Portraits of Collections Past Present

Hey remember when this as half photo blog half thought rambles?! Photos are back! (But only kind of :)

Importance of Sleep

Z surprised me with a weekend in San Fran for my birthday. We emerged from the plane in Oakland and all the Oregonians let out a gasp at the 65 degrees and sunshine. Z and I actually had to buy sunscreen day II so that we wouldn't come back lobster style.

Part of his unofficial itinerary was a Planning Morning where I would hang out in the hotel room journal in hand and Figure Shit Out. (While he got champagne and bread for brunch.) I no longer do New Years resolutions. Not really. Any major resolutioning I do happens mid to late Februaries. This gets me out of the New Years malaise but throws me double into the birthday malaise. And this one could be a lot of malaise. This year it's 30.

Sitting down with a journal and 30 years to come to terms with wasn't a historical re-visitation. It was more of a lesson in perspective. Every day we are breathing we are learning more about ourselves. Whether or not we recognize it and log it is a totally separate issue but every day we bump into good and we bump into bad and we react emotionally to those experiences.

Family Matters

At some point in college or quickly thereafter, the way my family communicates stopped working for me. I've known this on an emotional level but never on a level where I could put terms and definitions to it. And even in its unpleasantness we could interact fairly well. We work together. I lived with them for almost a year after moving back from Portland. Holidays are pretty OK. But I still feel it. I'm exhausted in my childhood home. In family gatherings I feel like I am speaking a language that all of my friends understand completely but these people who raised me can't.

2011

A new year. Get ready set go. Z and I spent the New Year at the beach, and on the lovely drive we began talking resolutions. I do most of mine on my birthday, but New Years is still a good excuse to add one or two and reflect on the ones I've already got cooking. I listed off all of mine and then when I asked Z for his he gave me two. "And that's what I think I can do," he said, and he was finished. This is a wonderful example of how we operate differently. I throw a net out and see what I catch. He focuses his spear on one fish, eyes it, calculates and throws.

Feb 2011 Goals

Life has resumed enough to create goals again. *Ah* feels good. There is a lot of finishing that I need to do before I move on in some ways. Finish moving in. Finish vaulted video projects. Finish throwing out wedding stuff and writing thank you cards. This winter will be about making good on creative promises and closing the book before I begin to open more. Finishing is a really important part of the artist (and life) process that I have never been very good at. The next three months (until my birthday) I'm going to try really hard to strengthen that muscle. And maybe some others.

Oooooh, this makes so much sense NOW.

It is fascinating being on this side of the wedding planning line. My sister got engaged last week, and tonight I saw her for the first time post engagement. I went in with a list of self imposed rules: No asking about wedding plans unless she brought it up (asking about the proposal and all of that, totally fine.) No sentences that start with charged sentiment like, "You know what's a great idea..." or "It'd be great if..."

Lessons from Too Much Stuff (and A&E)

There are five levels of hoarding. You can tell a person's level not so much by the amount of stuff they have (although that may give you a clue) but from the type of help they need to fix the problem. Maybe they just need a friend to come in and point out that no, they actually never wear those 18 pairs of four inch heels. Or maybe they need a professional organizer, a trained psychologist, and pest control. 

Rarely does a television show change my life but I can now point to two. Back in 95/96 I watched the movie Babe. Yes the one with the talking pig. I've been a vegetarian ever since. Three weeks ago I had exhausted my Hulu queue and Netflix instant popped up the show Hoarders. I'd always avoided it due to its "reality show" genre and I just assumed it took advantage of people in compromising situations. What I saw however was a story that reflected my own habits of consumption and keeping in a way I had never had before.