Busy = Happy, or at least positive

Getting behind posting, BUT not getting behind doing my actual visual journals.  I'm wondering when it will lose its appeal, both to me and to my viewers.  Well, I think a goal for now is to keep it up until my birthday since I'm planning on having a big 40th birthday art show and it would be cool to put out my journal for viewing.  So that's a 6 month commitment as of now and tho I'm finding it more and more challenging that also means I'm being pushed in more and different ways which is precisely what I need and half the reason I'm doing it.  However, I'm just not going to be able to write much about them all the time esp when I'm feeling better and am busy.  It's funny, my written journal has huge gaps in it from the times where life is good but when I'm in a shit hole I've got pages written for every day!  To overview briefly, up until yesterday I was having a really rough time and that's really reflected in my visual journal.  I actually showed it to my mother and her response was "it seems like my daughter is haunted."  Lovely.  And true...sometimes.  Here is Jan 3, 4, 5 & 6.  I will save 7 to hopefully write about along with 8.  Cheers.

Words are very unecessary...

they can only do harm.
Feelings are intense, words are trivial...
All I've ever wanted, all I've ever needed
is here in my arms.
Enjoy the silence

Name that tune ;)  Yes, Depeche Mode just came on my Pandora station and it felt fitting to where I was at on January 2nd.

I'm getting myself a little confused at this point now because I'm generally doing my visual journal for the day on the next morning because by the end of the night I'm too tired and still often "soaking up" the day so it just makes more sense to reflect the next morning before starting that day.  However, if I don't actually post it then, like now where I'm trying to post for the last 2 days, things start to get a little fuzzy. 

Anyway, I made room on my visual journal page for Thursday to write a poem because there felt such a need and because I truly want to include them each day.  For all the emotional angst I'd been putting myself through for over a week over a gut feeling I had I finally got a phone call which both put to rest and confirmed my feeling.  I still have another check-in to make but I was overly joyed to find out my initial fears were unfounded.  Cryptic?  Yes, well I don't want to go into details, those are not important.  The basic impact on me was due to self-doubt, fear and sensitivity.   At least I have the security to reach out to confirm or deny my concerns.  However, much of the day I was still feeling a bit like a freak, like an outcast, angry, broken and looked down upon, hence much of the imagery.  But really who is doing the judging here, the people I *think* are feeling that way or myself?  Yes, myself.  I take full responsibility for my actions, right or wrong good or bad, I take responsibility for how they represent who I am and I take responsibility for judging as well as accepting and loving myself for them.  What more can I really do?  Hopefully learn some lessons and choose to or not to act accordingly next time.

Naaay!!

Happy New Year!  New Moon phase, Year of the Horse and all that good shit ;)

I hate getting too caught up in any holiday anymore, it just doesn't do me any good.  I know myself and it's best to keep an even level of excitement and anticipation for big things so as not to set up for a let down.  Maybe that's not the right attitude but it's what keeps me sane for now.  I think I've finally gone from swinging way high and swinging way low to just kinda bobbing around the horizon line and while it definitely keeps things more tolerable it also feels a bit numb.  It's like an ex boyfriend of  mine once commented that "life is never boring with Tiffany even if that means it's not positive."  But "boring" is a funny word I think...these days being a stay at home mom I often feel "bored" regardless of being busy.  Working on my art and doing social things helps break me out of that bored place but really, can life be just a big jolly exciting party all the time?  No.  Or maybe it can, but who can sustain that?  The rich and famous who have tons of minions to do all their "real life" stuff like laundry, grocery shopping, paperwork, kid sleep training, etc. etc.  Anyway, I have gotten in "trouble" in the past for saying things I apparently shouldn't or that isn't appropriate or is uncomfortable for the company and it has always pissed me off because I hate that I should have to BE someone else just because other people might not get it.  Have I gone totally off topic now?  My sis & bff kindly remind me that just because it's ok in my eyes doesn't mean it's ok in the rest of the worlds eyes and even tho that doesn't mean I should conform it does mean if I want to keep the peace I should have a little respect.  Gosh, I just never thought I was disrespectful, that hardly feels like a word people would use to describe me...or is it?  At any rate, this is a whole tangent playing in my head these days which has translated to my visual journal, although maybe not totally obviously.  The poetry is missing the last few days due to lack of space and a pissy attitude.  I'm trying to stay positive and not bitter but that's not always easy.  I'm working hard on trying not to care, ultimately, about what others think about me, but that's just not who I am.  I care about what people think.  I want people to like me.  But if they don't, that's just their loss I guess ;)

Pure Heroine

Just purchased and listening to Lorde's Pure Heroine and I LOVE it!!  A new album to take me through the new year.  Realized it's a new moon tonight as well so it's an extra powerful time.  In the process of setting some intentions and putting them on paper.  No, not "resolutions" but Intentions. :)

Yesterday was a better day, it got better after I showered, washed my hair and put on thick black eyeliner ;)  Cleaned up the house and took down Christmas deco since I don't like to go into the new year with it still up.  I felt like a lot of different people which is reflected in my daily journal imagery and poem.  Busy with nothing today getting ready for New Year's Eve...

122913

it was a sluggish day, still feeling the energy drain from the Mission and have this mysterious crappy pain in my right arm which has put a damper on my spirit & productivity.  I laid low much of the day with the partial excuse that it was Sunday.  I got some bummer news and have also been feeling a bit hyper sensitive/hyper paranoid about some friendships so all in all it wasn't a great day.  well, I guess they can't all be positive ;) 

Eeeny Meeny Miney Mission

So we drove 4 hours south to visit Tony's dad Friday morning, returning late last night.  That's about all we can take unfortunately.  It's so sad watching those we love get old, grumpy, sedentary, confused, etc.  We usually go for slightly longer but break it up by staying with some good friends who live nearby but who were sick with the flu this time.  Tony told me on the drive home I did very well this trip...well, I brought with me plenty of distractions, my new daily goal of the visual journal occupying much of my thoughts since what was tangible and in front of me i was trying to escape.  I suppose that doesn't really make sense, trying to avoid the pain of real life by figuring out how to put my feelings about it into my visual journal?  Well, whatever, that's what I did and it seemed to work and I actually got the page done!  It's funny how as I'm going through the day I'm making note of what's impacting me, influencing me, affecting me and what I want to take away from it to put in my journal and then the task of finding the imagery and verbiage in my current magazine stash, in the tips of my pens & paint brushes, in the form of poetry, to take the whole day and make one page out of it.  Some things that seem important don't end up on the page but how can you capture it all?  This new project is challenging me, rewarding me and therapyzing me (that's not a word i know but i didn't like "counseling me"). 

Yesterday was another day of driving and pit stops so I didn't get to finish my page until this morning which i felt compelled to do before anything else...ok, I helped get the kids dressed, wiped Teagan's snotty nose, watched the kids play on the sidewalk out front, picked up the house a little, etc.  Again, another day filled with things I can't possibly, or maybe don't even want to, include on its page.  I grabbed little things here and there to add to it, including a St. Anthony charm that I safety pinned to the page and while at Barrel House Brewing Company I did a rubbing from the very cool & bizarre wall texture which became the background of the page. 

We visited two Missions on this little road trip, places I'm very drawn to and intrigued by.  Yes more of the cross collecting atheist's random obsessions.  I would like to put together a photo book someday, not the first of it's kind but the first by me, of all the California and Baja Missions.  I've been to and photographed several of them now.  On our way down we checked out the small Mission Soledad, off the beaten path a little and centered in fields of dusty crops, the wind blowing dirt over the property making you wonder how it hasn't been buried!  I absolutely loved the chapel with all it's quaint detail and i picked myself up a little golden Milagro heart which i glued onto my visual journal page for the day.  On the drive home, however, since we had the time we drove the 26 miles off the highway to visit Mission San Antonio de Padua.  The drive was very pretty, a mixture of old oaks and desert feel.  Fallen leaves scattered the road and as we drove through I'd look in my rear view mirror and smile at the fluttering, sparkling dance we'd leave behind.  Unfortunately the mission didn't leave me with as much good feeling.  I couldn't put my finger on it while we were there, wandering about the massive building and grounds, nor could I figure it out as we were driving away and I knew I never wanted to return.  It wasn't until my head lay on my pillow many hours later that I made the connection between the saint of lost possessions, the disabled & sick, St. Anthony, and the mission built in his namesake.  I had been picking up the negative energy of loss, of pain and tragedy and heartache.  It was almost as if I could see the spirits erratically flying about, tortured and sad.  Yes, I just said that.  Yes, I'm an atheist...but something I can't quite resolve is my connection to what I can only really describe as the spiritual world, or the energy world.  Do I believe in ghosts? Not really.  But I know I have a mild psychic connection to my fellow man and their energy.  As I tried explaining all this to Tony (ironic about the name) this morning he took the opposite reaction, that there would be a sense of love, support & kindness to those things & people lost, to those disabled and sick.  I heard him and I understood but it's not what I felt when I was there.  I'm glad I went but I won't be returning.  Maybe someday I should, to try to make peace with it, but it's very far down on my list and I've basically already put it behind me.

So here are the two visual journals for Friday and Saturday.  Enjoy!

Super Who? Super What?

It's been a WHILE since I blogged...what on earth was I focusing on at that point?  My fitness goals? Those went by the wayside for my artistic goals which then went by the wayside when I mentally couldn't handle any more than the basic daily tasks...  In November I thought I'd found my miracle happy pill, which of course came with the caveat that I couldn't take them for long lest I develop some random "possibly permanent abnormal facial/tongue movements" (do I trade a facial tic for true bliss?!) but I find myself at the end of December once again feeling like I did prior to starting my miracle pill.  Ah hah, so apparently there is no miracle pill, just temporary fixes of some sort or another.  Which leads me to the ultimate goal of this post, since I neither have the time nor energy to pour out a giant typical Tiffany blog.  One of the beauties of being diagnosed Bipolar II along with the prediagnosed Borderline Personality Disorder and being prescribed a lower dose of Zoloft along with a new low dose of (happy pill drum roll...) Abilify, is that I've suddenly had the mental clarity and physical energy to tackle more than the minimal requirements of the day and thus my art.  I've completed more art in the last 4 weeks than the last year I think!  Not that it's all great, but it's complete and it comes from that place inside me that needs release, that needs to create, that needs to grow via my art.  But as the happy pill high is waning I'm in fear of losing my artistic burst and want to set myself a goal to hopefully keep me pushing through the tough days, as today was one.  I happen to pick up a "magazine/book" called Artists' Café Best of Somerset Mixed Media and was, in a very low moment not just in the day but in the month, the year, even my life (if up to now I had to rank a dozen or so of them) I made my way through by creating a visual journal page.  I am a journaler, I am a writer, I am an artist but up until now I have not been a visual journaler.  The ideas were all over the magazine I picked up today and with the options of doing something not quite so productive or even I dare say harmful vs creating a visual journal page...well, the Tiffany that is the survivor picked the latter and here we have it.  It's not pretty, it's not happy.  I even wrote a "poem" to go with it which is not at all uplifting but I was none of those things as I created it.  However, when it was finished there was a sense of relief, of the blister burst, of a pride and that's what I hope to keep aiming for with this new goal.

So going forward I'm going to try my hardest each day to create a visual journal page.  It will be put together within an hour, not over thought, not over planned or over produced.  It will be what it is, the good bad or ugly.  I am going to post a picture of it here each day as a way to keep myself in check.  We are planning on going away the next few days so both doing the page and posting it will be a challenge but I think I need those to keep me sane right now.  Sanity is a good thing I think everyone can agree :) 

I welcome and invite you on my journey here and of course am always open to comments, suggestions, thoughts, etc. 

best,
tiffany