It has been three months now since I concussed myself on the handrail when standing up after picking up 500 beads that I'd accidentally dropped on the stairs. There has been a great deal of progress, but I'm still shy of a full recovery.
Noise sensitivity remains an issue. Music in particular bothers me more than it used to. I'd already pretty much stopped listening to music over the last year or so because it had become too much for my migraine brain to process, but now it's gone from overwhelming to excruciating. I'm constantly having to change the volume when watching movies because the moment the music swells, I have to duck and cover. I find myself grumpily wondering why people feel like they have to put music in TV shows or play it on radios or in offices. Times sure have changed since the days when working without music was nearly impossible!
My eyes are more light sensitive still, too. It's not something I notice so much on a day-to-day basis, but as the light has changed with the seasons, I've noticed, as I mentioned in this post, that my eyes are as sensitive with my light sensitivity glasses on as they were without them last year. It's a serious enough problem that I'm going to look into getting a darker tint for my light sensitivity lenses. I suppose I also have less cushion for the amount of visual work I do, but that's something I've adapted to.
And while I have been able to get some great work done over the last month or so, like opening my macro photography shop, I'm nowhere near ready to getting back to work on my ABC book. Before the accident, I was thinking I might be just a few weeks away from starting to take the photos. Now, when I look at the boxes holding the props, I just feel tired. There are definitely limits to my energy and enthusiasm. I have been able to leave the house now and then for reasons other than medical appointments, though, and I even drove once a few weeks ago. That was a matter of necessity: if I didn't drive, Abbey wasn't going to get to go swimming this summer! I'm in no hurry to get back behind the wheel for less essential errands, however. Pre-concussion, it wasn't unusual for me to go weeks or months without driving, so it's more like I'm mired in one of my not-feeling-as-well periods.
I worry, too, that I'm more susceptible to feeling lousy because of weather changes, but truth be told, I have no evidence. I felt lousy all last spring because of the weather, so feeling crummy when the wind blows or the pressure drops isn't a new phenomenon. I had a respite during August and September from weather-related illness thanks to relentlessly fine weather, so the latest days of feeling wiped out are signs of changing seasons and may or may not have anything to do with the head injury or may have happened anyway, but it just seems like exactly what my brain would do.
One of the biggest lingering differences, though, supported by plenty of evidence, is that the migraines are worse. The entry-level pain, so to speak, is always higher now. Previously, the migraines would start out at a 4 out of 10 on the pain scale (my version, at any rate) and build from there. I would say that the starting point for pain is much closer to 6 out of ten. There have only been a few days since the concussion when I haven't taken acute prescription medication for headaches. By being smart (usually) about my limitations, I used to only need acute prescription meds three or four times a week. The headache threshold is so low now that getting migraines that require treatment on a daily basis is essentially unavoidable. Again, this is something that I've gotten used to, but it's a change.
It's possible that all of these things could improve over the next months or years. I have to say, though, that I no longer feel like I'm actively dealing with the concussion the way I was six weeks ago. Things have been static long enough that it just feels like the new normal. My migraines tend to change over time, so while it was a blow to the head and not some unexplained shift in internal chemistry that brought on the latest developments, this feels like just another chapter in my life as a migraineur, not the ongoing trials of a head injury patient. And it can't be undone. So, three months post-concussion, while my brain may still be healing, it's the usual stuff--art, dogs, family, the day-to-day state of my health--that's on my mind.
Blue-Violet Iris Interior
Thursday, October 6, 2011
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
California Dreamin'
I dread the coming winter.
I used to love autumn. It was my favorite season. I missed it tremendously during the four years I spent going to college in Florida. I missed the way the color of the light changed from warm and golden to cool and white, the delicious tang of cooler days and frosty nights, the brilliant colors of turning leaves, the crunch of those leaves underfoot, and the spicy scent that I associate with fallen brown big-leaf maple leaves in particular. When I worked as a floral designer, it was definitely my favorite season because of the grasses and the pods, the bold dahlias and sunflowers, the antiqued hydrangeas, the joy of working in a palette of rust, chocolate, copper, cinnamon, orange, and burgundy. Fall always made me feel more alive. The sunny days were glorious and the rainy days seemed seasonally appropriate.
Today is the kind of sunny autumn day that used to set my heart singing. But instead I am filled with terrible apprehension. Fall and winter are not kind to this particular migraineur.
Take this photo, for example:
My parents, when choosing the house where I live, kept the benefits of passive solar in mind, and so all the main living areas of the house--the kitchen and family room, the windows of all the bedrooms except my own--face south. Because of Seattle's latitude, the angle of the sun changes dramatically between summer and winter. During the summer, sunshine penetrates all these south-facing windows by only a foot or so, which helps keep the house cool. In winter, the sun shines all the way in to the far walls, filling the house with light. As you can see in the picture, the sun of late September is penetrating deep into the kitchen. The problem for me, though, is that this change in the sun's angle is excruciating to my light-sensitive eyes. Sunlight becomes unavoidable. It spills across the kitchen table and the family room couches. It reflects blindingly from the chrome of the kitchen faucet. And if I look out the windows, it shines painfully into my eyes.
This picture also represents a terrible problem. Those dappled shadows spilling across the carpet (and Abbey) are my idea of hell. When the wind stirs the branches, causing them to move, the effect on my brain is nearly unbearable.
Shadows outside the house become problematic, too. The changing angle of the light casts longer shadows and the cooler light temperature means the contrast between the very white light and the very black shadows is greater than they are during the summer. The contrast between black and white is very difficult for the migraine brain to handle, which is why I seldom read books or magazines much anymore and I have to limit my writing and reading on the computer. The contrast between the thin black lines of print on a white page is nothing, however, compared to the shadows cast by trees on a sunny day and the worst possible thing is to be riding in a car through those shadows. The strobe effect of passing rapidly in and out of darkness back into bright light causes an instant, severe migraine.
Winter also means shorter days and, therefore, longer nights. When the sun sets at 4:30 in the afternoon, it means any outing undertaken in the evening is done in darkness and being out in the dark means encountering the contrast of bright headlights, streetlights, signage, etc., against the darkness. One of the most awful sensations as a migraineur is to be riding in the car and have the shadows cast by streetlights pass through the car. Most people, I'm sure, never notice the way the shadows seem to run through the car, one after another, but I find it agonizing. Last winter, I stopped riding in the car at night altogether. During the summer, when it didn't get dark until 9:30 or later, I seldom ran into the issue.
I spent last winter virtually a prisoner in my own house, unable to tolerate the roving shadows in the outside world, always having to sit with my back to windows, creeping and wincing through the house. Things improved when I obtained my light sensitivity glasses last March, but this fall I'm more light sensitive because of the concussion, so the benefit of the glasses is only about equal to where I was last year without them.
I have another worry, too. I used to find some respite in cloudy days, of which Seattle has an abundance, but my increased sensitivity to changes in barometric pressure, particularly the drops associated with bad weather, has me worried. Last winter, La Niña brought months of wind and I spent most of the early spring in exhausted misery. When the wind blows, it saps all my energy, lowers my mood, increases my migraines. There is no escape from it. I can't tell you how much I dread this coming winter, with its fluctuating bad weather and the possibility of another La Niña and months of wind.
Before the migraines started, I was very seriously considering relocating to the Southwest, since I love the landscape there and I had noticed that from a mood standpoint, I feel ridiculously better when the sun is out. With this increase in sensitivity to changes in weather in general and wind in particular, the Southwest (and most anywhere else in the U.S.) with its windy springs and occasional thunderstorms is out. I am now certain that I will be moving to Southern California at some point. My parents are from Los Angeles and we visited every summer and I have extended family there. I liked to visit, but it was never a place where I desired to live, but Southern California, be it the Los Angeles area or San Diego, has some of the sunniest, most stable weather in the country, and being at a much more southern latitude, the changes in the angle of light during the winter is not so severe. It may be some time (as in several years), though, before such a move is possible. I must confess that the thought of spending not just this winter but many more here fills me with despair.
I used to love autumn. It was my favorite season. I missed it tremendously during the four years I spent going to college in Florida. I missed the way the color of the light changed from warm and golden to cool and white, the delicious tang of cooler days and frosty nights, the brilliant colors of turning leaves, the crunch of those leaves underfoot, and the spicy scent that I associate with fallen brown big-leaf maple leaves in particular. When I worked as a floral designer, it was definitely my favorite season because of the grasses and the pods, the bold dahlias and sunflowers, the antiqued hydrangeas, the joy of working in a palette of rust, chocolate, copper, cinnamon, orange, and burgundy. Fall always made me feel more alive. The sunny days were glorious and the rainy days seemed seasonally appropriate.Today is the kind of sunny autumn day that used to set my heart singing. But instead I am filled with terrible apprehension. Fall and winter are not kind to this particular migraineur.
Take this photo, for example:
My parents, when choosing the house where I live, kept the benefits of passive solar in mind, and so all the main living areas of the house--the kitchen and family room, the windows of all the bedrooms except my own--face south. Because of Seattle's latitude, the angle of the sun changes dramatically between summer and winter. During the summer, sunshine penetrates all these south-facing windows by only a foot or so, which helps keep the house cool. In winter, the sun shines all the way in to the far walls, filling the house with light. As you can see in the picture, the sun of late September is penetrating deep into the kitchen. The problem for me, though, is that this change in the sun's angle is excruciating to my light-sensitive eyes. Sunlight becomes unavoidable. It spills across the kitchen table and the family room couches. It reflects blindingly from the chrome of the kitchen faucet. And if I look out the windows, it shines painfully into my eyes.
This picture also represents a terrible problem. Those dappled shadows spilling across the carpet (and Abbey) are my idea of hell. When the wind stirs the branches, causing them to move, the effect on my brain is nearly unbearable.
Shadows outside the house become problematic, too. The changing angle of the light casts longer shadows and the cooler light temperature means the contrast between the very white light and the very black shadows is greater than they are during the summer. The contrast between black and white is very difficult for the migraine brain to handle, which is why I seldom read books or magazines much anymore and I have to limit my writing and reading on the computer. The contrast between the thin black lines of print on a white page is nothing, however, compared to the shadows cast by trees on a sunny day and the worst possible thing is to be riding in a car through those shadows. The strobe effect of passing rapidly in and out of darkness back into bright light causes an instant, severe migraine.
Winter also means shorter days and, therefore, longer nights. When the sun sets at 4:30 in the afternoon, it means any outing undertaken in the evening is done in darkness and being out in the dark means encountering the contrast of bright headlights, streetlights, signage, etc., against the darkness. One of the most awful sensations as a migraineur is to be riding in the car and have the shadows cast by streetlights pass through the car. Most people, I'm sure, never notice the way the shadows seem to run through the car, one after another, but I find it agonizing. Last winter, I stopped riding in the car at night altogether. During the summer, when it didn't get dark until 9:30 or later, I seldom ran into the issue.
I spent last winter virtually a prisoner in my own house, unable to tolerate the roving shadows in the outside world, always having to sit with my back to windows, creeping and wincing through the house. Things improved when I obtained my light sensitivity glasses last March, but this fall I'm more light sensitive because of the concussion, so the benefit of the glasses is only about equal to where I was last year without them.
 |
| A wind-whipped Mr. Gorgeous in photo taken last February. I was helping out his owners by walking him regularly, but I was exhausted all the time not from the exercise, but from the endless wind. |
Before the migraines started, I was very seriously considering relocating to the Southwest, since I love the landscape there and I had noticed that from a mood standpoint, I feel ridiculously better when the sun is out. With this increase in sensitivity to changes in weather in general and wind in particular, the Southwest (and most anywhere else in the U.S.) with its windy springs and occasional thunderstorms is out. I am now certain that I will be moving to Southern California at some point. My parents are from Los Angeles and we visited every summer and I have extended family there. I liked to visit, but it was never a place where I desired to live, but Southern California, be it the Los Angeles area or San Diego, has some of the sunniest, most stable weather in the country, and being at a much more southern latitude, the changes in the angle of light during the winter is not so severe. It may be some time (as in several years), though, before such a move is possible. I must confess that the thought of spending not just this winter but many more here fills me with despair.
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
Don't Even Look at Me
I only have two regrets. One involves not saying some things to someone important in my life before that person died. The other one I rectified in a dream I had last night, which is why I have it on my mind.
I was sexually harassed by a classmate in high school. This is no big secret. Some of my friends knew about it and tried to protect me from him. I even told my parents about a lot of it. (Had I told them all of it, they probably would have acted, but at fifteen there were things I was not yet comfortable discussing.) The worst of it happened during my sophomore year, when we had six out of six classes together the first semester and five out of six classes together the second. By my senior year, we only had one class together and it was essentially over. My desire at the time was for the problem to just go away. I read and reread the section in our student handbook about the school's zero tolerance policy on sexual harassment, but I never took the problem to the administration. I was worried that when I told about all the little comments, the innuendo, and, of course, that time in the library, it wouldn't sound like much. Or that he would just deny it all and it would come to nothing. Or even if they did believe I was being sexually harassed, what could they do? We took all the same classes and at least three of them were not offered at any other time, so it wouldn't work to reassign us to different schedules. What if telling just made things worse? So I did nothing. I didn't really get angry until I was in college and by that time, of course, it was too late. So that's my regret: that I didn't officially lodge a complaint of sexual harassment against this classmate with the school while I had the chance. Subsequently, he was never informed that what he was doing was not okay. It took some eight years for me to escape the power of his gaze and he got away with it.
If I simply sum up the various things he said to me, while a few of them were inappropriate, they don't sound like all that much, certainly not worth the amount of agony they caused me. How would it have sounded if I had gone to the school counselors and said, "Hey, this guy, he's really creeping me out, he's said a couple of times now that he's worried about how thin I am." I mean, that one doesn't sound like sexual harassment, does it? And I was horribly thin. But I can still remember nearly fifteen years later where I was when this conversation took place (German II) and how creepy it was because I could tell how much he got off on being able to talk about my body in this seemingly legitimate context. I also got the sense that he felt very possessive of my body and this mock solicitousness was really a way of asserting that my body belonged to him. This and other remarks made it clear to me that not only did he think about my body in a sexual way all the time, but that he wanted me to know that he thought about me this way. I am sure of this, just as I am sure that loathing and resentment was a component of his desire. But how was I to prove something that existed almost entirely between the lines?
And at fifteen, I didn't know how to say to an adult, whether it was my parents or someone at the school, that more than once I caught him with his hands in his pockets fondling himself while he stared at me. I can remember the circumstances of the first time so clearly. Our class was in the library. I had been looking up something in the encyclopedias. I glanced up, having had that eerie feeling that I was being stared at, and there he was, in a chair on the far side of the library, hands in his pockets, hands moving in his pockets, and looking straight at me. My gut immediately knew what it had seen, even though I desperately tried to think of reasons why it wasn't so. It wasn't just me, though, who saw him. They didn't see what he was looking at, but some of the other guys in the class had spotted what he was up to. I overheard one of them tease him as we were leaving the library, asking him if he'd been enjoying "stroking the lizard" during class. He hotly denied it, of course, but it was sickening proof for me that I hadn't imagined what I was seeing.
I told my friends about these various instances and they tried to surround me and protect me when they could and I developed a number of strategies to try to maintain space between us, but the fact of the matter, especially during my sophomore year, was that every hour of the school day was spent in his vicinity. That proximity--and his gaze--were the worst of it. I could not avoid him and I could not stop him from looking at me and he'd said and done enough things for me to know exactly what he was thinking about when he stared at me every day in every class. It was horrible, it made me feel sick, it even made me ponder violence, but I was worried that all the little instances, the little things that were said, wouldn't sound like enough, so I didn't go to the school authorities.
It was during my freshman year in college when the annual Clothesline Project shirts went up that I finally understood that even the gaze was a violation. The Clothesline Project addresses violence against women; individuals decorate T-shirts in colors corresponding to various types of violence (assault, rape, etc.) with their stories and hang them on clotheslines for others to see. While reading the stories on the shirts, I recognized what had happened to me. He may never have touched me (and how I had longed, in a way, for him to do so, because I was resolved that a touch would be the final straw), but he managed to hurt me nonetheless. I got very angry. But it was too late to hurt him.
I already struggled with social anxiety, but the attention of his eyes made it even harder for me to tolerate being looked at by others. It didn't help that my freshman year I was considered the Hot New Thing on Campus. I'd been pleasantly invisible (except to my harasser and my friends) in high school, so it was unnerving to discover that everyone at my small college knew who I was and that just about everyone found me sexually attractive. It made me feel very vulnerable. I ceased to feel like I had ownership of my own body. I don't want to equate my own experience to that of being raped, but I also don't want the fact that there was never any physical contact to minimize the damage that was done. To be looked at became a sexual assault, the equivalent to an unwelcome and inappropriate touch. I worked with high school kids that first summer after I went to college and fourteen year-old boys are incredibly obvious when they check a girl out and I got checked out a lot. Midway through the summer, I shaved my head. The next year at school, I didn't go out much. At my worst, I yearned to retreat from society, to never be looked at again except by those whose gaze I knew to be benign, to exist without a body at all. I improved during my final two years in college, but it was several more years (not to mention medication and therapy) before I was able to feel my body remained completely my own while being looked at by others.
I hope I never see my harasser again. He was one of the reasons I skipped my ten year reunion and I've blocked him--preemptively--on Facebook. A little while ago his face popped up in an old photo posted by someone else, which is probably why I dreamt of him last night. It gave me a nasty, sick feeling to see his face again. It pulled back up a lot of those things I never said: the curses, the gagging, the howls of fury, the unemphatic THIS IS NOT OKAY. It also reminded me of how dearly I longed to smash that face in with a metal lab stool during the long year when we had to be chemistry partners. I used to mentally rehearse it so I'd be ready when the day came. But the day I was waiting for, the moment when he'd cross the line, was actually behind me. I'd fully been the victim of his obsessive longing/loathing since that afternoon in the library. I see that now. And while I'm still angry, I'm not his victim anymore.
I was sexually harassed by a classmate in high school. This is no big secret. Some of my friends knew about it and tried to protect me from him. I even told my parents about a lot of it. (Had I told them all of it, they probably would have acted, but at fifteen there were things I was not yet comfortable discussing.) The worst of it happened during my sophomore year, when we had six out of six classes together the first semester and five out of six classes together the second. By my senior year, we only had one class together and it was essentially over. My desire at the time was for the problem to just go away. I read and reread the section in our student handbook about the school's zero tolerance policy on sexual harassment, but I never took the problem to the administration. I was worried that when I told about all the little comments, the innuendo, and, of course, that time in the library, it wouldn't sound like much. Or that he would just deny it all and it would come to nothing. Or even if they did believe I was being sexually harassed, what could they do? We took all the same classes and at least three of them were not offered at any other time, so it wouldn't work to reassign us to different schedules. What if telling just made things worse? So I did nothing. I didn't really get angry until I was in college and by that time, of course, it was too late. So that's my regret: that I didn't officially lodge a complaint of sexual harassment against this classmate with the school while I had the chance. Subsequently, he was never informed that what he was doing was not okay. It took some eight years for me to escape the power of his gaze and he got away with it.
If I simply sum up the various things he said to me, while a few of them were inappropriate, they don't sound like all that much, certainly not worth the amount of agony they caused me. How would it have sounded if I had gone to the school counselors and said, "Hey, this guy, he's really creeping me out, he's said a couple of times now that he's worried about how thin I am." I mean, that one doesn't sound like sexual harassment, does it? And I was horribly thin. But I can still remember nearly fifteen years later where I was when this conversation took place (German II) and how creepy it was because I could tell how much he got off on being able to talk about my body in this seemingly legitimate context. I also got the sense that he felt very possessive of my body and this mock solicitousness was really a way of asserting that my body belonged to him. This and other remarks made it clear to me that not only did he think about my body in a sexual way all the time, but that he wanted me to know that he thought about me this way. I am sure of this, just as I am sure that loathing and resentment was a component of his desire. But how was I to prove something that existed almost entirely between the lines?
And at fifteen, I didn't know how to say to an adult, whether it was my parents or someone at the school, that more than once I caught him with his hands in his pockets fondling himself while he stared at me. I can remember the circumstances of the first time so clearly. Our class was in the library. I had been looking up something in the encyclopedias. I glanced up, having had that eerie feeling that I was being stared at, and there he was, in a chair on the far side of the library, hands in his pockets, hands moving in his pockets, and looking straight at me. My gut immediately knew what it had seen, even though I desperately tried to think of reasons why it wasn't so. It wasn't just me, though, who saw him. They didn't see what he was looking at, but some of the other guys in the class had spotted what he was up to. I overheard one of them tease him as we were leaving the library, asking him if he'd been enjoying "stroking the lizard" during class. He hotly denied it, of course, but it was sickening proof for me that I hadn't imagined what I was seeing.
I told my friends about these various instances and they tried to surround me and protect me when they could and I developed a number of strategies to try to maintain space between us, but the fact of the matter, especially during my sophomore year, was that every hour of the school day was spent in his vicinity. That proximity--and his gaze--were the worst of it. I could not avoid him and I could not stop him from looking at me and he'd said and done enough things for me to know exactly what he was thinking about when he stared at me every day in every class. It was horrible, it made me feel sick, it even made me ponder violence, but I was worried that all the little instances, the little things that were said, wouldn't sound like enough, so I didn't go to the school authorities.
It was during my freshman year in college when the annual Clothesline Project shirts went up that I finally understood that even the gaze was a violation. The Clothesline Project addresses violence against women; individuals decorate T-shirts in colors corresponding to various types of violence (assault, rape, etc.) with their stories and hang them on clotheslines for others to see. While reading the stories on the shirts, I recognized what had happened to me. He may never have touched me (and how I had longed, in a way, for him to do so, because I was resolved that a touch would be the final straw), but he managed to hurt me nonetheless. I got very angry. But it was too late to hurt him.
I already struggled with social anxiety, but the attention of his eyes made it even harder for me to tolerate being looked at by others. It didn't help that my freshman year I was considered the Hot New Thing on Campus. I'd been pleasantly invisible (except to my harasser and my friends) in high school, so it was unnerving to discover that everyone at my small college knew who I was and that just about everyone found me sexually attractive. It made me feel very vulnerable. I ceased to feel like I had ownership of my own body. I don't want to equate my own experience to that of being raped, but I also don't want the fact that there was never any physical contact to minimize the damage that was done. To be looked at became a sexual assault, the equivalent to an unwelcome and inappropriate touch. I worked with high school kids that first summer after I went to college and fourteen year-old boys are incredibly obvious when they check a girl out and I got checked out a lot. Midway through the summer, I shaved my head. The next year at school, I didn't go out much. At my worst, I yearned to retreat from society, to never be looked at again except by those whose gaze I knew to be benign, to exist without a body at all. I improved during my final two years in college, but it was several more years (not to mention medication and therapy) before I was able to feel my body remained completely my own while being looked at by others.
I hope I never see my harasser again. He was one of the reasons I skipped my ten year reunion and I've blocked him--preemptively--on Facebook. A little while ago his face popped up in an old photo posted by someone else, which is probably why I dreamt of him last night. It gave me a nasty, sick feeling to see his face again. It pulled back up a lot of those things I never said: the curses, the gagging, the howls of fury, the unemphatic THIS IS NOT OKAY. It also reminded me of how dearly I longed to smash that face in with a metal lab stool during the long year when we had to be chemistry partners. I used to mentally rehearse it so I'd be ready when the day came. But the day I was waiting for, the moment when he'd cross the line, was actually behind me. I'd fully been the victim of his obsessive longing/loathing since that afternoon in the library. I see that now. And while I'm still angry, I'm not his victim anymore.
Sunday, September 25, 2011
More New Listings!
I listed a lot of cards over the past week, most of which can be see in this post, but I put up more photographs in the macro shop, too. Here's the rundown:
(No one has looked at this one yet, but I really like it!)
It was a busy week! I also had a sale in the mouse shop and got the final okay on a trio of mouse photographs for a commission. I've been snapping pictures like crazy (I've already take 1070 photos with the new camera) and am trying to get as much done as I can before the weather changes for the worse, so this flood of listings may continue.
Saturday, September 24, 2011
Case in Point
This is why I love macro photography:
The other day I was taking pictures of the various polished rocks I collected as a kid and in one of the groupings I included a murky reddish little flake of stone that looks like this:
When photographed with my powerful new macro lens, however, an unexpectedly complex beauty emerged. That's the same stone at the top right.
I was totally blown away. You can only see the faintest suggestion of the agate's patterns with the naked eye. After seeing the photographs, I had to dig through my box of rocks to find it again, which wasn't easy. It's hard to believe how small it really is! I'd like to find a slightly larger piece of the same kind of stone so I could make it the sole subject of a photograph (it's a trifle on the small side even for my camera unless you start compromising on quality), but it's too hard to tell on the internet if the pieces available have this kind of minute patterning or not. But what a wonderful surprise! I just love discovering something is far more beautiful and complex when viewed up close than you would ever imagine otherwise!
The other day I was taking pictures of the various polished rocks I collected as a kid and in one of the groupings I included a murky reddish little flake of stone that looks like this:
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| Abbey can be seen in the background overseeing my activities. |
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| The amount of detail is incredible! |
Thursday, September 22, 2011
Card Craze
I've put up half a dozen new card listings (and sold another already!), so I thought I'd take you on a tour.
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
Paycheck
Today I received the first of my monthly disability payments. This is a relief, for the most part, since my financial future is no longer in jeopardy, and there is also something rather validating about having one's disability recognized by the government and I am thankful that there is a system in place to help folks like me who are unable to work. But I must confess that my feelings are somewhat mixed.
For one, it feels a little different to be depending on the government versus depending on my parents. (Well, I'm still depending on my parents at this point, but the day will eventually come when they will no longer be there or able to support me.) While it doesn't always work out that way (for any number of reasons, from dysfunction to lack of resources), there is a certain moral obligation for family members to look after one another. I am acutely aware, however, that the government doesn't owe me much. Unlike a retiree on Social Security, I haven't spent a lifetime paying into the system. I only put in about five years of full-time work before the migraines took hold. The size of my monthly payment reflects this rather paltry contribution, but the fact is that over the years, the government is going to be paying me a lot more than I ever paid them. It's not just the monthly payments, either: once I'm independent of my parents, I'll need subsidized housing and food stamps to survive. So I'm profoundly grateful, but being the recipient of charity isn't an entirely comfortable feeling.
And then this: I wish I were able to work. Trust me, I'm not malingering, I'm not looking for a hand-out or an easy ride or scamming the system. To be thirty years old and unable to work because of illness is disheartening. I liked working. I was very proud of being a good employee. I was looking forward to a lifetime of work. I had a very satisfying job working as a floral designer and was starting to study graphic design while also investigating whether I wanted to return to grad school to study scenic design for theater. I was so excited about my future. Although I've always been someone who needed a fair amount of downtime spent alone, it was because I have an extraordinarily active mind, an intense compulsion to create, and a powerful work ethic. Idleness has never been of much interest to me!
The flower shop where I worked for many years was extremely flexible, understandable, and accommodating when it came to my (pre-migraine) health issues, and so it gave me a lot pleasure to do my job well in return, whether they needed me to wash buckets, act as a navigator during deliveries, or make beautiful arrangements. However, I made a point of being a good employee even when I wasn't in a job that suited me as well. I worked just as hard in various temporary office jobs during school breaks as I did arranging flowers. I was proud of the fact that the mortgage company where I worked one summer expressed tremendous dismay to learn that I would be leaving them to go to grad school--they'd already come to see me as reliable employee who was quick to learn new skills and very thorough in her work. For a while I had a rather difficult-to-describe temporary position with a company that put advertising circulars and catalogs online for national retailers and I was very proud of the fact that I picked up my duties so quickly and was able to explain them so clearly that within a week of starting, the other temps were coming to me with their questions rather than to our supervisor. This did not go unnoticed, so by my second week on the job, my supervisor had ME training the next round of incoming temps! The bottom line: no matter the job, I was always hard-working, thorough, detail-oriented, honest, reliable, quick to learn, good at taking direction, good at giving direction, provided quality customer service, was able to remain cool in a crisis, and always got along well with fellow-employees. (I was NOT good at lifting heavy things. That was my primary (and literal) weakness at the flower shop. Also, my tendency to be thorough and detail-oriented occasionally meant I was not extraordinarily fast at what I did, but I was always efficient and organized in my thoroughness. I am utterly incapable of producing sloppy work; to do so would be offensive to everything I value. Fortunately, my version of "slow" tended to be comparatively fast!) As you can see, none of my attributes, or even my weaknesses, as an employee make not being able to work very palatable for me!
I consider myself lucky that I can work, so to speak, on a very limited scale. I take my art seriously, and while I'm not at the point where I'm bringing in much money and certainly not with any regularity, it does offer some of the satisfaction of having a job. The frustration, of course, is that I am only capable of a couple of hours of work on a good day, and none at all on others. I have sufficient ideas that I could work ten hours a day, six days a week on various creative projects. But I'm well aware that only being able to do little bits of work at a time is so much better than nothing.
So to Social Security: thank you! I'm extremely grateful. But believe me, if I do have a reversal in health, I'll be so glad to go back to work!
For one, it feels a little different to be depending on the government versus depending on my parents. (Well, I'm still depending on my parents at this point, but the day will eventually come when they will no longer be there or able to support me.) While it doesn't always work out that way (for any number of reasons, from dysfunction to lack of resources), there is a certain moral obligation for family members to look after one another. I am acutely aware, however, that the government doesn't owe me much. Unlike a retiree on Social Security, I haven't spent a lifetime paying into the system. I only put in about five years of full-time work before the migraines took hold. The size of my monthly payment reflects this rather paltry contribution, but the fact is that over the years, the government is going to be paying me a lot more than I ever paid them. It's not just the monthly payments, either: once I'm independent of my parents, I'll need subsidized housing and food stamps to survive. So I'm profoundly grateful, but being the recipient of charity isn't an entirely comfortable feeling.And then this: I wish I were able to work. Trust me, I'm not malingering, I'm not looking for a hand-out or an easy ride or scamming the system. To be thirty years old and unable to work because of illness is disheartening. I liked working. I was very proud of being a good employee. I was looking forward to a lifetime of work. I had a very satisfying job working as a floral designer and was starting to study graphic design while also investigating whether I wanted to return to grad school to study scenic design for theater. I was so excited about my future. Although I've always been someone who needed a fair amount of downtime spent alone, it was because I have an extraordinarily active mind, an intense compulsion to create, and a powerful work ethic. Idleness has never been of much interest to me!
The flower shop where I worked for many years was extremely flexible, understandable, and accommodating when it came to my (pre-migraine) health issues, and so it gave me a lot pleasure to do my job well in return, whether they needed me to wash buckets, act as a navigator during deliveries, or make beautiful arrangements. However, I made a point of being a good employee even when I wasn't in a job that suited me as well. I worked just as hard in various temporary office jobs during school breaks as I did arranging flowers. I was proud of the fact that the mortgage company where I worked one summer expressed tremendous dismay to learn that I would be leaving them to go to grad school--they'd already come to see me as reliable employee who was quick to learn new skills and very thorough in her work. For a while I had a rather difficult-to-describe temporary position with a company that put advertising circulars and catalogs online for national retailers and I was very proud of the fact that I picked up my duties so quickly and was able to explain them so clearly that within a week of starting, the other temps were coming to me with their questions rather than to our supervisor. This did not go unnoticed, so by my second week on the job, my supervisor had ME training the next round of incoming temps! The bottom line: no matter the job, I was always hard-working, thorough, detail-oriented, honest, reliable, quick to learn, good at taking direction, good at giving direction, provided quality customer service, was able to remain cool in a crisis, and always got along well with fellow-employees. (I was NOT good at lifting heavy things. That was my primary (and literal) weakness at the flower shop. Also, my tendency to be thorough and detail-oriented occasionally meant I was not extraordinarily fast at what I did, but I was always efficient and organized in my thoroughness. I am utterly incapable of producing sloppy work; to do so would be offensive to everything I value. Fortunately, my version of "slow" tended to be comparatively fast!) As you can see, none of my attributes, or even my weaknesses, as an employee make not being able to work very palatable for me!
I consider myself lucky that I can work, so to speak, on a very limited scale. I take my art seriously, and while I'm not at the point where I'm bringing in much money and certainly not with any regularity, it does offer some of the satisfaction of having a job. The frustration, of course, is that I am only capable of a couple of hours of work on a good day, and none at all on others. I have sufficient ideas that I could work ten hours a day, six days a week on various creative projects. But I'm well aware that only being able to do little bits of work at a time is so much better than nothing.So to Social Security: thank you! I'm extremely grateful. But believe me, if I do have a reversal in health, I'll be so glad to go back to work!
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