engage in conversation with those voices? Drawing with my new bamboo pen and ink! And mess with masking fluid and watercolours!
I'm not fooling myself, they'll be back - but this afternoon I went with fun ;)