Ideas | Owls and Orchids

Posts Tagged ‘Ideas’

Desperate Measures

Posted in Blessings, Coping Skills, Creativity, Depression, Gratitude, Health, Identity, Life, Love, Photography, Uncategorized, tagged #being Susan Jamieson, #deperate measures, #dog beach, #helpul people, #independence, #living life to the full, #normal life, #patient, Chronic pain, exercise, health, Ideas, sunrise on February 3, 2014| 14 Comments »

image from http://www.josephinewallart.co.uk

“I did the only thing I knew how to do: I built my own walls of silence to disguise my desperation and what later came to be recognized and diagnosed as depression.”
― Sharon E. Rainey, Making a Pearl from the Grit of Life

A strange thing happens when I sit or recline to write. Either I’m eager as a beaver because I feel I have a stunner of an idea, I sit and look at a blank screen and finally something surfaces like a safety line thrown to a drowning person, or I languish forlornly staring at the accusing emptiness and suddenly words will flow and something is on the page. Ideas like bubbles blowing in the breeze wash over me in a magical haze and words appear in front of me.

Amazingly, the latter are the best of all, so I need to tap into my well spring of creativity or, do more prep work because I love writing and love seeing the finished item as I hit that publish button. I was told many months ago that writing for the acclaim of others was a waste of time. If I didn’t like writing for myself it was a lost cause and I should simply stop right then. Incredible as it sounds, that advice was true then and is still true now.

Having said that, it certainly is wonderful having people enjoy what I write and comments are always appreciated because they give me a chance to learn more, about myself and this craft of writing. Yet this is not what I wanted to talk about.

I am a terrible ‘patient’. Terrible doesn’t cover it. Abysmal is closer to it really. I hate the whole illness, can’t do things, must take pills by schedule, do this, do that, everything ordered by someone other than myself. This is not independence. I am, or rather was a fiercely independent person. No – I still am. I haven’t changed, I simply have had to accommodate some changes that irritate but I have to accept as a necessary evil! Temporarily!

For three days I’ve been incredibly emotional after a ~~unpleasant~~ , horrific dream. Even though it turns out the dream is not as bad as it felt, it left me emotional. I hate emotional. It is a loss of control, it is an undermining of the little independence I have left and it leaves me tired, in pain, unimaginably so, and with a burning desire to do something, anything to make me feel, even for a short time that I am ‘normal’ once more.

Ocean Shores 4.30am

Normal, what a stupid word to use. What is normal? Well, for me it is being able to do what I want, when I want without needing any assistance, even that given freely and with love. Independence. It is a heady draught and having it taken away is dis-empowering. Yes, everything revolves around empowering ourselves. Illness removes that empowerment in the cruelest way.

So, after another sleepless night and emotional day before it, I lashed out. I secreted my clothes and sand shoes in the laundry before ‘officially’ going to bed. At 4am I decided my husband was deeply enough asleep I could afford to get up. He is used to me getting up and down during the night now anyway. Quick trip to the bathroom and a little makeup, just in case someone should see me and I crept out to the laundry where a light wouldn’t disturb anyone.

Yes, I sneaked out of the house like a teenager breaking curfew! I even had the forethought to grab a water bottle and my phone. I haven’t walked to the beach where I live and I’ve been here a year. I haven’t sat on the beach and seen the sunrise (at the beach) for a year either. I used to do both regularly when I was alone, independent, before I was engaged or married. I was like a drunken sailor, or a drugged up lunatic, weaving and staggering down this hill. I thought the beach was at the bottom of the road. A kilometre later I reached the sandy access to the beach.

All I could hear was the pounding of the waves. I wished I’d brought my camera but I don’t think I would have made it to the beach if I had. My whole body trembled from the exertion and I staggered down onto the hard sand to sit down. Thankfully seeing someone staggering in the soft sand doesn’t raise eyebrows. I was there and I wasn’t going to be able to move. But I was THERE!

Sunrise at Ocean Shores Beach 5am

I watched the sun rise above the horizon and the clouds.

It was beautiful. It wasn’t hot – I can’t take the heat and the meds had made me burn easily. I could feel the calm wash over me with every wave breaking along the shore line and the rays of the sun peeking over the horizon. I hadn’t known it was a dog beach. A dog. OMG – how much I want a puppy, a miniature fox terrier and all my own. It’s like an ache, never ending. The dogs began appearing with their owners and I was truly happy when they came over to say hello. To pat them, scratch behind their ears and look into those kindly brown eyes, was blissful. Strange how little it can take.

My photos are grainy – even the lauded iPhone can only do so much. But I will be returning with my camera,and soon. By 7am I was beginning to feel more than a little uncomfortable. Couldn’t move my legs properly and turning around brought a sharp twinge. A few more canine cuddles and I knew I couldn’t wait, it was time to start the trek UP the hill to get home. The sun was now a blazing ball in the sky but it was still cool.

Sunrise Ocean Shores 6am

I hit my first hurdle. I couldn’t stand up, couldn’t twist around and couldn’t bend my legs enough to kneel up. Just a little problem. Soft sand….. I finally managed to flop around like a beached whale until I I got one knee pulled under me enough to lever myself onto hands and knees. Humpf! This is what emotional independence gets you. Somehow I made it upright only to fall flat on my face – almost, hands and knees again. After my third staggering attempt and fall someone noticed it wasn’t quite normal and offered to help.

Help! I had to acknowledge I needed help to get up that soft sandy dune and she was a nice and concerned lady. So we managed to get to the seat at the edge of the dune so she could stretch after her walk and I could regroup after hiking up the sand dune! I was determined to walk up that darned hill. I stood up and walked to the footpath with my new found friend. My body, not one part of it, wanted any part of moving in a co-ordinated fashion. I staggered like a drunken sailor with palsy until I finally reneged on my independence and accepted a lift to the top of the hill. So much for being independent. After showering and changing I’ve been sequestered in bed, complaining body reminding me of my foolhardy outing at every turn. Yet desperate circumstances require desperate measures to be taken.

A mini foxie friend at Ocean Shores

I may have paid for my intemperate haste to be independent, but I have my doggie pics and a few hours of remembering what it felt like to be able to go where I wanted, when I wanted to with impunity. For a while I forgot I was this person with an illness. I was Susan all over again and it felt wonderful. One day, one day soon, I will be that person again… come hell or high water I will be.

Blessings, Susan x

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Is your inspiration a Feast or a Famine?

Posted in Blogging, Creativity, Motivation, Uncategorized, Writing, tagged frustration, Ideas, inspiration, Magic, manifesting belief, memories, mind power, motivation, patience, self belief, wishful thinking, Writer's Block on July 1, 2013| 6 Comments »

image from http://www.redletterbelievers.com

“Behind this mask there is more than just flesh. Beneath this mask there is an idea… and ideas are bulletproof.”
― Alan Moore, V for Vendetta

For over a week now I haven’t been able to blog. My laptop had picked up some malware and it wouldn’t let me log on. It’s been frustrating to put it mildly. A simple job which I was told would take and hour and a half took the entire week, All those beautiful bright thoughts, that glittering inspiration which felt like a tingling in my fingers, just waiting for me to get them onto the page were stuck there, somewhere inside my head.

When I tried to write them down they seemed to become trapped in some mystical never-land and before I was past the first sentence they had become lost in a quagmire of sluggish thoughts, firmly swallowed by a thought eating monster who would refuse to let them out. I felt like a still pond when someone drops a pebble into it, the ripples spread out but the surface is barely affected and soon returns to stillness,

By the time I got my, allegedly fixed laptop back I had hit an awful blank wall. Nothing, but nothing wanted to come out. All that inspiration seemed to have been gobbled up in the despair of not getting those bright ideas onto ‘paper’. From a place where I had so many ideas waiting to burst out of me I reached a place where there was an arid desert – a nothingness where no ideas wanted to take root.

image from http://www.flickr.com

“Ideas are like legs: what good are they if you can’t run with them, or spread them?”
― Jarod Kintz, The Days of Yay are Here! Wake Me Up When They’re Over.

I have a multitude of beautiful photos I’ve recently taken, and those I’ll share soon. The stories, well, I’m hoping they return once I start writing again. That’s my hope and plan. A slow trickle to begin with, like a slowly moving stream. It slowly meanders along making its way from the source to the river and then the ocean, carrying everything along with it. As it moves along it picks up little bits and pieces and carries them with it making it more than it was before.

Then, when the time is right, and my idea guzzling monster has fed well and decides to leave me for fresher pastures, I’m hoping that the bright scintillating plethora of ideas will come flooding back. They may not be the same ones, in fact they most probably won’t be, but they will be stories which want and need to be told.

I’m trying to be gentle with myself. The creative process cannot be forced. It either is or it isn’t and the difference can be felt. I don’t want to fill a ‘page’ with the nonsensical, a space-filling nothingness just to say, “Hey I’m here, I really can’t say anything but I want to say I’ve posted something today.” Which is really just a vain plea to say “Please don’t forget me, I really want your ‘likes’ and following and I just want to remind you not to forget me”.

I know the experts say regular posting builds a following, but I would rather post something meaningful, at least to me and hopefully my followers than what feels like filling up empty space with ‘white noise’. (Have you ever seen that movies? It’s frightening because of the possibilities).

I want my river of ideas flowing with the magic and mystery of spirits and undines, sylphs and sprites to bring mystical and wondrous delight to the reader.

image from http://www.nipic.com

“A man may die, nations may rise and fall, but an idea lives on. Ideas have endurance without death.” ― John F. Kennedy

This then is my feast or famine. It is a simple arid desert of nothingness of ideas, a slowly moving stream of a budding flow of inspiration and then a beautiful rushing river of creative wonders, just tumbling over one another to get out.

So I wondered, what is your inspiration? How would you describe your feast or famine of ideas? How do you get past that awful “writer’s block”. There – I’ve said the dreaded words. They weren’t too difficult after all – it’s simply what they mean which is so awful.

May you always have bright ideas to fill your page.

“Dare to dream! If you did not have the capability to make your wildest wishes come true, your mind would not have the capacity to conjure such ideas in the first place. There is no limitation on what you can potentially achieve, except for the limitation you choose to impose on your own imagination. What you believe to be possible will always come to pass – to the extent that you deem it possible. It really is as simple as that.”
― Anthon St. Maarten.

Blessings. Susan x