Tag Archives for Zendoodle

Gratitude and Creativity: Low Emotional Valley

I’m just realizing that I spent the better part of the past month in a low emotional valley. The failure of my acupuncture treatment hit me hard. I know this because of the smatterings of energy I managed to invest in anything that resembled something creative, including how little I wrote. The recovery from the pain flare up caused by the acupuncture has been slow – I haven’t been able to reduce the doses of my pain medications. The frustration and disappointment of another treatment that doesn’t work for me is becoming hard to bear. As much as I try being positive, the melancholy found its way in and decided to hang around as I drank copious amounts of tea and binge watched TV while sleep eluded me most nights.

My uninvited guest sapped me of so much energy that I became too tired to sleep. Too tired to feed myself properly, and barely able to meet the few commitments I made to family and friends. The strange thing is while this was happening I didn’t recognize it because I was still moving, still breathing, and still feeling pain. I’m not numb, but I was enveloped by whatever the opposite of being mindful and aware of oneself might be. Then, this morning, as I turned the corner on another sleep-deprived night I flipped through a few pages of my art/gratitude journal and saw how little my brain and hands have produced because of my low energy and sinking emotions.

What was I trying to find in the pages of a sketchbook at 6:45 on a Saturday morning? I was looking for a blank space to teach myself how to draw a new, to me, Zentangle pattern. The space was easy to find because, as I said, I haven’t done a lot of creating lately. I keep saying that I’m teaching myself how to draw. However, at the rate I’m going I may not reach that goal. I have the books and the art supplies I need, but without motivation and a positive mood, that amounts to a lot of blank paper and unused pens, pencils and paint.

I noticed that the time I spend in these emotional valleys seems to be getting longer each time and my awareness of that space is losing its sharpness. This morning, wanting to draw a new combination of lines alerted me to the presence of the current valley. I wanted to connect with one of the things that help to stop me from falling down the steep slopes and that desire, that smallest of desires, pulled me upward.

Last night, while sleep stayed far away from me, I spent time on Adele Bruno’s website Tickled to Tangle. She’s a Certified Zentangle Teacher (CZT) from whose posts I’m learning a lot. She writes a series called “Tips for Tangling” where she shares great step-by-step information about how to draw Zentangle patterns that makes drawing them a lot easier. Because of her posts, I’m becoming more comfortable and confident about drawing in ink and not worrying about making mistakes. After all, in Zentangle there are no mistakes. It was one of her posts that made me reach for my sketchbook: Tangling Radiant Sooflowers. I wanted to try creating my own radiant drawing but I first needed to learn the tangle pattern, Sooflowers created by Livia Chua, which luckily wasn’t at all difficult. After a quick practice, I worked on my tile and made one change to customize it. Instead of stippling the white spaces with dots, I filled them with small Tipple circles.

Sooflowers – Livia Chua
Radiant Sooflowers – Inspired by Adele Bruno (CZT)

My tired eyes and shaky hands aside, I’m happy with the result. I’m also happy that although I didn’t sleep at all last night, Adele Bruno’s creativity alerted my awareness to my low emotional valley and inspired me to start climbing out.

 

Ed Sheeran – I See Fire

Gratitude and Creativity: Drawing Myself Out Of Heaviness

I’ve been writing about such heavy feelings and topics lately that I felt the need to lighten things up. It helps that the sun has lit up the otherwise overcast winter skies for a few minutes each afternoon this week and that I got some unexpected rest while meditating yesterday morning – I fell into a deep sleep for about an hour with my face planted in a pile of pillows. Not getting sleep tends to fry my brain and has a dampening effect on my moods. Even though I try to sound and act cheerful, the weight of fatigue drags me down like an iron anchor. I have to work hard not to succumb to the tug of depression, which only adds layers to my fatigue.

To counteract the heaviness I’ve been researching different art forms to figure out which one suits me best and what I might be able to achieve on a larger scale if I teach myself how to draw and paint. I’ve encountered some interesting artists. One artist whose gallery and website I really enjoyed exploring is Sandrine Pelissier. She’s a mixed media artist who creates beautiful paintings using acrylic paint, watercolor, dry pastels, graphite, oil sticks, and vibrant inks on paper, yupo paper, and canvas. She incorporates things like string, plaster, and paper to create interesting textures. She even incorporates life drawings and Zentangle patterns into her work. I’m considering taking one of her online classes to add some structure to my learning.

In the meantime, I started a small project. I’m making Zentangle tiles using a single tangle pattern (monotangle). It’s intended in part to make me practice drawing the patterns and steady my hands that tend to shake when I draw, while helping me to relax because I don’t meditate as much as I should. This is becoming a helpful practice because I realized that once I draw the patterns in my Zentangle notebook I may add the ones I like to something I draw in my art/gratitude journal, but the others never get drawn again. I also need to practice shading the patterns, which isn’t something I do in my notebook, and I’m not terribly good at right now. To make the project more challenging, instead of drawing random strings (guide lines) on each tile, I’m using the strings from the Tangle Patterns web site. There are currently 196 strings and tangles beyond that number in existence, so I should be busy for a while.

 

Don McLean – Vincent (Starry Starry Night)

 

Gratitude and Creativity: A Year Of Banking Positives

I’ve been reflecting on the year that passed, trying to identify the best thing(s) that happened. Unlike other years, this time it wasn’t too difficult to pinpoint what I should put at the top of my list. Flipping through my memories, a few things, and people kept coming back to the surface. Much of them related to my illness and all that has happened, or hasn’t, because of it. Surprisingly, there were more good things than bad that filled my thoughts, which puts me in a positive frame of mind as this new year unfolds.

The best thing that happened to me last year, by far, was having a new surgeon assigned to my case. If I wasn’t sent to him for a second opinion, I’d probably still be sitting here with a growth in my pelvis waiting to see what might happen to it – would it grow larger or mutate into something cancerous as some speculated – and what would happen to the rest of me as a result. It took one meeting with this surgeon for things to take a more positive tone and move forward more rapidly than they had at any point since the start of my illness. Within weeks of his first assessment, I had pre-admission tests scheduled and my surgery date was set. I had surgery last August, close to the second anniversary of the frightening start of my illness, and although my recovery hasn’t been smooth, the surgical outcomes were better than anyone could have expected because the growth removed from my pelvis was benign.

The physical pain that growth introduced to my life was the catalyst for some of the other good things that are now part of my life. Because of all the pain medications I take to function daily, I had to find new ways to express myself. I started by writing a journal that focused on my pain and how I was coping with it. That journal eventually became this blog, but I soon realized I needed more to fill my life: I needed to reconnect with my creativity. I found so many creative ideas and tools online. I started an art/gratitude journal, which made me realize that who I’ve always been isn’t gone, although the fog of pain medications sometimes masks it. That spark of self-recognition helped me start writing poetry again and made me feel less disconnected and dulled. I’m also teaching myself how to draw; this came about purely by accident when I found Zentangle, which has the added benefit of being a meditative practice. My life is full of colour now – I literally have coloured pencils, pens, markers, sketchbooks and paper all over my place – when I never imagined there could be room for anything creative with this illness and constant pain.

Life
Hope

Many of my relationships also changed and some became stronger because of my illness. At this point last year I felt alone and very isolated. The feeling of isolation shifted a bit when I started this blog and made connections with people living in situations similar to mine. From their stories, I learned how chronic pain and chronic illness could take a heavy toll on your relationships with friends and family and on your relationship with yourself. Articles and blog posts I read spoke of incredible loss and loneliness because people are afraid to share the truth about their circumstances or they had people turn their backs on them when they did share the truth. I had those fears about sharing and I did lose relationships with people who didn’t want to deal with what I’m living with, and I even had some family walk away from me. However, the people who encourage me to be honest about how I feel (physically and emotionally) and want me to ask them for help are incredible. People, who a few years ago I might have considered casual friends, are now some of my closest friends. Friends I’ve known for decades are now even closer and do whatever they can to support me and keep my spirits up when pain overwhelms me. The love from these friends and the family that stand by me makes me feel less afraid about being open and less isolated, even though I spend most of my days alone.

Chronic pain and illness continued to change my life in 2015. However, as I look back, most of the positive changes wouldn’t have happened without them. I never make New Year’s resolutions and I’m not going to change that now, but I am going to hope that my bank of positive experiences continues to grow.