The Ups, the Downs and the In-Between

Another day and another moment...

My moods fluctuate as if they're on a pendulum, back and forth, up and down. Some days I'm really happy and other days I'm really low. I'm not sure why I get into these moods, but I do. Today's another of those low points. As I sit here typing I can hear the wind blowing, my wind chimes jangling as the air stirs them into movement. Under those I hear the subtle bird song that has recently been increasing. The birds are beginning to return, slowly they arrive for it's still just a little too cold for them. Our seasons are all messed up. Usually by now the temperatures are warming, the winds have faded with the passing of March and the lush greenery begins. This year it seems that everything is twisted around and backwards. Some of my daffodils have their little yellow shoots on them, but they have yet to open. Some of the trees have little buds on them, but everything seems to have crawled to a screeching halt as winter refuses to abate. The sun is shining bright but if one were to step foot outside they would still need a jacket to keep the chill at bay.

Perhaps this stall in the seasons is what is partly contributing to my down moods. I don't know. Perhaps it's simply a lot of things, and I'm more keen to agree with that.

Still I sit anxiously by waiting for that time when nature comes alive with new growth and the deer begin to journey into my backyard instead of cutting across my drive way where I barely see them. My hummingbird feeders are going up today. I remember when I moved here last year my dad said he doubted I'd get any. I hung those feeders up on March 1st and though they were slow to appear they soon did and by the end of summer I had approximately 6 of those beautiful little jewels of Spring flying around. My hopes are that they will show up in the next week or so. I feel so much better, get so much more excited, when I can look out my window or sit on my porch and watch their little antics and acrobatics. They come down from their perches to sip at the feeders and in a flurry of energy take off again into the sky.

I love to watch birds return in the Spring, to hear their sweet songs upon the air and to watch as they undergo a flurry of activities as they begin to prepare for their young soon to be born. The beauty of Spring is a true blessing. I just wish it would start already and then perhaps just a little tiny bit my mood may start to lift, and I'll be excited and happy about something again.

Is a piece of art ever truly finished?

How do you know when a piece of artwork is truly done?

I doodle at times. I find it therapeutic in that I can let my mind wander while my hand draws. I start out with a random line here or there and keep working at it. Soon the paper, envelope, whatever I'm doodling on ends up this elaborate, weird design. I put it to the side and sometimes days, months later I pick it up and doodle again. They usually turn into these complex images that, according to others who've seen or looked at them, form different things based on the way you look at them. It's a quirk of mine.

I started these elaborate doodles several years ago when I'd find myself sitting and trying to find a muse for a story I was writing and failing at completely. Writer's block, in essence, turned into designing these weird ink pictures. I've thought of sharing them online but only ever shared one envelope and scanned several others. I've had people I work with tell me that they're neat but sad. Why? Because I draw them on lined paper and not plain paper. What?

I still, to this day, doodle on lined paper. Some day I plan to do them on plain paper. I don't add color, but I've been thinking about it. Guess I could coin these weird doodles as therapeutic drawing?

I don't know, whatever it is I do it off and on and always, always when I go back to glance at them months or years later I'm surprised at how interesting they look.

** The above picture was drawn by hand by me **

My Little Cabin in the Woods

As I sit here in the house I bought a little over a year ago and watch the light of day dim into the dark of night I wonder. I do live in a little cabin in the woods. It's mine though I am still paying for it. It's full of my stuff from top to bottom, yet sadly it's not completely mine yet. I haven't added my own little touch to the place. Sure I've set stuff out and have furniture, counter tops with decorations on them, a bedroom with a full size bed in it, pretty blue rugs rest on the bathroom floor. I have a back porch and a very pretty front porch. I even have my own little yard and my own little woods with a lovely creek running through it. But though I live here, love it here, it's still not totally mine. Why do I say that you wonder? Because while my stuff graces the interior and a few odds and ends grace my front porch everything else is the way it was on the day I purchased the place. I've not completely put my own touch into it. The colors on the walls remain the same as they did when I moved in. The carpet on my bedroom floor is shabbier and pink, pink is really not a cabin color and I find myself wondering why pink? The curtains remain the same as they were the day I moved in. The closets haven't changed much either and my loft is a disaster area of unpacked and packed stuff, stuff that still has no place and is just in "storage". I still haven't moved all of my stuff out of my dad's place. Bins are piled in his attic that are mine of stuff I gathered through the years. Basically I have a place and it's mine for the most part, but it's without any personal touches.

I, in essence, just live here in this space that I love but that just isn't, not fully, one hundred percent me. Money is a big hold up on making this place truly mine, that and time and my apparent moodiness as of late. I look around and see so much potential yet have done little to make this place "my personal space". I love to sit in the living room late at night and stare at the beautiful wooden beams criss-crossing my ceiling and making up the underside of my roof. In the half light of the nightlight I have positioned in my kitchen you can just make it out, and it's so very peaceful. I often, when feeling sad or upset or just plain bored, will sit or lie back on my small couch and just gaze around. Sometimes I fall asleep, sometimes I don't but for some reason I find it soothing and comfortable and relaxing. I think of what I want to do to the place. I think of the furniture I want to get. The paint I want to add to the walls. I envision how my loft will look when it's complete and how pretty my yard will be with flowers and color in it. I think of how pretty my porches can be. I think of the little things and the big things I can do that will make such a big difference in this house, and I think of the money I don't have that it will cost to make this place completely mine. Patience. It will all take patience, so much patience but one day this place will be a true retreat for me, a true, honest-to-God solace. I've dreamed of it so much and one day, one day it will be a reality but the waiting is a killer. It's kind of sad to look about and notice that little progress has been made towards my ultimate goal. Everyone tells me that is completely normal for a new home buyer, especially when money is tight, and that in time it will become the ultimate dream home...all in good time.

So I sit and glance around, gaze at my home and the stuff in it. Shake my head at the extremely cluttered kitchen island, frown at the loft which is nothing more than storage at the moment, gaze in frustration at that old pink carpet that so clashes with the cabin and sigh when I look at furniture that in no way, shape or form really fits in a log cabin. One day, some day, that will all change...or so I hope. For now I look at pictures of furniture, beautiful furniture that would accent my home. I look at the paint and carpet I so want to use in my bedroom. I admire the beautiful curtains I'd love to one day put on the windows. I stare longingly at the corners of my yard that some day in hopes will be filled with beautiful colors.

Some day I'll be able to sit down and smile as an overwhelming calm, cozy feeling starts to coarse through me at a job well done when this place truly does become MINE.

Thoughts in a Whirl

Been doing a lot of thinking lately about where I am in life. What I've been doing with it. What I want to do with it. Where I am in general and am I happy? It's frustrating not being able to adequately answer such questions efficiently. I've been tossing around the same two questions for a little over a week now and still have come up with little. Those questions? What makes you happy? What are you passionate about?

Easy enough questions to answer correct? You'd think so but that just doesn't seem to be the case with me. Truth is I've spent so much of my life trying to make things better for everyone else and neglecting myself in the process. I always have to make sure everyone is happy, everyone has a good time, everyone is doing well...everyone that is, except for me. Me, yeah the one person you shouldn't neglect is the one I have neglected the most. Always looking out for everyone else and putting myself, my thoughts, my feelings, my life on the back burner to please everyone else. I'd like to believe, have actually believed, that I've gotten beyond that "everyone is more important than you" deal, but sadly it's still there hovering in the back of my mind. I always sacrifice myself for my work, for others and never, well not never more like seldom, focus on me. Why? I don't know that's just the way that I am...

What makes someone do that? Focus so much on everyone else that they fade to the back burner and blend into the background never to be seen, never to be noticed always trying to make others shine brighter. Why do I do that? Why? I don't know, but I've done it far too much. Something at some point has got to give, something, somewhere, at some point will give.

So back to the initial questions posed at the start of this new idea of a journal: What are you passionate about? What makes you happy?

Should really be posing the question: why can't I answer that as easily as I should be able to, shouldn't I?

So in answer to those two questions? I've written down a few things, a very miniscule amount of things...that makes me sad. Why sad? Because there are so few things listed. What am I passionate about? It would seem in the last week and a half I've only come up with a few scant things. In a nut shell thus far?

Birds and birdwatching

Abandoned places

Architecture

Ghost stories

Chicago

Yeah that just about sums it all up. Sad I know. In answer to the "what makes you happy?" question...

The jury's still out on that one.

Pathetic isn't it? Absolutely pathetic.

A Testament of Time

It's snowing again, which I guess is okay. I just... It saddens me. Spring is on the doorstep waiting idly by to begin. The daffodils have already started sprouting forth from the ground, bunches of deep green leaves jutting into the sky as if to say 'we're here let us out now!' Buds have already started to form upon the trees. The birds are returning one by one their melodious songs carrying through the still barren woods. Familiar songs not heard in months are now returning in abundance. The sun is coming out more and more each day, but instead of spring bustling forth in full glory we have snow, cold nights, cold days and the green trying so valiantly to step forth being buried under a blanket of white.

Spring is one of my favorite seasons but more and more each year it seems to grow shorter, dimmer, being squeezed out by the nagging winter and the heat of summer. Every year I look for spring, look for flowers to begin pushing through the surfaces that remained barren for so long, look to the skies for birds gathering nesting materials, to the trees for their pretty greenery and every year I become disappointed as spring arrives for barely a week then is gone again.

When I was a child the springs seemed so much longer. I'm not sure what happened. Whether it's just the change in age and time or the supposed greenhouse effect, perhaps we're on the verge of the apocalypse, but whatever it is spring seems to be suffering, diminishing and fading. My favorite season of the year seems so very short now and there's nothing to be done about it.

I gaze out my windows and see white every where. It's prettily laying on every branch and every surface, but it leaves me feeling sad, feeling blue. I'm surrounded in a pretty white cover, yet when I look out each window and door I feel a sinking feeling in my heart for the loss of what is spring trying desperately to emerge, to come into full bloom. Oh spring how I long for thee. Won't you come back to me?

Windows

Windows are many. Some are small, some are tall, some are large and some are wide. Some are shuttered. Some are open but all are unique.

I've had a journal online since 2004. I've created other journals on other platforms, delved into all those little social sites and have come back with a select few I find enjoyable. Those journals I've kept I've tried desperately to keep up. I am apparently an overachieving procrastinator because most have fallen to the wayside and made little progression beyond 'hi this is me and this is what I want to do'. It's frustrating really to want so badly to have one special little place to share all but know that you just can't seem to stick with it. Excuses run rampant: 'that one's all writing and fandom-y stuff,'this one was a failed attempt at discussing my art journaling,' 'this one just didn't get beyond entry number four' and 'that one I just don't have time for.'

The doubts creep in piling one on one: who will read it? Do I really want to share that? Am I ready to do this? I'll wait a little longer. No one will ever care what I have to say or do. No one really cares, so what's the use? Yeah, I've been there multiple times, recycling those same old excuses and more. I've tried the "fresh start" approach of 'no one knows me so go for it', but get upset when no one follows me or seems remotely interested. The doubts creep in again and the blog, journal, whatever again falls to the wayside soon to be forgotten, returned to only when I have a desire to share something and become too intimidated by who knows what to continue.

We've all been there I'm sure, some more than others. Me? I'm a pro at it, so why am I here again? Why do I feel this strange desire to try again and again? Why do I struggle so much with everything? I don't know. I'm not really sure, but damn it I want to do SOMETHING more.

Lately I've been toying with these very things. I'd like to think I'm a happy person. I have a beautiful home. I have a small yard. I own a car, and I have my writing but I'm still depressed. My job is one of the biggest stresses around, not really the job itself but the people I work with. I come back from a trip feeling happy, excited, great and enter that building only to be slammed in the face by negativity. It builds and builds and within a half hour my happy mood has dimmed, darkened, winked out only to be replaced with frustration, depression, sadness and hindered by despair. I try to stay positive, try to stay afloat but these weights pull me down and I sink down, down, down...

I have to do something to regain happiness. I can't leave the job or I'll lose the house I've owned for just over a year. It wold crush me if that happened and there's no other places that seem to be hiring, so I go back to thinking. I opened my art journal and wrote down some words, just a few simple words to think on: What are you passionate about?

I wrote that question out at the beginning of the week and sadly have little listed, so I expanded the page incorporating other questions to help me along the way:

What can't you wait to share, to shout out to the world? WHAT MAKES YOU HAPPY?

What makes you happy?

I'm nearly forty now and you'd think this question would be an easy one to answer. It troubles me that it is not.

Doors

The Secret Door to the Land of the Fairys by *Estruda on deviantART

A door, a simple picture of a door taken by someone, somewhere because it intrigued them, fascinated them, made them smile. A door one's curiosity would love to open and explore. What lies on the other side? Could it be a living room, a kitchen or a whole new world? Could the door lead to an enchanting little street in an enchanting little town or a world purely drawn from the realms of make believe?

Sometimes I feel like that door, all closed up, locked up tight, hidden from everything and everybody. The door stays shut only opening on occasion sometimes wide, sometimes half way, sometimes a mere inch. Sometimes a hole or two get drilled into that door, little pieces of a person leaking out after staying hidden for so long, buried.

The purpose of this journal will be to draw open that door, nudge it time and again, a little this day, a lot that day and see if we can't open it fully. What remains is steeped in mystery. Shall we dare to take a peek and see if the door will budge?