Wednesday 10 April 2013

Stuck in Neutral... General updates on life.

It's been a while since I've written, and I think it's time to take stock of how I'm doing and what's been going on. Phil asked me the other day how I was feeling, emotionally. (We've had cold and flu going around the house, so we'd already dealt with how I was feeling physically.) I didn't know how to answer him.


I'm not feeling as bad as I have in the past. I'm not feeling great, either. I feel like I'm stuck in neutral. Neutral isn't a bad place to be, but it isn't someplace I want to stay long-term. I read an article this morning about ways to deal with depression. It wasn't about ways to "beat" depression, just how to function and keep things from being harder than they have to be. It was well written, and it's part of what got me thinking to the point that I could/would write this.

I can smell spring in the air...but the world still looks dead...or asleep...and brown. I'm not seeing the new spring leaves or flowers yet. It has been warm enough lately to start driving with the windows down, and the ground was defrosted enough that when I went out to call Liz in to dinner the other night, I could feel the grass soft on my bare feet. Granted, it's last season's grass that's still brown, but it felt good. It made me realize that I don't remember the last time I walked barefoot in the grass, and it's something I should do more often. I really want spring to get here.

I found a job a couple weeks ago, but I'm still waiting for the background check to come back so I can do whatever comes next. It's a seasonal job for someplace that doesn't open until the beginning of next month, but there's got to be some kind of training, so I really hope that's soon. I'm still a bit "socially starved", and haven't been able to really force myself to change that yet, so I'm counting on work to help.

In the meantime, I've found a new crafty obsession...painting pottery. I want to play with painting on glass, too, but that may take a bit. The military spouses' group did a get-together at Firefly Studios in Portsmouth, and now I'm hooked. There's definitely something therapeutic about painting, and it's the process as much as the product that I enjoy. Actually, I probably enjoy the process most, and would happily paint things for people if they wanted to pay for the supplies and let me do it for them. Granted, I like seeing the finished products...but I don't need to keep them if someone else will enjoy them.

Painting is probably a bit of an escape, but I don't know if that's a bad thing. It's kind of like a "moving meditation". I was thinking yesterday while I did some of the detail work on a platter I was painting that it fills part of the same void that making the window art I used to do in Europe did. There's a type of concentration and an intense, forced relaxation with just the right amount of tension, focus that happens with using a squeeze-bottle to form unbroken lines when you know you can't go back and erase mistakes. (Take a deep breath, set the tip of the bottle on the starting spot, slowly breathe out while applying enough pressure to squeeze out an even flow of paint while tracing around the appropriate shape.) There's also a bit of "so that didn't go as planned...how can I make it look intentional?" that happens while painting. Learning to deal with mistakes in artwork can make it easier, sometimes, to look at life the same way..."that didn't go as planned, so what's the new plan?"

Phil's work schedule has changed, which is taking some getting used to. I think it's a good thing overall. He's now working an afternoon/evening shift, so I see him in the morning, but not at night. We have time together in the morning without the kids around. I'm still working on the fact that it's ok for me to leave to do things on my own even when he's home. It's nothing that he's ever done or said, really, but I always feel like I should be here if he's home. Still, we're being able to get things done together, like breaking up firewood, and talking about what's going on in our heads. I hadn't realized how much I kept to myself that he missed sharing. I'm learning. It'll take time, but we have time.

I still feel like I'm stuck in the same limbo that I've been in since we knew we couldn't stay in England. That's not something anyone else can fix. I'm not sure how I can fix it yet, either. In the meantime, I'll focus on fixing/cleaning/accomplishing small things each day, and keep my eyes out for opportunities.

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