something to do...

I NEED to do something.  I need to move my butt away from the monitor and DO something creative and inspiring.


I could work on my contract's designs...but I'm saving those for the weekends when I can fully concentrate.

I could work on the novel.  ...but I'm still not ready.  Gaia's not ready.  the muses aren't ready.  We all need a little bit more healing time before we're ready to venture out and share the stories once more.   :(

I SHOULD work on some drawings that are owed folks...

but I don't want to move.



My brain feels as if it were made of oatmeal.  I've been sick, according to my manager, Aline, since last Thursday.  I've been REALLY sick since Saturday.  I am, according to said manager, under orders to work from home tomorrow should my lungs NOT be any better.  But I don't WANT to stay home.  I just managed a huge breakthrough with the new software I'm learning to use at work and I don't want to lose my  momentum.  That I managed to completely construct two working sales reports today was HUGE.  But after all that sheer genius... I'm tired.  My lungs kind of hurt and I swear that my current body mass is made up more of snot than anything else.

seriously.

But I am feeling better than I was and I'm not so inclined to pursue my absolute favorite mind numbing pastime of gaming tonight, so I must find some way of productively using my time.  I am supposed to be an artist after all.

that being said... here's me off to draw the seventh sense and to construct what very well might become the icon for a new religion.

...seriously.  ;)

it only get's better

so they say.

but some days, I have to wonder.

on being alone...

I gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which I must stop and look fear in the face... I say to myself, I've lived through this and can take the next thing that comes along... We must do the things we think we cannot do.

~Eleanor Roosevelt~

I don't like being alone.  As far back as I can remember, I can remember not liking being left alone.  Maybe it goes all the way back to being left alone in a stark room with an army of nurses and doctors who held down my tiny, three year old person so that I could not move a muscle so that they could perform a spinal tap.  To this day I still remember my absolute terror as the nurses put their hands on my head, shoulders, arms, hips, legs... any part of my body that might move and cause me harm as the procedure was performed.  I imagine my mother tried to explain to me what was going to happen... but how do you explain to a three year old that they must endure incredible pain, without moving a muscle, in order to find out what's wrong with them?  


It turned out that I had epilepsy.  I spent the next few weeks at Oakland Children's hospital in a special ward with other children likewise diagnosed... all of us with varying degrees of what is still a very, very mysterious neurological condition.  I had, unbeknownst to me, become part of a very import series of medical trials designed to find efficient treatments for epilepsy.  After I was released from the hospital I was rarely out of sight of a trusted adult (in case I had a seizure) and became remarkable isolated simultaneously.  


To control the seizures, I was taking a regimen of Dilantin, Phenobarbital, and Valium twice daily.  The Dilantin and the Phenobarbital were used to control my seizures.  The Valium was used to mellow down the incredible side effects the other two medications had on my very young, developing person.  In my mother's words, the medication made me a demon child.  My mother, or those caring for me, kept a close eye on this very sick little person so I was rarely 'alone'.  But then I started going to school.  


Of course, the schools were told of my condition, and that's where the isolation began.  Today they tell teachers with epileptics in their classes, "treat them like any other child".  But back when I was a girl, this was not the case.  I was put in the back of the class so as not to "frighten" the other children should I have a seizure.  I only had one grand mal seizure (the big nasty ones that affect the entire body).  Most of mine were what are called petit mal seizures... where I would just vanish into my own mind for a while,staring blankly out into space until my brain kickstarted itself again.  But my teachers didn't care, to the back of the room I went, ignored and feared.  This trickled down to the students I was in classes with and as such, I was excluded and pushed aside as "that weird girl"  This went on through the second grade.  When my teacher recommended that I be held back because I couldn't read a single word, my parents realized there was a problem.  (of course there was a problem!  My teachers were afraid of me and avoided me like the plague) My mother, having just remarried, decided to move and give me a fresh start at a new school.  My second second grade teacher was this crazy old woman named Ms. Bittner and she had my number immediately.  She had only compassion for the epilepsy diagnosis even though I'd not had a seizure in two years and treated me like every other student in her class.  She taught me to read and by the end of the year... I was ahead of the rest of my class.  


I was also... no longer alone.  


I wasn't ostracized by the other students as I had been in K-2nd grade (the first time), because I wasn't being ostracized by the teachers.  But the insecurity and fear of being alone had already planted it's evil little seeds in my heart.  


So, by hook or by crook, I've managed to never be alone since that time.  I've had roommates or lived at home with the family.  In a big, rambling Portuguese family this is a highly acceptable thing!  :)  Even when I separated from my ex, I had the children with me, and when the children were with their father... I went back to drum corps.   Yes, there were nights where I was alone...but never for an extended period of time where I was just... flying solo on my own.  


....and now I am.  


I'm not sure how I feel about it yet.  I'm thankful for the two dogs and the kitten that sleep on my bed each night.  But I MISS the children something terrible...even in their worst and most fretful moods.  That'll be a post for another day, after I've determined more fully just how I feel about this being alone thing.