Dragon's Needle

I was trying to find something in my purse, and then looking in the rolling backpack I use to haul my purse (and laptop) around in, and then in the car I use to drive the rolling backpack to work, and had a realization.

This is the same thing I’m doing with my stuff, the stuff in my head, in my heart. I’ve got these couple-few broken, messed up things to worry about; now here’s another one. I can’t hang on to all of it at once, I’m dropping things and making a mess. I can’t work on fixing any of these things because my hands are full hanging on to them.

I find a bag, and put the things in the bag.

At first this is great. I know where the broken things are, they are in the bag. I don’t have to look at them and feel bad that I’m not dealing with them. When more things come along I add them to the bag too. Now I have a bag with all the broken messed up stuff I don’t want to deal with.

Being me, I pick up other people’s broken stuff when I see it. I worry more about my loved ones than about myself, their broken stuff is heavier than mine.

This bag is getting kind of heavy, and it’s just about full. I can’t find anything, so I try pockets. More pockets, one pocket for each thing. But the bag is still full - I need another bag.

Eventually I have a bag in each hand and another tied to my back. As I wander through my life, these big bags are swinging around, bumping into things and causing more breakage, more things to pick up and put in the bag. When I find more parts for something, bits that need to be connected with something I know I picked up, I have to rummage through all the bags, looking for the right other bits, all while hanging onto all these bags, and not dropping any of the stuff.

Because I can’t stop moving. The world is moving and I need to keep up. I’ll be left behind alone if I don’t keep up. This is my life, if I stop moving forward what will happen? Who will pay the bills and feed the pets and do the job? I have to keep working, keep going, keep picking up more and more stuff so I can get far enough ahead that I have time to pay attention to what I already picked up.

I think my metaphor is broken, but I’ll continue to carry it at least through the end of this post.

I’m not sure how to fix this. I’ve been trying to build a cart to put all the stuff in, so I can haul it around with me. I’ve drawn up elaborate plans for the cart, designed it with cubbyholes for all the different stuff and things and bits. (It wouldn’t do to mix up the things with the bits, or to get the stuff all over everything else.) Yes, beautiful plans. But when I try to put it together my hands are already full.

And then the realization I just had, about the physical thing I thought was in my purse but I had to search for in ever larger nesting containers, shows me the cart will only add to the problem. Only make it harder to find thing, and harder to figure out where to put things.

I want to be able to put things down, and trust that if I really do need them, they will be there. Trust that I won’t trip over them and hurt myself. I want to hold just one thing, big or small, and find all it’s bit and get it fixed once and for all. Maybe I could move around easily and do something fun and creative, instead of trying to sort out the broken stuff.

How can I do that? It would be easy if I could stop moving and sort things out, figure out what goes where. Maybe I have all the pieces to fix one of the big things, only I don’t know it. Maybe I could put the other people’s stuff somewhere else, in a nice safe place, and it will be there if I find a bit to help but it won’t weigh me down.

But it’s really scary. I don’t have time to stop, there’s too much to do - I’ll lose my job and my house and my husband will run away with the dog and my cats will starve until they get desperate enough to eat me. (Not a long time for the fat one)

But it’s the only way I know how to sort things out - stop and spread them out. Find somewhere big enough, get lots of containers to divide it all up, and just plow through it all until it’s done.

Or until I absolutely have to run and do something else and leave it all spread out. This explains the current state of my house as well as my head.

I’ve got lots of little nagging health problems, and although I have an amazing health clinic with wonderful practitioners all helping me, I’m just not doing the thing. In this case, the taking care of myself thing. And I need to know why, so I can stop hurting.

With the help of Havi and Selma’s Destuckification Station and Emergency Calming Techniques, I’ve been trying to find some stuck I could talk to, or at least look at and talk about. It’s harder than it sounds. I found a bunch of different bits of stuckness in me, characters I could talk to but none of them were very cooperative.

The first one I’ve found is the Little Girl.

Sometimes she’s me at about 10 when I was all elbows and knees, the tallest girl in my class even at two years younger than everyone else. Sometimes younger, but then she looks more like my sister for some reason.

The Little Girl is very scared of everything. She doesn’t want anyone to look at us, to notice that we’re weird and different and sort of broken. She won’t answer me at all, not in words. But I can see her peeking out from behind things, and when I ask what she wants, sometimes I remember the answer.

The Little Girl wants to be like everyone else, wants to be normal and pretty and be able to do what they do. But she’s terrified, afraid to be seen by the other kids. If I do anything to seek help for the health issues, or work on them where people can see, then they will know. They will know she’s weak, and fragile, and can’t run fast without falling down or wheezing. They’ll throw things at her, and call her names, and the teacher will send her to the library at recess so she doesn’t get hit anymore.

A couple of weeks ago I went to the park with my poodle, and after we walked around and got worn out, we sat under a tree. The poodle sniffed around for squirrels (the ancestral enemy of the miniature poodle) and in that perfect moment the Little Girl came out. We picked up leaves and sticks and seed pods, and made patterns and designs all around us under the tree, and thought about nothing at all. I remember playing this way, all alone in a corner of the playground, hiding from the other kids.

Little Girl made a thing out of seedpods and sticks

I started to drive home but Little Girl wanted to go to the beach, and stand in the waves and feel the water pushing her back and forth. The poodle and I were tired, and the poodle had never been to the beach, but the Little Girl dragged us there without grown-up me realizing it until we were going the wrong way on the freeway.

I thought maybe the Little Girl was onto something. The poodle is fascinated by the lake we go to, and the streams that flow into it. It was sunset on a warm day, and we went to the beach where dogs can run around off-leash.

Not so great, actually.

Turns out that even on a warm day, sunset on a beach is sort of cold, and windy. Without a bathing suit, there was no option of going in the water even if it wasn’t freezing. We were both tired (me and the poodle, not Little Girl) and my feet were aching. We’d already gone to the off-leash area at the park, and since the poodle is not at all social with other dogs she was not really liking the idea of even more dogs trying to sniff her butt. I took off my shoes, and walked into the soft white sand - which actually felt kind of nice on my feet. Poodle did not agree, and followed me dejectedly out to the edge of the water.

Poor poodle. The sand was hard to walk in, since she was sinking almost to her knees with every step. She was not prepared for the water to come running up and grab her feet, or for the big shaggy dog that came running to say hello. It was like the Red Bull, herding all the unicorns into the sea. I had to pick her up because she started barking like crazy, and trudge back to the car.

Little Girl was gone. I think she stayed at the beach.

Strangely enough, as I wrote last night about all the reasons I was wasting time online, doing boring things instead of what makes my heart sing, I somehow forgot one of the main obstacles.

It’s a little hard for me to put into words, so I will share it through the medium of interpretive dance. No, wait, that would be silly and I’d probably fall over and break an ankle. Instead, I will show it with pictures.

So, a little hard to feel creative in there. It’s only been about a year since I redid the room with all sorts of storage and organization and work surfaces. For the last six months I’ve barely gone in there, so all this happened in probably four months. How?

A lot of it is my work style. I need all the materials and tools spread out. I need pull out things that might end up becoming part of a project. Then I get tired of that project, shove it to the back of the work surface, and add a new layer.

I have trouble going back and excavating older projects because there are layers of guilt between all the various project layers. Guilt for not finishing something, disappointment that it didn’t come together like the vision.

It is my hope that I can bring some order back to this space this weekend, and get it to where I can use it happily.

A while back I was helping a coworker do a part of her job that she hates. It’s not that she doesn’t know how, or why it needs to be done, it’s just in her words “it doesn’t make my heart sing.” I love that phrase. What makes your heart sing, what you do because it gives you that little jolt of “yes! this is right!”.

So what makes my heart sing? Making things. That could be sewing, gluing things onto other things, making little creatures from clay and stuff, or even just drawing little doodles of things I want to maybe make someday.

Why am I not in my making room right now?

Because there’s things I should be doing.

Ick. A should. I’m trying to get rid of those. Am I doing any of the shoulds? Hell no. Actually I’m about three layers deep in the avoidance/timewasting category. So if I’m not doing the shoulds, then why am I not doing what makes my heart sing? Why am I doing the type of interwebs wandering that is so boring I have to play solitaire at the same time just to keep myself awake?

Because if I don’t do the shoulds, then my heart doesn’t deserve to sing.

Deserve. That’s a huge gaping pit of blackness. Step away from the edge, it’s too close to bedtime and if I look in there now I’ll have nightmares tonight.

Because it’s late, and I wouldn’t have time to do much of anything before I need to get to sleep.

Ok, that’s valid. It’s true that if pick up anything, I lose all track of time. And I do have work tomorrow, including a three hour meeting. So, one logical reason.

If it’s a logical reason, then there can be a logical solution, right? OK, a plan. When I do go in there, I will set an alarm for whatever many minutes. And put that alarm where I can hear it, but not turn it off without climbing out of the cave of creativity.

Because there’s too many thing I want to make…

Too many things I want to make - that’s good isn’t it? All these ideas and flashes of inspiration. But what if I work on one, build it up from a spark to a true flame and make something of it. All the other little flashes might get lost, either consumed by the one flame, or just washed away in the light of the flame.

But the current plan is even worse. Now the little sparks dance around a bit, and then slowly die for lack of fuel. Working on one at least allows that one to become something more.

Or another way could be that when I feel like this, bubbling over, I need to pull out one of my 542 notebooks or sketchbooks and just scribble them all down, let the sparks scorch the paper so they leave a permanent mark.

…and because I don’t want to work on the things promised to others.

Ah. Some should hidden in what makes my heart sing. It’s hard to shake these shoulds because I did agree to do them.

So why don’t I want to work on these particular projects?

• Because they are not my true heart’s songs - they are someone else’s songs I’ve been asked to record in my style.
• Because in some cases I would rather have said no to the project but felt obligated and now i feel resentful.
• Because I’ve fallen out of love with the concept and if it were up to me it would be abandoned.
• What if it’s not perfectly executed?
• What if it doesn’t meet their vision?
• What if they hate it?
• What if I hate it?
• What if they love it and demand I do more and make me feel all this guilt and should again?
• What if I finish it and they love it and now they want to pay me for it?

And why do I keep agreeing to projects that don’t make my heart sing?

• If someone actually wants to pay me money to make something, how can I say no? I need money.
• Even on the ones I’m not being paid for, someone else bought the materials.
• It’s hugely validating to have someone ask me to make something.
• Some of these are for Mom. Can’t turn her down.

Hmm. I think the hardest part of these self-work posts is trying to come up with a conclusion. I feel like it’s an essay, and I have to be leading up to a conclusion, but I don’t think that’s how it’s supposed to work. Who’s got the rulebook?

Hi, I’m Stacy’s first post. *peeks up shyly through lashes*

I don’t really have much to say. Or maybe I have too much, and can’t decide which one thing to start with.

If this post is still the only one, just you wait. There will be more.

And if you are visiting me from the future, if you’ve read back through the hundreds of posts that will flow through this blog, then sit back and gaze in wonder at the humble beginnings of it all.