DWP Challenge... sort of...

Ever since discovering the Daily Paintworks website and their weekly challenges. I have really wanted to try one. The Zippo Challenge is the one I most wanted to try first. You use only titanium white, ultramarine blue and burnt sienna on your palette and nothing else. To be frank, I had to force myself into my studio. And after only a few brushstrokes, I wiped the entire canvas board clear.

I've been in a horribly depressed state for the past few weeks. 6 months of chronic pain and exhaustion and the return of my mother's cancer? Not exactly what I'd call conducive to happiness and joy. I was wandering about the house aimlessly. My appetite all but vanished. I spent many of my days feeling close to tears. I'd love to say I snapped myself out of it. I'd love to say that prayer and positive thinking is what did it. But I broke down and asked my therapist for anti-depressants. Since my breakdown two years ago, I had been on a variety of anti-anxiety and anti-depressant drugs but was weaned off of them in the spring shortly after my illness began. In retrospect, it probably was not the best timing to come off of them. But I was holding my own until a few weeks ago. The great thing about the medication I'm on now is that it begins to work almost immediately. I've only been on the stuff for two days and I can already feel my spirits lifting.

And they lifted enough for me to begin painting again. I probably should have gone back to the Zippo Challenge but I decided to do something harder. I went for The 10 minute challenge. 10 minutes is not a long time especially when you're caught up in painting. And I knew that it would not be long enough for me to complete anything I'd be happy with. I pulled a lemon out of my fridge, I figured it would be the simplest object, and then modified the time allotment.

The top three versions were done in 20 minutes. It was immediately clear to me that 20 minutes was too long. I felt as if I was able to more leisurely futz with things and make minor corrections. Even though I knew I had extended the time limit too much, I completed the other two anyway. I do feel that I improved what I was able to fit into those 20 minutes.

For the bottom row I decided to shave off 5 minutes from the time allotment. Now, I felt like I was racing the clock. I was surprised how fast those 15 minutes flew by in my first attempt. I felt like I was in an episode of Iron Chef. I was more prepared for my second attempt and managed to fit more in. But, again, the time beeped there were still things unfinished. The last attempt I got too comfortable. I felt like I had the time management down but I actually didn't. I think the bottom middle is the best effort.

I plan on doing more of these so that I can get it down into the 10 minutes. All in all I found this to be an excellent exercise in simplification. I am always bogged down in the details. A great learning experience!

BIG Triumph!

A full night of sleep with minimal problems falling asleep and I didn't wake up once in the night. It's like a small miracle. I honestly don't think I could be happier right now. I'm not even bummed about the pain in my legs today.

This brain runs on fumes...

While some things may be changing about my illness, somethings remain the same. And it always turns out that sleep deprivation always makes the pain worse. Without a doubt, if I have not slept, I will be in pain during the coming day regardless of anything else. It's the one thing I can absolutely count on. Two sleepless nights in under 7 days. I'd like to say that's a record for me but it isn't. At one point a few years ago I was falling asleep only every other day, but it's certainly my worst sleep stretch in at least two years. I guess I'll try to chalk it up to left over pms and a traveling husband insanity.

But as usual when I see the sun come up, I desperately try not to fall asleep until it goes back down again. When trying to pull an all nighter as an adult, I never intend to fall asleep. It's an accident or a weakening of the will. I rest my head back on the couch and close my eyes for a second or I tell myself I'll just lay down for a few hours and before I know it? 8 or 9 hours have gone by. So today has been a steady stream of working through my pain and exhaustion, while doing my best to keep my eyes wide open and not accidentally fall asleep.

Paint. The first order of business. I was supposed to go to art class this morning but an all nighter means absolutely NO driving. I've fallen asleep at the wheel before. There's usually no warning and it's so lightning fast you never notice. One second your car is in the left lane. The next? It's on the grassy shoulder and to your own utter horror you have no memory of the time in between. And it can happen even on that 5 minute trip around the corner. I think that any driver who even risks it is absolutely friggin' completely insane.

So I started filling in cherries this morning at around 10AM. I am waiting for them to dry so I can fill in the stems. I don't know quite what I want to do about stems yet. I suppose I'll also have to adjust some of the shadows to match the stems however I decide to draw them in. It's going to be an artistic license thing because I don't like the way the stems appear on the actual still life. I'm only working from a poor picture now.

I really do love the way it's turning out. There's just something about the composition I cannot wrap my brain around. Maybe it's how one sided it is. Like the pitcher and the cherries are just off on one side and then there's this big chunk of empty blue cloth on the left side. It might just be my eye that's drawn to it. I find that when you become more familiar with a painting, you only see the flaws that are glaring to you and not to anyone else. Maybe I should turn the thing upside down or on its side or something. I don't know really how to become "unfamiliar" with it. And I don't know how to figure out exactly what it is that's bothering me. Last class, I may bring it back to the teacher to figure out what it is. I appreciate her encouragement. But I really hope she can tell me what it is that may be off.

Feeling so much better today

Since my husband has been away at his radio controlled helicopter adventure, I have been feeling pretty miserable. Don't get me wrong, I miss him but I'm not really feeling all that lonely. I've mostly been feeling vulnerable and filled to the brim with anxiety. It's relaxed a little now and my spirits have raised. For a few days there, I was feeling really miserable and depressed. The insomnia is still bad as ever. After not sleeping all Thursday night, I finally did fall asleep at around 3AM last night. But I'm still awake now but it's not causing me any worries. I may only try to catch a catnap for this unit of sleep.

I think that what has raised my spirits the most has been the relative pain-free existence I've had for the past 24 hours. I'm still quite weak and have very little stamina but I think that this coming week I may try to build back into my normal household routine. I tried it this past week with poor results.

I fiddled with the cherry and pitcher still life painting a little more. I didn't feel the need to take or post a picture since all I did was futz with the left edge of that pitcher. It looks way better now but the change is so subtle I doubt it would show up on a picture. Unfortunately, that edge is STILL bothering me. I found it very useful to turn the painting on its side. A good lesson was learned there. Just because it's going to be viewed right side up doesn't mean you have to paint it that way. I found it much easier to see the flaws in the two edges once I turned it on its side with the offending edge on the bottom. I'm now starting to think that a small waver in the right edge is actually what may be causing me to feel the left edge is so wrong. I'm going to correct that tomorrow.

I am also planning on diving into the cherries tomorrow. I'm trying to figure out exactly how I want to do the cherries. I think there's going to be a lot of creative license here where it comes to color and I think it could make or break the composition which I already think is a little flawed. I pondered moving the cherries around and changing them by printing out the cherries and just tacking them up onto the painting and I can't seem to find a composition I'm happy with. I think I should have placed the whole composition more to the left of the canvas. That way I could have used the cherries as a way to lead the eye into the bowl and pitcher. I suppose I could paint over the whole damned thing and start again but I think I need to just let it go and keep it as a reminder to plan better in the future.

I was thinking of fiddling with the portrait painting as well but I think I want to keep the pressure of having the painting done only in class. It's good to have a time limit. I really want to set up a nice simple still life at home but I don't really have any idea how to properly control the lighting. I'll ask my teacher next class if she can give me any suggestions about that.

Another mostly wasted day

I woke up in a horrible mood and in terrible spirits this morning. The pain in my arms and legs dulled with a higher dosage of medication. While the doctor insists that I am on an extremely low dosage of the medicine, a neuroleptic called gabapentin, I seem to be sensitive to its side effects, more so than I ever have been before with medication.

I really just thought of the fact I have no way of knowing if it's my illness making me so tired or the medication even though now that I'm taking two 100 mg pills instead of just one, I'm finding myself more tired. Then again I also haven't been sleeping but there's nothing unusual about that for me. The medicine also seems to be making me dizzy and giving me slight headaches. All my life I have been made very easily motion sick and the combination does not work well. With arm and limb pain gone, just walking around my house makes me feel like I'm standing on a bobbing boat. I ended up with a murderous migraine this afternoon and spent four hours face down in bed.

Chris and I are really starting to feel the loss of my small income. We've never been very good budgeters and we've been lucky that that skill was not really required before. But Long Island living is far more expensive than either of us remember. Since moving down here from upstate NY, what we pay for each kilowatt/hour has doubled as has what we pay per unit of natural gas. This house is nearly double the size so not only has how much we pay gone up but also how much we're using. Our grocery bill has also nearly doubled. Our car insurance has also nearly doubled. Unexpected household problems were minor inconveniences for us and are now major concerns. And I have no real idea how to make the major expenses any less than they are. Our mortgage is what it is. Our taxes are what they are. We switch car insurance companies twice in the past year to keep the price down. I grocery shop every other week, buying minimal amounts and I try to shop the sales as much as is physically possible for me.

One month of my salary would have covered our carpenter ant problem and another the fallen tree. But unable to work, and ill on top of it, I have plenty of time on my hands but no ability to take care of things. Although neither of these things is something a homeowner can handle on their own, there are things that, with all my free time from not working, I'd be able to usually handle on my own. Simple things like cleaning or yard care and minor breaks and fixes around the house. Instead we have to shell out money to hire people to take care of these things and the medical bills are also piling up even with my husband's excellent insurance.

Frustrated with zero spoons

I did so much this week (although nothing compared to what a normal person would be consider a lot). The result? Thursday has arrived and I now have no spoons..

5 months this has been going on and there seems to be absolutely no rhyme or reason or consistency to what is going on. There seems to be absolutely no predicting or properly managing the exhaustion and pain. It's like I'm running a race with a blindfolded and every single day how far away the finish line is moves. Sometimes it's a foot in front of me. Sometimes it's a few miles away. And it's not like it behaves like a slide rule either. It's fluid. It's jagged and jumps around. It is frustrating because it makes it nearly impossible to plan anything in advance. Even something as simple as a dinner with a friend.

A childhood friend of mine just moved from Oklahoma to Massachusetts. My husband is going to a RC helicopter event near where she's moved to and thinks it would be a great idea if i went to visit her. Normally? It would be. These days? I have absolutely no idea how I'll feel. She's a mother of 3 with a busy job and a busy life. I remember when she lived very close to me, she had two children then and visiting her was exhausting. The kids and household life don't stop because your friend is coming over and most of the time I spent with her was tagging along during her day. Something like that would be impossible for me now.

Granted, now that I have more medications, I no longer worry about simple things like showering or using the bathroom stopping me in my tracks. But I still have absolutely no idea what, day to day, I will be able to handle beyond the basics. I don't know when I'm going to run out of spoons, all I know is that suddenly, I don't have any. And then I also have to worry about the basics like making it to the bathroom once I hit that wall. Which leaves me in a state of fear about leaving the house for fear of being stranded.

Although hitting that wall quickly is probably my own fault. When I feel well, I tend to try to move quickly and get done what I need to get done as fast as possible. If the pain, the exhaustion are indeed creeping up on me, I'm probably not noticing because I'm so engrossed in getting what I'm doing completed before I'm unable to. It's frustrating to feel fine like I did this morning, go to bake some cinnamon rolls and then the minute I set the dough aside to rise? BOOM. Pain started blossoming in my arms and legs. Exhaustion shot through my neck and shoulders and brain like a cannon. You ask yourself... what do I do now? Do I push through knowing you'll end up having to down enough vicoden to make a whale's liver curdle and end up laying on the couch for possibly days? Or do you leave your best mixing bowl outside on the deck with a bunch of yeast dough in it where it will accumulate insects until your husband gets home from work to bring it in and throw it away because it's ruined? Do you leave the flour and dough bits all over the kitchen counter and floor to attract ants?

More often than not, I end up cleaning the mess and finishing what I'm doing and popping pills.