Tag Archives for Drawing

InkTober: Day 29 – Surprise

I love doing things to surprise the people in my life that I care for. I don’t feel it’s necessary to wait for a special occasion like a birthday or holiday to do something nice for them. However, I don’t like being surprised. I especially dislike someone telling me they have a surprise for me because the suspense of waiting feels terrible. It’s hard to quiet my mind as it jumps from one possibility to the next trying to figure out what the surprise might be. Don’t get me wrong, that doesn’t mean I don’t like having someone do nice things for me.

I think not liking being on the receiving end of a surprise has a lot to do with always trying “to be in control” of all aspects of my life. The crazy thing about that is if you understand anything about life, you know you can’t control anything about it. Time passes, the seasons change, and we grow older. We can’t stop any of it and we can’t speed it up or slow it down. All we can do is manage how we react to each unexpected event, and even those we know are about to unfold.

I say manage because I’ve learned – it seems like a lot more since becoming ill – that sometimes our emotions surprisingly overwhelm us. This means our reaction to a situation may not match the scale of what has happened. We also need to take into account that our reactions are also coloured by our past experiences so what we feel in a given moment may not even be about what’s happening in that moment. A current event could reawaken a memory or long-forgotten feelings and it’s not until we stop and put things in perspective that we might figure this out and make sense of our surprising reaction(s).

So, knowing all of this, how can anyone expect to control anything?

InkTober - Day 29 - Surprise

 

InkTober: Day 28 – Burn

Yesterday was another rough day for me because I didn’t get much sleep the night before. It was also the first day of the InkTober challenge, I didn’t post my drawing. I’m posting this drawing a day late, not because I didn’t complete it yesterday, but because my pain made it necessary to spend most of yesterday asleep or resting; and even though I could have, I didn’t feel like rushing through posting it to put it up before midnight. One of the challenges of practicing mindfulness with my pain condition is giving myself permission not to do something, even when it’s something fun.

Yesterday’s word, burn, made me think of two completely unrelated things. The first was how terrible I am at roasting marshmallows. I’m fairly certain that I always end up with a bit of blackened – burnt if I’m being truthful – crust on any marshmallow I’ve ever held over an open flame. I’m not sure why that is when roasting marshmallows is something young children are quite skilled at doing. The other thing it made me think of is the ever-present pain in my body and how, sometimes, it makes me feel as if the flesh on my body is burning. This sensation becomes more intense when I’m about to experience a pain flare up and it’s one of the most uncomfortable feelings I’ve ever known.

While thinking about the constant presence of my pain, and the burning sensation it often causes, I was led to write a poem. Although, for the first time in a long time, I struggled with writing it, because the words wouldn’t flow. I think my thought process was affected by how tired and uncomfortable I felt and I’m certain it still requires many edits so I’ll post the poem another day. Nevertheless, it’s interesting that what inspires me to write poetry is always so unpredictable and unexpected.

InkTober - Day 28 - Burn

 

InkTober: Day 27 – Creepy

When I saw today’s InkTober prompt: creepy; my mind started down the path of thinking about things that evoke emotions and feelings that are unpleasant and uncomfortable. However, that’s not the direction I wanted to go in. My day had already started out unpleasant and uncomfortable for me because of pain and feeling groggy, so I wanted to think of things that would take my mind and mood into a different space. Instead of going down that path, I shifted my thoughts to reflect on my childhood, specifically the long hot summers I spent with my cousins, when we would spend hours outside trying to collect bugs or what as kids we called ‘creepy crawlies’.

I know now that what we did probably wasn’t the kindest thing for the grasshoppers and caterpillars, and other unnamed bugs we would catch and put in jars, but it was so much fun trying to catch them. In our efforts to keep them alive so we could study them, we always put holes in the lids of the jars and bottles to make sure they could breathe; and we filled the bottom of them with beds of grass, twigs, and leaves so they wouldn’t be hungry. The construction of their new homes would be followed by constant checks to see if they changed in any way. I remember hoping that one of our many captured caterpillars would transform into a butterfly while we slept, and being thoroughly disappointed on many mornings when not one of them had.

I’m not sure how old we were when we stopped chasing grasshoppers and searching through the grass and trees for caterpillars. I do know that I’m glad to have the memories of summers I spent with my cousins just being kids that did silly kid things like collecting ‘creepy crawlies’ and hoping we could turn them into butterflies. I’m even more glad I have these happy memories, and many more, to turn to when I have unpleasant days like I did today, so I can transform my mood and I never have to settle for having a bad day.

InkTober - Day 27 - Creepy