Courtesy of some virus. I’ve barely left my bed in 36 hours. I’m ranging between feeling philosophical about it, to hysterically overwhelmed by the exposure of my exhibition, the piles of admin, horrible things going on for some of my mates, and life in general. For someone who’s been sick a lot, I still don’t cope with it very well!
Today my grand plan is to have a bath and wash my hair. If things go well I might get some laundry done too. Clean clothes would be nice. Rest, rest.
It’s been a mammoth week here for me, and with 2 exhibition launches this week and a major sculpture project due on Monday… it’s not going to ease up anytime soon. It’s getting challenging to find time to write the blog! Over this last week I’ve had the wedding of two dear friends (to each other), a friends mental health crisis, vandalism happening around my home, and I’ve officially started dating a wonderful woman I first met in the online dating scene. We’ve been talking and catching up for almost 4 weeks now and we’ve just done the big status change on facebook. 🙂
Needless to say, I’m feeling slightly dazed! On top of the world, anxious, excited, exhausted, frustrated, happy… I think I’ve hit every emotional note and then some this week.
Dating as a multiple is complicated. My girlfriend knows of my situation and we’re doing a lot of talking. I’m learning a lot and my system is adjusting to the new circumstances. I’m working on foreseeing and avoiding at least the obvious possible problems (such as leaving the other person feeling rejected when some parts need time to themselves), and discovering that being a multiple in a relationship doesn’t all have to be trauma and downsides… in fact it can be fun, silly, enjoyable, slightly bizarre, and always interesting! There’s a lot of role swapping and different kinds of bonds being formed as different parts turn up to say hello.
So, that’s been my week. Off to The Knack tonight, hope your week is going well!
…and then there’s out to your neighbours… I’ve been having a rough time since I moved in, with one neighbour shouting at me and sending the occasional hostile letter. In the last few months I’ve woken up a couple of times to find some minor vandalism. Last week was a bit special, had one of my windows super-glued shut. 😦
This morning I was busy painting shoes and I could hear this neighbour complaining about me to others in my block which was pretty unpleasant. I turned up the music and kept my head down.
This afternoon I discovered that the local Messenger was running the story about me for Big Circle Arts and Mental Health week. Hence the sudden interest by the neighbours. (the last time I was interviewed by The Messenger, it didn’t run the story in my local area)
My first reaction is to feel ill. Stressed, exposed, discredited, humiliated, targeted. Feels like being back at school.
My second reaction (thank god for parts, they always have a different view) is defiance. I have nothing to be ashamed of, and nothing to be embarrassed about. I’m a decent person and a respectful neighbour. People can think what they like, I’m holding my head up and I’m happy with my life. Out is where I wanted to be.
Took the whole day off yesterday! Slept for 11 hours which was badly needed, then spent half the day in bed, reading, journaling, and having brilliant art ideas…
I’m so inspired seeing my work up, my brain has been firing with exhibition ideas, launch possibilities (most art launches are painfully dull and involve lots of speeches… I’m thinking of fire breathing performances instead… ) and ideas for new works… I can actually really conceive of a professional arts practice for myself, up until now it has been so much a matter of faith/wistful hope…
I do so much wrong really to be a professional artist. You’re told to stick to one medium, develop a recognisable style, and once you have something marketable, to mine the work for all it’s worth. I’m hopeless at all of this! I don’t like the idea of artificial exclusivity through limited edition prints, I like the idea of anyone who likes or finds an artwork helpful being able to get their hands on a print. I like art that’s accessible rather than alienating, and deeply personal. I hate replicating a work, I’m always looking to make something new… But maybe there’s a niche for me after all. I can see the possibilities and I’ve been luxuriating in that. I’ve so much to create, so much I want to say, and finally my life is stable enough that I think it’s going to happen. Magic. Resting and dreaming and finding confidence in the identity of an artist.
And not getting much time for blogging, sorry about that 🙂
The roses are blooming in my yard, and I’ve been talking all week to someone rather wonderful I met online. It’s getting difficult to take out time to write this blog, so have patience with me! Art project and journal due Tuesday, I do not foresee a lot of sleep happening between now and then. Stunning spring weather that makes me want to spend the afternoon lying on the lawn…
I’ve really never understood why people lie about themselves when dating, the idea of winding up in a relationship with someone I’m not very compatible with isn’t at all appealing to me. I’ve been in relationships that didn’t work, I know how unbearably painful, lonely, and harmful that can be. I lead a very content single life. I don’t need someone to sweep me off my feet and save me from loneliness or misery. I am very committed to the idea that it is far better to stay single than be in an unhappy relationship. If I never find someone I will be okay.
But, I’ve been single for awhile now. I’ve done a lot of processing, I’ve come out, I’ve rebuilt my friendship networks and my life is now full of art and groups and some really amazing people. I’m not denying the desire for a romantic connection, and I feel ready to cope with the ups and downs of dating and relationships. I’m still nervous, I don’t want to hurt anyone or be hurt. But I’m strong and I’ve got a lot sorted out in my life now. It’s time to be open to new possibilities.
Back down to earth, so far online dating has been…. hmmm, different to how I expected! I’ve politely turned down a few requests from couples and married women. I’ve chatted to a few straight women which has been kind of a relief, just to have a simple friendly conversation. A surprising number of conversations don’t go anywhere, the other person barely responds and at some point drops offline randomly. I have had friendlier and more connected conversations waiting for the bus! The other profiles are actually really interesting to read. The next time I need characters for a book I know where to find some! In some the spelling and grammar are so appalling it’s painful. I’m no grammar nazi and I’m happy to talk in text here and there but wow. Most of the profiles start the same way and involve the words ‘happy go lucky’ ‘easy going’ and ‘laid back’. Are they all writing from some manual I missed? Baffled! I realise this is a fairly specific data set, but I am deeply suspicious that not ALL of the women on oasis are temperamentally happy go lucky. On the other hand I’ve also had a couple of really nice conversations with people.
Writing my own profile is something I do a lot – everytime I’m in an exhibition I have to do one, for talks, for this blog, you name it. It’s always a little tricky and I never run with a stock one. Here’s what I decided to go with:
I’m a passionate person, with many hobbies and interests. I am very creative, currently studying visual art and then planning to finish my psychology degree. I love books and writing and read voraciously. I’m an alternative kind of person with coloured hair, ink on my hands, and a bit of a goth streak. I’m into British comedy, gardening in storms, writing poems at night, and good chocolate.Â
I work hard, care about people, and volunteer a couple of days a week with the not for profit mental health organisation I helped found. Life is great and I’d love to share it with someone special.Â
Then I had to write what I’m looking for in someone else. That I don’t do very often. It was sad how many people wrote versions of ‘I’m not sure’. I went with:
Compassionate, intelligent, sensitive, and strong, with a keen sense of humour and a love of life. You’re not perfect but you are caring and thoughtful and communicate really well. It will help if you’re a bit mad yourself. 🙂Â
No couples or married women please, and for me ‘casual dating’ means dinner or a trip to the beach, not a one night stand. 🙂
Funnily enough the vast majority of my contact requests are turned down. I could take that to mean I am scaring people away, but I’ve decided to interpret that as meaning the profile is doing its job and weeding out those who are really not going to get along with me. It’s still weird to make a contact request and have it knocked back, it’s like going up to someone in the street to say hello and having them walk off. Still, I can live with it.
The other part I find a bit tough is that I have quite an online presence. Between facebook, this blog, and other social media, there’s plenty of information about me out on the net now. So when a new friend and I connect on some other social media, there’s suddenly a very inverse degree of information sharing. They can find out a lot about me, but not often the reverse. That’s a bit nerve wracking!
All in all though, I feel pretty good about it. It’s certainly an interesting experience. 🙂
Sigh. It’s a good thing for her that she’s completely adorable! I’m car sharing with family who’s vehicle has kicked the bucket for the moment, so I wound up taking her for a fairly brisk 6.5km round trip yesterday to return library books, fill scripts, and buy milk. It didn’t even slightly slow her down that evening. I think I need to install a greyhound track in the backyard…
Sarsaparilla, on the other hand, is never taken for walks, has not chewed any of my clothes, furniture, or personal belongings, and is generally angelic:
Except for last night when he knocked over a huge glass of cordial by my bed, all over my phone and library books! Fortunately I leaped into action and everything survived unscathed, but that is not a good way to wake up at 6am! Gosh darn them, I don’t like it when they gang up on me like this!
I’m particularly keen to develop my face painting business as I love it to bits, and I just can’t keep directing people here, there’s too much going on. I am slightly flirting with the notion of dismantling this site into it’s constituent parts – mental health, general news, art and so on, making them independent blogs with perhaps a master blog linking them all together and updating weekly on any activity in the others. I know many wonderful readers cannot keep up with the volume! On the other hand, I know many love the daily post and would be irritated to have to trek about and follow a collection of blogs instead of get all the input easily in the one place. Posting everything on facebook would help though. So I’ll think about it. There’s upsides and downsides. If I kept the layouts clean and simple it might actually make things easier to find.
So, an online portfolio. Well, after the initial flush of enthusiasm I have realised how much work this will take. I need to re-photograph or scan most of my work as the images I’ve been using are frankly terrible. The watermark needs to be small, tasteful, and consistent. All work needs to be titled, sized, priced, and have a useful description. Ye gods. That’s weeks of work alone. What am I in for? I was tempted partway to abandon the whole thing and just upload the lot to pinterest. But one of the things that really makes a portfolio special is a few words from the artist – what they like, why they made it that way, their inspiration. Sometimes artists love an aura of mystery about their work, if they write something it’s in incomprehensible and usually patronising, gibberish. I’ve been to enough art galleries to know that once you’ve read one of those unhelpful little plaques, you’ve read them all. I’ve a guts full of work that is ‘challenging the dominant paradigm’, ‘inverting’, ‘juxtaposing’, ‘discoursing’, ‘refuting stereotypes’, ‘critically examining traditions’ and all the other palaver that makes me want to pull my eyebrows out. I like descriptions that are clean, to the point, understandable by a layman, and if they’re a bit poetic too, I’ll give a big, happy sigh of delight.Â
So, my test blog is looking fantastic! Clean lines, great menu system, the front page updates with any new content. It’s damn exciting. I have a three-fold menu structure – you can look at art by themes eg. all art of any type involving tree spirits, or by medium, eg all acrylic painted works, or by scrolling through thumbnails of all artwork loaded on the site. Here’s the really tricky, clever bit though. No matter how you get to it, you are only ever loading the same page. That means if a work that is listed under say, Inks, also under Cats, and under Asian style paintings because it fits all three categories, happens to sell, I update the one page only. That’s very important! Otherwise you can forget to update duplicate pages and frustrate buyers. The gallery options that come with the blog are gorgeous but I’m not using them as they won’t allow me to do this. I have to upload the image again for each gallery it is used in. Duplicates are trouble when running a blog! I really do not want to be forced to have each artwork in one gallery only, it will make looking for a particular work much more difficult for users. So, I’m a little bit excited about it all. A professional looking portfolio and one stop shop for images of my art sounds awesome. I can integrate back and forth easily, in the test site the ‘blog’ tab takes you straight here. I wish I had about 40 more hours in my day, darn it!
And isn’t she gorgeous! I’m not sure of her name, I thought she may be Fragrant Cloud but her colour is too pale and pink… Thoughts, anyone? Curse all the house moving, I like to know my plants by name! Glorious weather, I’ve ordered a little greenhouse online, when it arrives I’ll get set up and start sprouting some seeds!
In the meantime I got the house cleaned in my Friday off and wrestled with adobe audition and word press for a Radio Adelaide project. Apart from my email inbox, which is overflowing, the stack of paperwork colonising my desk, and my increasingly futile efforts to stay on top of my cluttered diary, things are going well today!
I reached overload in a big way this week with things of a religious/spiritual nature. I’ve some hot buttons in those areas and wound up having my first panic attack in a very long time! Managed to get home first, which always helps, cried for a couple of hours then dozed on the couch with Zoe. Too many early mornings are not helping, so I’m using the weekend to catch up on sleep, read, and get some serious work done on projects, ready for next week. It seems to be working, I’m feeling a lot better and I’ll just pace myself a lot more in the areas where I’m still raw. I’m not worried, I don’t feel it’s the start of some downward trend, just a bump in the road. We live and learn.
Big day today, doing the live one hour radio program. I find the live work quite tiring, it requires a lot of concentration for someone inexperienced like myself. It went really well, but I’ve been wiped out all evening and haven’t managed dishes or other things on my goal list. Ah well, it was fun!
Zoe had a pretty good day too. She decided to tear her dog bed to bits:
… and the big winds blew her a huge present:
She’s adorable. 🙂
I was up very early choosing the songs, digging out background information and writing the script for the show. This week the theme is about grief in music. It’s been very interesting to research, I found myself on funeral sites with song suggestions for the service, on sites for kids who’d lost parents to cancer where they were sharing songs that they connected with, and sites talking about music used to express grief in films. I’ve tried to be sensitive with the script, some listeners will be grieving themselves and I don’t want to upset anyone. I’ve also varied the tone of the songs, some are heavy, some are lighter, some are angry, some are hopeful, some are painful, some are beautiful. The type of grief is also broad, songs about death, relationship loss, songs about parents, partners, children, friends. Songs to express grief and songs to lift you out of it. I hope you tune in, I’m quite proud of it, even though rather exasperated at how much work it’s been on a stunning spring weekend!
I’m also taking on another role at Radio Adelaide, as online producer for Writers Radio. This means I’ll be editing and uploading interviews and reviews from the show onto the website and helping to keep the site up to date, easy to navigate, and connected to other online writing resources. I’m looking forward to getting started, the site is on wordpress, which I’m less familiar with than the blogger platform I use but it will be good to have a play and learn more about it.Â
This is what I woke up to Wednesday morning:
 Zoe’s been in trouble lately for getting onto my desk to steal food or drink cuppas, snatching things off benches and chewing them to bits- including her new and expensive extendable leash. Partly the fault is mine for not walking her enough, she’s young and full of beans. With the extra walking I’m doing catching buses a few days a week, I’m struggling to come home and walk Zoe as well. The extendable leash was good for letting her run about more too, on a short leash she walks exactly the same amount I do, and she needs a little more! I’m also trying to get her more interested in fetch but by far her favourite past time is chewing. I sweep up an incredible quantity of chewed wood and leaves from the lounge room every couple of days.
So, after a while being locked in the laundry, I let Zoe back in this morning, kept a close eye on her, but the moment I ducked into the bathroom to brush my hair she tore into the armchair again!
Back in the laundry, and left in the backyard plus laundry area when I went out today. When I get home this evening she tears into the armchair a few minutes after being let into the house! Argh!
So, some new rules. She is left to roam the backyard and laundry when I’m not home or awake. She is allowed in the house when I’m there to watch her. I’ve put a mirror on my computer desk to let me easily keep an eye on the armchair while I’m working or gaming. And I’m going to get my bike up and running again so I can run some energy off her, and and buy another extendable leash as soon as I can. And no leaves or sticks in the house, only the few remaining chew toys she hasn’t destroyed.
Outside gets all the sticks and leaves she wants, bones to chew on, a bed in the shed, another one in the laundry, and warm dog blankets. So hopefully it won’t be all bad from her perspective. I never throw her outside as a punishment, and I play fetch with her out there and eat breakfast out there when the weather is good so… She makes a horrific racket if she’s locked outside even for a few minutes, but for some reason having access to the laundry seems to drastically reduce that.
This evening I took her for a ride in the car and introduced her to the fun of sticking your head out the window. Then watched a show with her dozing in my lap. After spending the day furious with her it’s important for me to spend time reconnecting and enjoying her company. We’ll get there.
Rain drops on my car windscreen catching the light. It’s a beautiful sight and has always enthralled me.
Not enough sleep, dreams full of struggling, waking and sinking back into them. Getting through the day with teeth gritted determination, one foot in front of the other, watching the room gently dissolve, casting around for anchors and grounding, stilling the agitation that rises, waiting for the darkness to pass, the veil will lift, it will lift again.
The highlight of Thursday was going to the beach in the storm with some friends. I’ve been feeling a bit run down so I took the day off and didn’t get out of bed until I had some decent hours, if rather broken sleep, and the worst of the joint/muscle pain had eased off. I am loving the warmer weather, even this morning it was not as cold to curl up in bed, which is great from a joint pain perspective.
I ducked off to Tafe to get some more work done on my seascape moulds, then drove up to the beach. It was wild! Wild winds and high seas and foam flying over the pavement. We trekked to the end of the jetty and screamed and howled into the night. Cold stung our faces and our hands and feet went numb. Sea spray flew like darts and the waves heaved and crashed. I love weather that makes you pay attention to it.Â
The shops and cafes were all closed up against the storm, we stood on the pavement in the rain and had to knock on a snack shop door to be let in. Inside the floor was a huge puddle and cheerful staff. We ordered a big bundle of hot chips and went to go huddle in the car to eat them. If I’d just got organised enough to bring a thermos of hot chocolate, the evening would have been complete. If I owned a drink thermos. Hmm, I’ll add that to my wishlist. 🙂 I need to go camping again.
Today was difficult. I took Zoe for a walk. I cried for a while. I read, talked to a friend, had some tinned soup. Breathed, just breathed.
This is the lounge area in my sculpture studio. I spent the best part of yesterday here. Much of the rest of the day was spent doing stressful things like accidentally catching an express bus to a long way from home, freaking out at a parking fine, having the mysterious intermittent electrical fault in my car play up again, and so on. Very drained, very in need of rest.
I have spent Sunday shifting the furniture around in my studio, making chicken stock with leftover roast chook, and wishing I wasn’t getting up so early for sculpture class first thing on Monday.
I’ve been wanting to rearrange the studio for a while now, and yesterday was a day I could ignore all my other obligations and shut down at home to get it done. It took forever and involved totally destroying the room. Midway looked like this:
Which was deeply demoralising. But I persisted and sorted a number of scary boxes and got rid of centrelink letters from 2004 which I really don’t need to keep anymore (yay!) and other such junk. The finished result at midnight was this:
Which is about 8 boxes fewer, and the new arrangement makes the wardrobe properly accessible so I can put away my coats. I do lose a bit of table space by putting them against each other, but I can easily access both grey shelves and I have somewhere to store the big easel when it’s not in use now:
Looking forward to getting in there and making some more journals and ink paintings soon. Must stop doing heavy lifting stuff on Sundays, everything hurts!
Of course, the one book that refuses to scan at the self-service checkout is the Lesbian Karma Sutra. I put on my brave face and go up to the librarian and look her in the eye and ask her to scan it through for me. I refuse to be intimidated! I do however, walk to the desk with the older female librarian rather than the older male. Not that liberated yet!
I’m loving spending time with other queer people, especially women. I have gay male friends but very few female. It’s been wonderful to meet other people and flesh out what have been mostly media-informed stereotypes in my mind. My initial sense of being totally out of my depth and uncertain is making way for a new sense of confidence and enjoyment. I love the company of these women, and I treasure feeling accepted by them. I’m also becoming ever more passionate about making safe spaces for queer people.
That’s not to say there haven’t been some interesting experiences. One day recently, I had a huge stressful day at work, dashed home to change and dress up – trying to find that line between just enough to look good and fit in and not so much that it looks like I think I’m on a date or trying too hard… gawd it’s like being a teenager again, worried you’ve got lipstick on your teeth and playing nervously with your hair. I drive off to a group I’m meeting up with. I’m nervous and excited and hypersensitive and jumpy. Watching them watching me watching them… wondering if any of these new friends have read any of my blog and if so what they thought about the crazy new group member or if that’s a conversation yet to happen, wrestling with a bra, my nicest one, whose straps climb off my shoulders every few minutes, and slightly freezing as we’re meeting in a big, cold hall.
A new member turns up with a pet rat tucked in her jacket and I can’t resist – I love rats. I wait patiently for a cuddle of him, he’s big and placid and sweet. He also quietly pees all down my jacket front. So, having gone through the anxious process of trying to dress up but not dress up too much – to work out which part wants to attend (the same one as last time or take turns? – this affects which outfit gets chosen) and the ramifications of that choice, trying to be friendly without over-sharing and fit in without pretending to be anyone I’m (we’re) not… I’m now sitting on the floor with all the carefully made choices about how I present myself to a new group of queer/lesbian friends rather foiled by the fact that I am wearing rat piss perfume.
After some thought, I give back the rat reluctantly, strip off my jumper as if I’m not cold, surreptitiously pat my tee-shirt to check if it’s wet, decide I’ve got away with it and finish out the evening. And laugh half the way home. Life is surreal! 🙂
Since Zoe came to live with me Sarsaparilla has been spending more and more time away from home. I’ve finally hit a solution that is working. My bedroom window is left open just a tiny bit, with the screen off and a wedge in the window to stop it being opened any further. The door is always shut and Sars’ food and water dish are kept on the floor. It’s a Zoe-free space with easy access. Now he’s sleeping in there all the time and I get cuddles every night.
We did have one glitch with him proudly bringing home a dead bird to dismember on the bed. He’s now the proud owner of three lovely bells on his collar and that seems to have resolved that. He’s the most sweet and lovely cat. It’s wonderful to have all this company at home.
This is a very busy week for me, and I am remembering why I try to have a couple of days off after gardening; I’m pretty stiff and sore! The lawn was starting to devour the garden furniture though, so there was nothing for it but to roll up the sleeves. Here’s what it looked like at the start:
Then we got in there with a lawnmower borrowed from a friend… It was like magic once we worked out how to start it (hint, use your dominant hand for the pull starter).
Friends came round to help and we collected some plants that another friend had been looking after for me. Thrilled to have such a decent sized garden to be starting here with! A big task now is digging up the lawn and planting all the plants so I’m not struggling to keep them all watered in pots over the summer.
We planted a number of roses round the edge as a thorny fence to protect my veggies 🙂
Then, there were waffles! First cheese and corn:
Then apple and cinnamon with whipped cream:
Totally worth every ache. Can’t wait to get a veggie patch planted!
We did it. A bunch of us met up again, spent about 5 hours wrangling with the Constitution, then voted the DI, and our first board into being.
What’s it like to give birth to an organisation? Exhilarating. We have come together and made something beautiful, something I love and believe in, something worth all the time and effort and anxiety of the process. Is it over? No. So much if the work is just beginning. We have policies and procedures to write, new groups and resources to create, funding applications to submit, collaborations with other organisations to work on. But we now exist as an entity; a not-for-profit, national organisation. It’s a huge step for something that started several years ago as a frustrated conversation about the inadequacy of supports for people who experience dissociation. We are making a difference.
I was at the Rufus May workshop, it was mind blowingly awesome. Fireworks went off in my brain all day and I am now utterly exhausted. It being Friday and the serious sleep shortage I’ve been running this week not much helping matters either. I’m so friggin excited about the workshop and developments in approaches to voice hearing and once I can remember where my head went when it fell off, I’ll tell you all about it. I’ve been meaning to do an ‘Introducing Psychosis’ talk at some point on here and now it’s coming together in my brain.
I got home this evening to find Zoe had climbed onto my study desk and carefully removed a single item from my pin board, a Blue envelope that must have caught her eye, before tearing it into small pieces. Shame it was a gift certificate for Eckersleys art shop! Now I’ll have to go find out how they feel about honouring gift certificates that have been torn into small bits, chewed lightly, drooled on, then sticky taped back together. While I was sorting that out, she tore a knob off the front of the oven and chewed it to bits. Argh!
Yesterday she chewed through the ethernet cable. Tonight I went off to Officeworks, which is dangerous as all out because I have a stationery thing going on and they always end lightening my purse more than I’d planned. I got a new cable on special, some clips to nail the cable to the skirting board, some duct tape to stick the rest of the cable to the floor, a new battery for my kitchen scales (feel super organised) and a free standing microphone for making better quality voice recordings on. Wow, does it ever work! And then I filled a script, bought milk, yogurt, custard, and bananas, because after a week like this I know I won’t be able to eat much, and then crashed out. Saturday is another DI meeting, hopefully to finalise the constitution. Wish us luck!
Sarah K Reece 