Tag Archives: survival

Dark & Beautiful: The Brain & Creativity

brainsbrainsbrainsThe human brain is a marvelous and terrifying thing.
I once heard that science knows as little about the deep sea as it does the human brain. The last frontiers. Is that true? Really, the only thing that matters is that I can buy its truthiness. Science can’t even really explain why some PMS makes me want to club a baby seal, but other times I’m fine. Hello?
Yesterday, for instance, I managed to be productive and focused, but inside I was terribly, terribly depressed and angry.
Fortunately, logically, I knew it was just hormones and weather. I realized there wasn’t an actual reason I should be either depressed OR angry, and I knew where I was in my cycle. The way I was feeling wasn’t rooted in reality, and I understood that, come morning, odds were highly likely the mood would vanish.
And poof, just like that, it’s gone. Today I’m hopeful, creative, charged, and just bought the domain name for the creative and existential project to consume the next half decade of my life. If that’s not optimistic, even at the low, low price of $8.99 per year, I don’t know what is.

Perspective

I mean, how many people have the opportunity to point at Planet Earth and go “I want that,” then set into motion the mechanics of taking on the whole wide world for five years with no roots, anywhere, no limits? One in 100,000? One in a million? Lucky, indeed.
It’s knuckle-cracking elbow-greasing time when it comes to this little going-Full-Nomad project of mine. A friend has offered to help me set up my blog. I’ve decided not to host that content here on The Cunt. This place has been great for me, and I’ll likely still use it to unleash my wrath and rail at the gods from time to time, but I’m in a different place now. I’m a different person now. I need a new creative home.
Despite my older, mellower ways, it’s pretty safe to say I’ll never be Mary Poppins. Nor would I want to be. I like my wrath and fury, my joy and faith. I like the mix of pathos that swirls in my brain. My yin to my yang is right there. I may tilt and pivot, vacillating from seeming extremes, but I’m usually able to hold onto a small measure of awareness that, whatever the tempest, life is generally a smooth-sailing place for me. Or at least a place I manage to navigate without peril.

Storms are Genesis

Chimp_Brain_in_a_jarEarlier, I saw a quote from Kurt Vonnegut about how it’s impossible to be a serious writer if you don’t suffer depression. I’m sure if he were to expound, he might have said something like it’s the variations of emotional themes which make great writers what they are.
They’ve loved, they’ve lost, they’ve lived to tell another tale.
Throughout history, writers have been the teller of the tales. They’ve kept the legends alive, passed the records of humanity from one generation to another. It wasn’t until humans began to write that we really had a record of not only the social structure but the emotional worlds in ages long past.
Writers record the human condition. We try to grasp what happens around us, record how it affects us, and inspire the next step. Today, different mediums allow for writing/recording/inspiring to happen visually, in audio, and of course on the page/stage/screen.
But all of it starts in the brain, when someone sees something and has a thing or two to say about it. Poof! A synapse fires, a thought is born, a project springs forth.
That inspiration and the ability to create something of where there was nothing, it blows my fucking mind.
The human brain is a marvellous and terrifying place, indeed.

The Psyche and the Fulcrum

Surviving nearly a year of dark, fearful deep depression baffles me. Survival didn’t seem an option then. I’m grateful my forays to bleakness are seldom now, rare even, and I’ve the faculties to buckle up and hang on until it’s over, which is never more than a day or two.
I have no illusions. Once I’m gone “Full Nomad,” there’ll be days where I find myself fatigued and homesick, wishing I had a bed all mine. But it’s days like today after I’ve told myself “It’ll be better tomorrow,” and I wake up, and it really is better, that convince me I’ve got this. I’ll have brief downs and see myself through them.

Done and Done

That’s another funny thing about the brain. The more we realize and act upon our strength, the more our brains can sell us on our toughness when needing a pep-talk down the road.
It’s fantastic we’re as resilient as we are. One of the greatest gifts ever given is adversity. It never feels that way at the time, but no matter what the loss or the price is, a healthy person will become better, stronger, more resilient as a result. I know I’m grateful to have proven already I’m “tough enough.”
Like the saying says, we don’t know how strong we are until we have to be strong.
That part is inspiring and comforting. What’s terrifying is the brain’s ability to shut out all hope and languish in darkness. Science needs to unlock mental illness. I’m glad it’s getting more attention.

And Now, More Mysterious Than Ever Before!

Strength and resilience aside, the flipside to the possibility of that terrifying darkness is the jaw-dropping experience of creation. Some brains conceive rocketships to the stars, incredible food combinations, cures for disease, life-changing books, or soul-charging songs. Poof! Magic. Inspiration, creation. And so the creative cycle continues.
With every new experience, a new creative door might open. I can’t begin to imagine what seeing the world and blowing my perception wide-open will do for my brain. What will I create? What will I learn? What will I experience? How will it influence my thoughts for the rest of my life? My creativity? How much will it increase my resilience?
I’ve already lived through incredible extremes of the human brain. Or like to think I have. In less than eight months, I start the project that I hope will shake me to my foundations and awaken me from my white middle-class life, and change my world-view for the rest of my days.
Waiting will be a bitch. Luckily, Trusty Brain shows me positives in proceeding slow and studiously, while laying proper groundwork for a long, successful journey.
Way to go, brain.
Brains

Money Ain't Everything

One of my favourite songs from my teen years was Cyndi Lauper’s “Money isn’t Everything.”
It feels like life comes in with built-in looped lessons, themes that repeat constantly throughout our lives. For me, money and patience are two lessons I’m forever learning about.
Money, though, is the one that causes me most grief.

Drowning piggybank, from TheDoublethink.com: http://thedoublethink.com/2009/06/how-much-to-spend-in-a-recession/


This year has probably been the most learned year on the money front for me. I’ve fixed a few things, changed my quality of life by way of making small choices, but I’ve still run into a great deal of hardship twice this year. Once during the Olympics, because you don’t realize until they arrive what a wild ride and party it is to live within, or how expensive life gets then, and, well, right now.
Having done the bad-back thing right before getting pneumonia, it’s actually been 7 weeks of consistent drain on my wallet, with little to nothing coming in, and it’s been hairy a couple times. Thank god for freezers with food in them and well-stocked pantries and beans and oatmeal, man.
But there’s a lot one can learn from hard times, even poverty.
There’s a gift in poverty, for those who are able to escape it.
I was raised by parents who’d come through a lot financially. My mother, I think, had it harder than my father — hers having been the kind of family that feared eviction on Christmas eve but returned home from mass with a giant gift box of food and clothing from the community, who slept three kids  to a single bed.
I still remember her telling me of those times, but I never “got” it. Not until the last five years.
Years ago, I was cursed to be stupid enough to fall into the “why me?” crowd when it came to being broke. I’d be jealous as shit of my friends who always got nice gifts. I felt like a victim, as stupid as that is.
I still resent people who can, and do, have all the things they want but have zero appreciation of just how fortunate they are to have it.
Some of them, if reading this, would probably have the whole “But you can earn your way out of poverty” attitude, and they’re right, to an extent. But what if you’re like me, or unluckier, where you have one year after another of illness or injury, misfortune or bad luck?
When it’s a six-month patch, you get through it and you move on. When it’s six years, or longer, it’s just an accomplishment to make it through month after month. Retirement? What? Savings? What? Survival, man.
I’m lucky, I’ve almost had it constantly be tough and hard for the last decade, but I always get by, I always make it through the hard patches. And every time I do, I’ve learned some new trick about money, some new way of saving a few pennies, but more importantly, I’ve always been able to remember that life is so much bigger and more meaningful than a balance sheet.
For those who think “time is money”, so just buy your food and work more — how? How does one magically make this more expensive, prepared, convenient food just appear? How does one afford to live spitting distance from the best job they can get?
They don’t. Not in this town, man.
There’s a reason money’s the fastest way to kill a relationship.
There’s nothing in this world we value more than money, there’s nothing that defines your life more — and nothing is more omnipresent than the reminders of just how much YOUR value is determined by the money you have or don’t have.
Try it. Wear tattered, out-of-style clothes with a bad haircut and zero accessories, carrying lousy plastic bags or beaten knapsacks, and be sure tote your insecurities and financial worry along with you, then enter into any decent shop in any reasonable area of town, and tell me you don’t FEEL your value lowering when you enter those establishments.
Or go experience the thrill of being constantly broke and listening to even your average friends talking about their new jeans or the restaurant they went out to, or the vacation they’re saving for, and try to ignore that little pang of “I wish…” that creeps up inside every time you think of small items you’d love to have.
Reminders exist everywhere of just how much you don’t have when you’re living hand-to-mouth. No matter how much peace you’ve made with your status, the constant reminders beat you down a little, just like how a single repeating drop of water can erode the hardest of stone over time.
Despite all this, the older I get, the more I appreciate that I truly value the important things in life, and through all my adversity, I’ve learned to really experience gratitude for the little things that come my way.
I love a good meal, I’m passionate about great wine, I know a gorgeous sunset can’t be bought, I savour all the little moments life gives me, when I find the time to really absorb them.
Truth be told, I’m happy there’s a recession on some levels.
When it comes to the middle class and the wealthy, I’m glad they’ve had to wake up some. I’m glad we suddenly realize there’s more in life than the mighty currency markets.
I’m saddened by those who’ve lost everything, who’ve had lives crushed by fucking assholes in the economic world who just have no concept of debt or value.
It’s so ironic. The people who “create” finance in the economic world actually have zero concept of what a real dollar is worth, of just how far — or not — a normal living wage goes.
And they’re the ones who’ve helped bring everything, and every one, down.
Still, poverty has its gifts.
Gratitude is a gift you’ll never grow tired of. There’s nothing like actually really appreciating a thing. Anything. So many people I know just shrug off little moments of generosity. How could they? Don’t they understand?
No. Not yet.
But they will.
Not having disposable income makes problems harder to solve, time harder to find, health harder to manage, and a social life harder to have.
But, with the right perspective, it can really open your eyes.
Has the recession taught you to better appreciate life? Have you really learned what you need to learn from the last two years? Have you gained insights that will define your future and always keep you cognizant of what real “worth” is?
Have you used it to remember what life is really about — the world and people around us, moments in time, laughter, and creation? Have you learned to be kinder to others and generous in thought, action, and words, when finances fail you? Have you learned to be understanding of the trials others face and the compromises they need to make just to make it through their weeks?
It’s not too late to learn those lessons now.

Of Insomniacs and Night Owls

It’s 4 in the morning and I’m thinking in my head.*
I fell asleep on my couch a little after 9, tired of the whole “stay up till midnight sleep till 7” routine of the working life. Now, I’ll sleep when the thought occurs to me.
Where do I have to go? What do I have to do? None of it is on schedule beyond the odd appointment or shop hours. Sleep, sleep I can afford. At any time, day or night.
So, it’s 4am and I’ve been sitting in a chair, in silence, thinking.
No TV or music, no droning of traffic on the nearby highway that never stops, no worry this’ll affect my sleep pattern and make work difficult later in the week.
Just silence. And all the time in the world.
So, I just sat there, me and the pinging and creaking of my 1952 radiators to keep me company as the fridge groaned and adjusted itself from time to time.
I was thinking a lot of the time I’ll be needing to talk to a crowd about at Northern Voice 2010 — when, for a moment, everything exploded and I was a pretty talked-about little blogger girl after I wrote a rant that got quoted and linked to all over the web, in sex-blogger circles anyhow.
Then everything came apart in my private life and all blogging momentum stopped. I made some other stupid mistakes that began driving nails in the blogging-success coffin before that, but that’s all another topic for another time…
Like for the folks paying a hundred bucks to hear a bunch of us speak at Northern Voice, for starters.
But what I was really thinking about is how I sort of have very little regrets about fucking all that up.
What if it’d been the other way? What if momentum really exploded? I’m pretty sure I’d have really fucked that up.
Oh, don’t give me “believe in yourself!” speeches. It ain’t that. I DO believe in myself and wish most people had the quiet inner knowledge I have about myself.
Then? I’d have fucked it all up.
Had I never lost the plot and gotten successful then and there?
I’d never have lost 70 pounds without a trainer or dietitian. I’d never have gotten into sports like I did. I’d never have blown my back out like I did and have to survive that fucking year of hell. I’d NEVER have proven all these things to myself in such a short time.
I fucked it up because I had a lot more to learn.
I’m glad. Life’s been a right bitch since 2006, but I’ve never been so smug and satisfied with myself as I am now — even if I’ve just become unemployed. Why? Because of everything I’ve been through in the last seven years, particularly the last 5. When it comes to getting by, I know I get it done now.
I’ve needed no man, no parents, no helping hands beyond small generosities of spirit and time from friends. I got through it all. Sure, uncertainty looms as I sit here in my silent clacking, but… it loomed before, and darker. Then it went away. I did that.
I guess I was just sitting there and thinking of the madcap events that dot the timeline between then and now, and how surreal life feels when you just sit back in silence at 4 in the morning with a single thought:
“So that happened.”
And now I’m off to bed. Thought, thought, and more thought.
Here’s one of my favourite insomniac tracks.

A Moment of Thanksgiving this Thanksgiving

fall leaves on burrard inletLucky us! I have half a mug of coffee left! Just enough for us to squeeze in a quickie!
What a FANTASTIC day. Beautiful, sunny. I’m going into work and kissing ass to have a short day. It’s fantastic working for women who understand that the here-and-now is as important as the year-end fiscal, and life is to be lived, not missed. Great bosses! Yet another thing I’m thankful for as Canada’s Thanksgiving weekend rolls into play.
Today is all but guaranteed, they think, to be the last day of unseasonable weather — tomorrow, the temperature drops like the NYSE after a Madoff scandal.
Oh, the difference a year makes. Every coloured leaf I admire makes me appreciate how far this year has taken me.
Last year at this time, it was just sinking in that I had done something horrible to my back. Had you told me then that I would be facing 9 months of rehab, the first three spent crippled, medicated, and in misery, well, the odds are I would have had a total mental breakdown, and come January or so, I pretty much did.
I enjoyed exactly 0% of last year’s autumn, and it broke my heart. I’m making up for it this year! Continue reading