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February 20, 2011

Weekly Review #46: The Antidote to Feeling Sunk

So how’m I doing in my quest to re-invent my life, follow my evolving Blisses and create the life I really, really want?

Perhaps it’s the fact that I’m approaching a year since starting this blog – a year in which other people seem to have achieved the kind of success that still eludes me (damn you, Comparison Trap!) – that led to Friday-and-Saturday’s surprising feeling of sunkness.

Perhaps it was the migraine, that hooked its claws into me Friday afternoon and was still clinging when I woke up.

Perhaps it’s missing my sweetie, who’s out of town this weekend.

Perhaps it’s the frustration that my right leg is still deformed and frustratingly atrophied, 3 months post-knee-surgery.

Perhaps it was all of those things, combined with general overwork and under-rest.

Whatever it was, it caught me off guard. I’ve never been a flatliner, but so many lovely things have happened this week! How could I be anything but happy and cheerful?

Sweetness this week:

The nicest fan letter ever arrived in my inbox on Monday (I challenge anyone to write a nicer one!):

Melissa Dinwiddie, I love you. Not in a sappy, soppy, sloppy kind of way, but in a girl crush kind of way; in an “I-so-want-to-be-like-her” way. Your voice, when you write, is so authentic, that I hear your lyrical voice…as a matter of fact, you’re across the table from me taking about life and love and your success and impatience over coffee and and some amazing cookies that I just baked with milk chocolate chips, toffee bits and cashews with a sprinkle of ground french roast coffee (and a touch of cayenne just to brighten the taste).
You don’t know it, but we have conversations together at times like these. I share my empathy, my stories and give you my encouragement.
By the way, my cats believe that I’m talking to them, but they are narcissistic beasts. They have no idea that I’m talking with you.
Just thought you should know on this Valentine’s day that you have a girl crush.
Sandi

(Thanks Sandi! Still buzzing on that one. :))

My Uke Diva gig at the JCC senior lunch on Tuesday brought raves and accolades. 87-year-old Joyce insisted that what I need is an agent, who would surely get me the fame and fortune I deserve in Hollywood. While 84-year-old Sam declared:

I have one word for you… no, [counting fingers] three words for you: You. Are. Good. And I’m a litmus test. I’ve been around 84 years, I’ve seen more performances than you can imagine. I can tell good when I see it, and you’re it!

Thursday I got further confirmation of my appeal as a performer when the music booker for Hog Island Oyster Bar in Napa emailed to see if I’d be interested in playing a couple of (paid) gigs on their outdoor patio this summer. (Mark your calendars for July 31 and September 11!) She said:

I came across your video “Uke” and I LOVE your style.

All very sweet, and made me feel very good, indeed. Nonetheless, despite all this validation, Friday and Saturday saw me feeling blue. Proof that the “happiness” that external validation offers is fleeting.

The Antidote to Blue

So what does a girl do, when the blues descend? Well, first of all, a smart girl reminds herself of this undisputed reality:

All feelings are transitory.

Next, she reminds herself of another undisputed reality:

Nothing good ever comes from comparing your insides to someone else’s outsides.

Yes, my path might seem overly long and winding, but it is what it is. I know getting caught in the Comparison Trap is just that – a trap.

And then she does the one thing guaranteed to lift the spirit:

She takes action.

For a Creative, that means getting into the Creative Sandbox.

Which is exactly what I did. Deadlines be damned – the blues call for taking critical measures. Now.

So I played

And since I’m still waiting for the delivery of my 200+ mini canvases, I turned to my more comfortable substrate, watercolor paper, and my old friend, walnut ink.

Here’s what came out of my playtime (shown here close to actual size):

2 3/4″ x 5″ walnut ink with ruling pen & brush, Pigma micron, water with steel nib, watercolor pencil

2 3/4″ x 7 1/4″ walnut ink, sumi ink with ruling pen and modified crowquill

3″ x 4″ walnut ink with ruling pen, watercolor, modified crowquill nib

And although I didn’t actually mat these, I matted them digitally, in Photoshop. See the image at the top of this post, and these two:

New toys!

Meanwhile, my order with Daniel Smith arrived, bringing ten new 4″ x 6″ x 1.5″ canvases and – most exciting! – a jar of watercolor ground!

Which I painted on a few canvases on Friday night, to allow the required 24 hours of curing.

And then didn’t let the full 24 hours to go by before pulling out my watercolors. (Patience? Feh!)

At a loss for what else to do, I reverted to the calligrapher’s standby, the alphabet. In my signature hand, Neuland.

Watch for these to evolve in the coming days…

And now?

Well, I’m still wishing my debt were down to zero and my internet empire fully grown and thriving. But I must admit I’m feeling a helluva lot better.

When in doubt, create.

Saturday Night Epilogue: Serendipity & Progress

While doing my prescribed knee rehab exercises and stretching late last night, a row of old journals on the bottom shelf of the glass doored bookcase in the living room (being at eye level as I stretched) caught my eye. Hmmm (thought I), I wonder what I was thinking and writing about back then?

From among the mostly identical, 8 1/2 x 11 hard cover sketchbooks, I pulled out the Morning Pages Journal (affiliate link). My thoughts traveled backwards to that year, in the middle of my marriage, the house I lived in, the small bedroom crammed with my drafting table and supplies.

December 1996. Six months after my first calligraphy conference. Just two years into this new Bliss of letter love. The amazing response to my work by respected authorities at the conference that summer. The sudden expectations I felt to be amazing, to fulfill my potential.

And the resulting block that descended.

Julia Cameron’s The Artists Way (affiliate link) had a profound effect on me, helped me bust through some of that block.

No wonder I splurged on the matching journal. It honored the importance of that book in my life.

Back in present time

(Or shall we say, much more recent past time.) As I stretched out my atrophied quads on the living room carpet, I skimmed over the first couple of journal entries. The repeating theme: my wish to be prolific.

To make work for me, not just for clients (already, just two years in and in a marriage that paid all my bills for me, I was allowing client work to intrude on my relationship to my Bliss.)

How I wish I could go back and tell that younger self that the secret is just to do it. Every day. In 15 minute chunks.

It only took me 14 years to figure this out. (Yes, that’s a note of sarcasm you detect.)

Ah, well. Could’ve been worse.

Progress.

February 14, 2011

Gradually Wandering Into Love

Originally published on Valentine’s Day 2011, this is one of my all-time favorites. It felt appropriate to bring it out again for another Valentine’s Day, in which I’m celebrating a month and a half being married to Miracle Man. Enjoy! xo,Melissa

Today’s post is my contribution to the Love Sparks Blogging Festival, started by Jasmine Lamb. All across the blogosphere, participants are posting blogs about love, in response to Jasmine’s request.

I’m staying close to home on this one, sharing something rather personal. Something I’m a little shy about revealing. But it’s what’s been on my mind, and what popped into my head when I got Jasmine’s invitation, so it’s what I’m sharing today. Hope you enjoy it.

I’ve never been big on Valentine’s Day.

As far as I’m concerned, it’s a brilliant ploy by the flower, card and candy industries rather than any truly meaningful moment in annual time.

This year, though, is a little different.

One year ago I had just been unceremoniously dumped, 2 days before Valentine’s Day, in what felt like a particularly shocking betrayal.

Little did I know it at the time, but my ex’s departure would clear the way for the entry, on Valentine’s Day itself, of new love into my life.

Though it took me almost a year to figure that out.

Because love, I’ve discovered, is not that weak-in-the-knees, sweaty palms, dry mouth, can-barely-speak-because-you’re-so-nervous-to-be-around-them feeling.

Nor is it that surely-we-knew-each-other-in-a-past-life feeling.

Or the oh-my-god-that-was-so-amazing-I-feel-like-I-just-touched-the-face-of-the-divine feeling.

Or the surely-I-will-die-without-you feeling.

I submit, in fact, that the feeling of being madly in love is actually a form of mental illness. May I point out to you that the phrase is, after all, “madly in love.” Witness, too, the term “crazy about you.”

Nonetheless, yes, I’ve experienced all of the above feelings, and they’re wonderful. I freely confess that I love being in love.

But as your mom may have told you, being in love is not the same as truly loving or as being truly loved.

Here’s a secret: every person I’ve ever fallen madly in love with has not, in the end, been a good match for me.

This is contrary to everything I ever learned about love, from fairy tales, from movies, from books and poetry and art. Even from my parents’ 50+ year marriage. (The lucky [expletive deleted]’s met when they were 19, fell in love, and are still happy to be with each other.)

Though falling is the more quoted mode of entry, I’ve discovered that it’s quite possible to gradually wander into love.

(Which makes me wonder how many people I might have wandered into love with, had I only given them more time.)

I’ve learned from experience that regardless of what other kinds of love you’re swimming in – infinite variations of filial, friendly, brotherly, spiritual, erotic, romantic, etc. etc. (English has a sad dearth of words to describe the vast number of types of love) – the being in love feeling is transitory. Often when it starts off strongest, it goes away fastest.

But sometimes it also comes back.

(Which makes figuring out when to end a relationship challenging indeed.)

Thankfully, the wisdom of experience whispered in my ear that if the being in love feeling can come back after leaving, perhaps it can show up where it had never been before…

Give someone enough time to show you who they really are, and you might be surprised at how your heart swells and opens.

A good match, it turns out, may have less to do with how crazy-wild-with-love you feel, than with how your life goes when the person in question is in it.

(Single people, take note.)

On Valentine’s Day one year ago I grieved the loss of an untrustworthy love, one that spoke a good line, but was perched on flimsy values. Rotten roots that disintegrated at the first sign of challenge.

Today I celebrate a steadfast love. One that kept coming back rather than running away. One that not only doesn’t flinch at challenges, but in every way possible makes my life go better.

I wish the same for everyone this Valentine’s Day.

Which is now – rather ironically, given my scorn for the holiday – my anniversary day.

Here’s to hearts and roses.

November 19, 2010

Enforced Rest

Not many words in type today (search engines will shun me). I’m tired, and it’s time for a nap.

Watch the vid for the words. (Plus bug-eyes, and me in a fuzzy green Hobbit hood.)

November 12, 2010

Fear

Normally in a post about fear I think I’d be writing about creative fears:

Fear of failure.

Fear of success.

Fear that makes you resist what you know you want more than anything.

Today, however, I’m dealing with a more visceral kind of fear:

Fear of dying.

That’s at its most extreme, granted. It’s also fear of pain. Fear of maiming.

Fear of something really bad happening.

I think this is a pretty “normal” kind of fear to have when one is about to go into surgery. Most people don’t like the idea of sharp instruments cutting them open, and other sharp instruments sewing things to bones and stuff, which is what is about to happen to my right knee in 2 hours and 20 minutes.

Can I just say, “Ack!”

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACK!

Okay, I feel a little better now.

I’ve been wanting to share all the cool stuff that’s been going on with the Thriving Artists Project, but the inevitable enforced downtime that this knee surgery is going to, well, enforce on me, meant a lot of scrambling to tie up a lot of loose ends to allow myself some rest.

Rest? What’s that?

Apparently I need something like a dislocated knee to get me to rest for more than a few minutes at time.

So, I sit here with my tensed-up back and neck, waiting out the last few moments before I get picked up to go to the hospital, anxious and scared.

And at the same time, I have to admit, kinda looking forward to my little “break.”

For which, by the way, I’ve packed an entire grocery bag full of library books on happiness (research for my Guide to Happiness e-course); plus my ukulele; a knitting bag with a 15-year-old partially-finished sweater; several journals to write in; and a borrowed laptop.

Someone apparently doesn’t know the meaning of the word “rest.”

I have, however, also packed a few DVDs, and will have minions at my beck and call to fetch me more, should I desire to just be entertained.

It could happen.

So, dear readers, enjoy your weekend. I’ll do my best to enjoy mine (thank GOD for pain meds!)

And next week I promise to share the latest exciting news about the Thriving Artists Project, which is charging ahead at full speed!

September 6, 2010

Weekly Review #23: Balance, backups & changes afoot

So how’m I doing in my quest to re-invent my life, follow my evolving Blisses and create the life I really, really want?

Here’s the funny thing: I was finding it hard to tap out my thoughts on the keyboard tonight, so I decided to just record them on video. But being me, I couldn’t quite stop there, so I still typed in (and expanded upon) the important points below.

Which is, perhaps, a good lesson that recording myself on video may be a good way to clarify my thinking. Note to self. (And important point #5, if you think about it.)

Important points:

1) Purge and sort to get some clarity back into your life

Thank you to Lori for her comment on my last video post. I don’t like to clean/sort/organize/purge, but I always do better when I’m surrounded by order, rather than chaos. Still, I’m so resistant to doing it, that I needed the reminder of how beneficial it would be.

Hooray for reminders!

2) Back up your blog(s) and website(s)!

Don’t procrastinate on this one. Seriously.

Johnny B. Truant‘s recent post, Freaky WordPress catastrophes and site crashes, and how to prevent them, was a painful reminder of my own experience (pre-blog) of my ecommerce ketubah site being downed by hackers almost a year ago. For a month.

Oh, the pain.

I’m grateful to Johnny for kicking me into gear. The systems I already had in place (daily automatic database backups and every-few-days backups of everything on my hosting account), though good, are not enough to save my @ss if the unthinkable happens again.

So. Several hours that I could have spent making art, or writing blog posts, or doing client work, went into researching backup and security systems. Much less urgent (seemingly) than a lot of the stuff on my mile-long to-do list, but a helluva lot more important in the long run.

The upshot?

1) I set every one of my developed domains up with Sucuri.net, which monitors your sites, detects unauthorized changes (ie, hacks and malware), and (best of all) cleans everything up if they ever are hacked.

2) I bought and installed Backup Buddy, a premium WordPress plugin that allows you to back up not just your database, but your entire site. Automatically. And restores your site if you ever need it. You can back up to your server, Amazon S3, a FTP/FTPS account, or an email.

I also just signed up for Amazon S3 and sent my backup to their server with the click of a button. Voilá!

I will definitely sleep better at night knowing my data is backed up!

(Now go back up your stuff!)

3) Changes are afoot: I’m partnering on a new site!

I’ve hinted about this, but now it’s official: I am the new partner in charge of a yet-to-be-launched site called 365 Days of Genius (the link is not working at the time of this writing… stay tuned).

365 Days of Genius is just one of several networked sites in the 365 Days of Everything family, a network which so far includes 365 Days of Style, 365 Days of Growing Things, 365 Days of Startups, and about 20 others (and growing).

The 365 Days of Everything concept is the brainchild of Heather Claus, who has brought together an amazing group of partners to run the various sites, and I’m excited about the opportunity to learn and grow in this community!

Given my (ahem) complicated relationship with the concept of genius, I found it especially amusing that Heather tapped me for 365 Days of Genius, which, in case you’re wondering, will be all about creativity, out-of-the-box thinking, innovation, how the mind works, and yes, genius.

I’ll share more later as we move toward launch. The point for now is that launching this new site is going to take a lot of my time and energy for the next several months, which will probably mean fewer posts here for awhile.

Just FYI…

4) Become an organ donor

One of my mentor/heroes, Tim Sweeney, has been ill, and today I found out that he is going to need an organ transplant.

Major shit, people.

But Tim being Tim, the email he sent to keep people posted of his condition also included an appeal to do a simple thing that could save a life (probably not his own): register as an organ donor.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve had the little “donor” button on my driver’s license since I first got a driver’s license. What I didn’t know until Tim’s email, though, is that there is now an online registry.

A few clicks on your keyboard, and – bam – you’re in the system, and should the unthinkable happen (which, of course, we hope never does), you’ll be logged as a donor whether you have your little donor card on you or not.

Did you also know that one donor can save eight lives?

Think about it. Make a difference. Do it, now, and tell your friends and family to do the same.

—–

Whew! For someone who couldn’t get any words out a few hours ago, I still managed to write a lengthy post. Nobody would ever accuse me of being concise.

As usual, write your comments below.

That’s it for this week!