Frozen
I've been feeling really frozen the last few weeks. Just, kinda immobilized with indecision. I have a reasonable amount of career-related projects and general life maintenance stuff that would be do-able if I were... managing my time better(?) but instead I'm giving each of them about 10% of my attention and then avoiding them and my guilt just continues to compound until everything feels impossible and I'm in a ball on the couch scrolling on my phone, frozen.
So I sat on the edge of one of my grow boxes and drew my cabbage flowers with markers, ink straight to paper.
First I blorped the yellow marker down, approximating the general distribution of the flowers. Then I went in with the green to add the stalks and little stick-y bits. I let myself go fast and loose, giving myself permission to fudge the actual botanical anatomy and let the colors overlap where they shouldn't.
Can you even believe this is what cabbage flowers look like?
What an absurd Dr. Suess-ass lookin' plant.
What's the nicest thing someone said to you this week?
Matt told me that my garden looks like me and that made me wanna cry.
My garden is lush and thriving- some parts of it are organized but it's enmeshed with the natural chaos. It's in a constant state of falling apart and mending and growing. It's a little bit nice and a little bit rough. Also, there's a joke to be made about being filled with pests or something 😤
I feel like I'm failing a lot right now, including taking care of my garden. I should have planted things at different times, I should have tended them better, I should do this and I should do that.
But also: it's alive! It's doing its own thing. I like seeing what it chooses to do with itself. Even when I'm frozen, it's still actively growing.
Comments (8)
I love that you made art while you were feeling frozen. Nicest thing someone has said? My sweetie, tonight, when she came home, said that the highlight of her day is coming home to me. ❤️
god I appreciate your MH/emotion posts, so so so much. it's been a tough week over here too, I'm preparing for like, six weeks of madness, which is all for good things but like.. 😮💨 but I think the nicest thing someone has said to me recently is probably telling me good job on some of the physical training I'm doing right now, which is pretty new for me and truly not the kind of thing I thought I was capable of.
I love the marker picture you drew - it reminds me of Chinese ink brush painting. Something my ink brush painting teacher taught us is to embrace where the ink bleeds into other colors on the paper, and that the beauty of the medium is those unexpected places where elements interact where you the artist didn't expect. It reminds me of how you describe your garden. Nicest thing someone said to me? Hmmm.... last weekend my 6 month old niece visited and met my cats for the first time. She gave me a huge happy smile and shrieked with delight when she saw the cats.
At the end of the day, I will sit and feel as if I didn't do a thing regardless of what I have done because there is so much more to do and I've just been faffing about. Then it's time for a deep breath and honest appraisal: "Hey, I got a lot done that needed done! Yay me!" which sometimes works. I tend to measure myself against impossible standards.
Hmm, the nicest thing someone said to me this week? Not much human interaction this week, the highlight would probably be a colleague waxing poetic about how the cupcakes I brought were simply divine ☺️ (chocolate cupcakes with raspberry-nutella filling, covered with nutella-mascarpone whip and chocolate… except it was fake nutella made from sunflower seeds and vegan ”mascarpone”, since special diets) It’s weird that I found the focus to bake those, when for some months it has felt like my executive function has gone to hell. So feel you on the should do this and should do that but just… don’t get it done.
The nicest thing someone said to me this week? I guess it was my brother saying that he liked the fact that I did the dishes. Seems small, but in context this was a huge and welcome compliment.
Sounds like my life. All the good and great things I could be accomplishing if I wasn't so busy muddling and stumbling through.
❤️❤️❤️