I admire artists. I admire people who can draw, and sculpt, and carve. Those are what most people think of when they think of artists.
But those aren't the only artists. Those are the artists that probably get the most recognition for being artists. What I admire, though, are the everyday artists.
I admire people who can conceive of something that doesn't yet exist in this world, and then throw their whole being into creating it. I have been privileged to know a few artists like that in my lifetime.
I spent the earlier part of my week helping a friend put in a wood floor in a house he is renovating. I enjoyed learning how to do something I had known how to do before. My friend had done floors for a living prior to having his back broken in an accident, and while he couldn't work as hard or as long as he had in the past, he was very capable of showing me a few tricks.
And he was capable of creating art.
He conceived of designs and and imagined how they would look. He either had the necessary skills to make the designs happen, or improvised on the spot how to make the images in his mind come to life. I'm sure he was in a lot of pain while doing it. It would have been much easier to just lay the floor in simple straight lines. If he had done that, I could have completed it myself in a day and a half after he showed me the ropes.
Instead, he took the time to make the hundreds of extra, meticulous cuts. Some boards had to be cut five and six times in order to fit just right. Instead of me doing it by myself in two days, it took three people three days to finish. And it was beautiful.
He kept saying over and over how beautiful it would be when finished. I thought it would be nice, but I had no idea how beautiful it could be. Turns out, it was stunning. He took a great amount of joy in his creation. I was glad to be there to see the process, to see the joy in the act of creating a thing of beauty push him past the pain.
Thursday, June 28, 2012
Tuesday, June 19, 2012
Evaluations, Decisions, and Consequences, or How I Spent My Vacation
I just returned from vacation. We elected to drive this year rather than fly. The consequences of this decision were both good and bad.
Good: We spent a lot of time together as a family. We set our own agenda. We counted a lot of Volkswagen Beetles.
Bad: We spent less time at destinations and more in between, and we didn't have an agenda, really. Freedom is a worrisome thing.
As a direct result of setting our own agenda, we made some questionable decisions. We drove from Myrtle Beach, South Carolina to Kittyhawk, North Carolina. We did this by the land route. There are other options.
Myrtle Beach was itself a questionable decision. Picture the worst aspects of any tourist trap, magnified by a thousand.
After leaving the mini-golf mecca of the South, we went to Kittyhawk, NC on the Outer Banks. This is an incredible area. The further off the beaten path, the better it gets. We went all the way north, up to Currituck. There, we saw the Currituck Lighthouse.
The next day we were to leave to go to my sister's in Richmond, VA, which was about a four hour drive. With that short of a travel time, we went back to Currituck the next morning and attempted to rent a jeep to go driving on the dunes, but they were booked up. So we decided to go south and see the Brodie Lighthouse. After Brodie, we decided what the heck, we'd continue south to see the Hatteras Lighthouse. After that, how could we not continue on to see the last of the NC Outer Banks lighthouses on Ocracoke Island, which is as far south as roads go. We were getting further and further from our final destination, but enjoying new experiences and seeing the best the Outer Banks had to offer.
To get to the Ocracoke Lighthouse, we had to take a 30 minute ferry ride. This was nice, and fun, but the day was getting away from us. We had to make the decision at this point to drive all the way back up, probably a time saver and better roads, or take a two and a half hour ferry ride to land in a Wildlife Refuge in the backwater of North Carolina. We took the ferry option.
On the ferry, my wife struck up a conversation with a 90 year old man who had been in the CCC and built some structures on the Outer Banks in the 30's. The structures were all gone, but he didn't seem to mind. He spoke over and over about decisions he had made in his life, and his lack of regrets despite the hard times.
On the drive that evening, I asked my wife to remind me at 9 p.m. how much I had enjoyed the day and driving down the Outer Banks. I had known my decision would put me driving later than I wanted. When I'm near the ocean, I love to wake up before dawn and walk the beach as the sun comes up. This is not conducive to good late night driving.
We arrived at my sister's house in Richmond at 11 p.m. I was exhausted. I had earlier made a decision to be uncomfortable, even miserable, in order to see and experience things I had never experienced before.
It was worth it.
I equate that decision with other decisions I have made in my life, especially more recently. I elected to move from a fairly secure job and take a chance on a new career as a teacher. I knew there were things about me, my personality and my outlook, my philosophies and beliefs, which might cause me problems in a public school environment. But I don't regret that decision. It was worth it, and it is still worth it, even in my current situation.
I equate what I am going through now with those last few hours of driving in the darkness. There is a destination for me, even if it is not clear right now. I am uncomfortable, I am nervous, I am worried. I am dealing with the consequences of my decisions. I am aware of mistakes I have made, but I don't really have regrets. I'll keep driving on until I get where I am going, and remembering the wonderful experiences that I have had.
Good: We spent a lot of time together as a family. We set our own agenda. We counted a lot of Volkswagen Beetles.
Bad: We spent less time at destinations and more in between, and we didn't have an agenda, really. Freedom is a worrisome thing.
As a direct result of setting our own agenda, we made some questionable decisions. We drove from Myrtle Beach, South Carolina to Kittyhawk, North Carolina. We did this by the land route. There are other options.
Myrtle Beach was itself a questionable decision. Picture the worst aspects of any tourist trap, magnified by a thousand.
After leaving the mini-golf mecca of the South, we went to Kittyhawk, NC on the Outer Banks. This is an incredible area. The further off the beaten path, the better it gets. We went all the way north, up to Currituck. There, we saw the Currituck Lighthouse.
The next day we were to leave to go to my sister's in Richmond, VA, which was about a four hour drive. With that short of a travel time, we went back to Currituck the next morning and attempted to rent a jeep to go driving on the dunes, but they were booked up. So we decided to go south and see the Brodie Lighthouse. After Brodie, we decided what the heck, we'd continue south to see the Hatteras Lighthouse. After that, how could we not continue on to see the last of the NC Outer Banks lighthouses on Ocracoke Island, which is as far south as roads go. We were getting further and further from our final destination, but enjoying new experiences and seeing the best the Outer Banks had to offer.
To get to the Ocracoke Lighthouse, we had to take a 30 minute ferry ride. This was nice, and fun, but the day was getting away from us. We had to make the decision at this point to drive all the way back up, probably a time saver and better roads, or take a two and a half hour ferry ride to land in a Wildlife Refuge in the backwater of North Carolina. We took the ferry option.
On the ferry, my wife struck up a conversation with a 90 year old man who had been in the CCC and built some structures on the Outer Banks in the 30's. The structures were all gone, but he didn't seem to mind. He spoke over and over about decisions he had made in his life, and his lack of regrets despite the hard times.
On the drive that evening, I asked my wife to remind me at 9 p.m. how much I had enjoyed the day and driving down the Outer Banks. I had known my decision would put me driving later than I wanted. When I'm near the ocean, I love to wake up before dawn and walk the beach as the sun comes up. This is not conducive to good late night driving.
We arrived at my sister's house in Richmond at 11 p.m. I was exhausted. I had earlier made a decision to be uncomfortable, even miserable, in order to see and experience things I had never experienced before.
It was worth it.
I equate that decision with other decisions I have made in my life, especially more recently. I elected to move from a fairly secure job and take a chance on a new career as a teacher. I knew there were things about me, my personality and my outlook, my philosophies and beliefs, which might cause me problems in a public school environment. But I don't regret that decision. It was worth it, and it is still worth it, even in my current situation.
I equate what I am going through now with those last few hours of driving in the darkness. There is a destination for me, even if it is not clear right now. I am uncomfortable, I am nervous, I am worried. I am dealing with the consequences of my decisions. I am aware of mistakes I have made, but I don't really have regrets. I'll keep driving on until I get where I am going, and remembering the wonderful experiences that I have had.
Thursday, June 7, 2012
I Must Try to Remember
Yesterday was a rough day. In the morning, I received notice that I hadn't gotten a job I was fairly sure I had a good chance of getting. Then, when I attempted to go to my back up plan for the upcoming school year, I found out I had managed to screw that chance up as well.
Everything external to myself seemed to be trying to indicate that I should give up my dream.
I was awash in self-pity. Worse than that, I hated myself for being awash in self-pity. I can't stand when people wrap themselves up in their own little universes of self-pity and fail to understand why they suddenly feel like the whole world is against them.
But at 44 years old, I have learned a thing or two about how to deal with adversity. I am a person who seems to be predisposed toward putting myself into situations where failure is always an option, and sometimes it seems this is the option I'm most likely to take.
The first and best thing I do is to give myself permission to be sad. It seems sometimes that we forget it is okay to be sad. There is a big difference between sadness and self-pity. Sadness is "things are not good, and that makes me feel bad." Self-pity is "things are not good, why do bad things always happen to me, I don't deserve this, I'm a good person most of the time, nothing good ever happens to me, everyone else is happy except me, etc., etc."
The key difference here is sadness is much more finite. I am sad, I have a reason to be sad. Now what?
And the correct answer to that, for me, has always been, "I have to get over this sometime, why not start now?" This is my mantra to replace the litany of self-pity. The next is, "What do I do now?"
This morning, I revisited plan B. I went to the place that told me I had no chance, and asked for one more. I was not told yes. But the hard no became a soft no, contingent on someone else's decision. It may not happen, but I prefer "may not" to "definitely not."
And then I began formulating plan C.
So at what point do I give up the dream? I've got the rest of the alphabet, and then I guess I can go to the Greek alphabet.
I may sound optimistic, but that's not really the case. My optimism has always been of the post-Modern variety. I don't believe in absolutes, and my particular brand of hope carries within it the possibility of failure. What I do believe in is the importance of individual perception (again, post-Modern in nature).
Many people who look at me and where I am now would see me as a failure. Sometimes that voice of self-pity comes through and I see myself that way as well. But this perception of failure is, like most things, temporary. There will be a change. And if I don't feel I'm a failure, the perceptions of others shade toward irrelevancy.
At some point in my life, I will regard myself as being successful again. There will be some event, some accomplishment, some recognition that I have succeeded. It is an unfortunate aspect of my personality that I will probably not expend a fraction of the emotional energy I have put into being sad at this moment into being happy in that moment, but I must try to remember.
Everything external to myself seemed to be trying to indicate that I should give up my dream.
I was awash in self-pity. Worse than that, I hated myself for being awash in self-pity. I can't stand when people wrap themselves up in their own little universes of self-pity and fail to understand why they suddenly feel like the whole world is against them.
But at 44 years old, I have learned a thing or two about how to deal with adversity. I am a person who seems to be predisposed toward putting myself into situations where failure is always an option, and sometimes it seems this is the option I'm most likely to take.
The first and best thing I do is to give myself permission to be sad. It seems sometimes that we forget it is okay to be sad. There is a big difference between sadness and self-pity. Sadness is "things are not good, and that makes me feel bad." Self-pity is "things are not good, why do bad things always happen to me, I don't deserve this, I'm a good person most of the time, nothing good ever happens to me, everyone else is happy except me, etc., etc."
The key difference here is sadness is much more finite. I am sad, I have a reason to be sad. Now what?
And the correct answer to that, for me, has always been, "I have to get over this sometime, why not start now?" This is my mantra to replace the litany of self-pity. The next is, "What do I do now?"
This morning, I revisited plan B. I went to the place that told me I had no chance, and asked for one more. I was not told yes. But the hard no became a soft no, contingent on someone else's decision. It may not happen, but I prefer "may not" to "definitely not."
And then I began formulating plan C.
So at what point do I give up the dream? I've got the rest of the alphabet, and then I guess I can go to the Greek alphabet.
I may sound optimistic, but that's not really the case. My optimism has always been of the post-Modern variety. I don't believe in absolutes, and my particular brand of hope carries within it the possibility of failure. What I do believe in is the importance of individual perception (again, post-Modern in nature).
Many people who look at me and where I am now would see me as a failure. Sometimes that voice of self-pity comes through and I see myself that way as well. But this perception of failure is, like most things, temporary. There will be a change. And if I don't feel I'm a failure, the perceptions of others shade toward irrelevancy.
At some point in my life, I will regard myself as being successful again. There will be some event, some accomplishment, some recognition that I have succeeded. It is an unfortunate aspect of my personality that I will probably not expend a fraction of the emotional energy I have put into being sad at this moment into being happy in that moment, but I must try to remember.
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