Thank God for Pinterest and Poverty

Not really poverty.  But my husband and I are going through a tight money time, you know, college student tight (what happened??? I graduated 7 years ago- how did I not equate marrying a later-in-life college student to going through this again? lol way to think think things through).  So as a result, I'm becoming college student creative to get things done--in a way I didn't have to when I was there myself.

I went through college before the credit crisis, and I worked a lot to fund my schooling, so banks just loooooved to give me credit.  I never really thought about it before, but I never worried about not paying my bills or not having money or waiting for cash from my parents.  Cash from my parents was always a nice bonus, and don't get me wrong, I *always* panicked when my credit card bill came.  But ulitmately, I worked, and I enjoyed the luxury of being able to go buy materials and books whenever I needed to-- as long as I got out of work before the stores closed.

It made college different for me than for a lot of students, particularly my fellow art students. Already prone to being an over-prepared hoarder, I had professors who taught all these great alternate media and encouraged experimentation.  And I hated running out of this that I wanted for how I wanted to do things.  I rarely had to figure out how to finish something when I ran out of materials or money.  I graduated with a creative degree and I certainly developed my creativity, but only in a limited spectrum.  I have a vivid memory of walking into a studio and talking to another student who was figuring out how to unify a series in which, on the first two or three paintings, she had covered the entire canvas in gold leaf, corner to corner, 3 inch square by 3 inch square.  They were lovely.  She then ran out of gold leaf with 1 painting left.  I didn't understand then why she didn't just go buy more.  I do now.  There was no more money.

I still have a lot of the extra materials I bought in college, buried somewhere under the materials I have accumulated since.  Must admit-- I *may* be a material girl.  Or a material whore, whatever.  Lots of great ideas float around in my head and I rush out to buy all the stuff for it and then it languishes because I run out of time to make whatever it was.  Often because I have rushed out to buy all the stuff for the next idea I have.  Same thing in my kitchen---tons of spices and mixes and ingredients, lots of peanut butter sandwiches eaten. 

For the last month, there has been no excess to buy materials.  Or crazy amounts of extra food for the three hour cook time recipe I found for every night of the week (we have plenty of money for food, but I stand in the grocery store and look at my cart and know that i know that i know I will not cook all those meals before the food spoils).  And I'm going crazy.  For the first 2 weeks, I could hear my soul screaming 'you're crushing my creative spirit!  I will never be an artist if you don't let me go buy the stuff to do this thing I thought of-- I can't write it down and do it later, it will not be as good!!  How could you let yourself get in this situation where you would do this to me?!?!?!?!'

Then last week, I looked at the pile of stuff in my living room (I have piles everywhere, organized priority.  If it is really important, I leave it where I will trip on it.  Priority B goes on top of usable surfaces, Priority C on non-usable surfaces, directly on top of priorities D-J.  Priorities K-S are partially under there also, having once been priority J or above, and then having toppled over because spray paint, involved in almost every project, is in a round can specifically designed to not stack well.  Especially after I cannabilized the cap for another project.  Priorities T-Z an neatly packed in boxes covered from the inside in spray paint.  I wonder why that is??) and decided, perhaps, if I couldn't buy stuff I could use some of the stuff I already have.  Shocker, right?  An artist making things?  I was pretty sure my art degree qualified me to make informed purchases, because I have done that quite successfully for 7 years.

And it feels better.  Turns out it may not have been my creative soul screaming at me to buy shit.  Imagine that.  May have been my laziness.  May have been the 'ooooo shiny' distractedness every artist has.  But the end result was that I was accumulating and not creating.  I had realized this in the kitchen slightly sooner.  I just hadn't applied it to everything else.  And much to my husband's chagrin, I still have prioritized piles everywhere.  But most of them are in process now.  Side note?  Spray painting things right (i.e. so they neither run nor permanently bond to the stuff around them) takes for. ev. er.  but I'm getting excited about finishing projects and deciding if they are worth trying again and improving and making more my own.

I feel hopeful about making things and having real ideas of my own again.  And my credit cards will be just fine without me.

Characters

A long time ago, a counselor warned me that I was not living life but rather watching over it, narrating it as it goes by.  I didn't see that as a problem then--I would not say I had truly lived life at all up to that point, and witnessing it so very closely at last felt a lot like living.  Sometimes I feel the depression encroaching again, and instead of being so very grateful to be near life, I painfully miss living it. 

I can't explain where the change begins or where it ends.  I don't know when I stopped observing life and started living it, or why that stopped coming so easily.  But I feel very overwhelmed and far away.  In these moments, it becomes second narture to narrate and observe again, compare life, deconstruct life, scream at life but do everything but live life. 

I suppose selfishly I hope this will make it easier to make things again.  After all, seeing through the lens only should make it relatively easy to mimic the lens.  But what about my friends my dog my family my husband my God?  What happens when I step out permanently this time?  They will notice, they already have.

I read Where the Heart Is.  I used to stop every time that movie came on lifetime.  It is one of a very short list of books that translate perfectly into movie form.  Having read the book, I don't think the movie missed anything-- if anything, the characters are richer (except for losing Americus's menagerie).  And I think of how Novalee simply is in most of the story.  She doesn't think about being too much or too little, she simply is and does and provides and makes this incredible life out of nothing, so grateful for the tiny outpourings of a million strangers, and never worries about being less than until the last moment.  And then of course she panics and sends Forney away but it is all so very perfect, and you don't realize until she does, sitting in that car outside the motel, that she considers herself less.  And you never think about how incredible it is that she doesn't pass an ounce of that to her little girl, no matter how deeply it is ingrained in her.  I imagine after she declares her love to Forney she never again worries about being less and simply lives.  I suspect Lexie also simply lives and basks in her good fortune at having made a family out of luck and a genuine heart.  How do these women stop themselves from getting lost as so many of us less fortunate get lost?  Or those as unfortunate, for that matter?  How do they neither become paralyzed in self loathing and fear nor become complacent and live of the system? 

Why can I not learn to become unbroken in the way they are unbroken?

And why can I not frame my life without a story from another's mind?

Why do I not live my life as fully as characters on the page of a book?

I know.  I don't want to put in the time.  I still see that regrowth as time lost, time that would be more productive if I were already fixed, not in process.  And I know how very stupid that is, yet I yell because, I don't know, maybe fixed me will come lead current me and the time lapse will close in the paradox?  So what do I do to jolt myself into mental presence and stop narrating?

Evidently, I narrate louder and pray that that works.