Bearly Making Sense
The story I wrote while my head hurt.
I’ve spent the last few weeks tapering off a medication that prevented migraines and relieved pain to the point where I forgot that I had chronic pain, but that also left me exhausted, depressed, and with no energy to do things with my painless body.
To me, that’s not a fair trade.
My brain whirls with ideas. There are so many things I want to do at any given moment. Napping on the couch is not me, but it has definitely been me for months while I’ve tried to figure out why life in general seems so overwhelming and exhausting.
I’m in the middle of a bunch of health testing (hello, medical bills) to confirm that it’s not my heart or some such thing that’s made me feel like a grumpy slug. But the med seems like at least a big part of the deal.
Tapering off the medicine is also pretty unfun. Last night, during the limited portions of the night in which I was actually sleeping, I had a bunch of weird dreams about hiding from bears. I’ve never seen a wild bear, and they don’t frequent my city, but they were crawling all over my sleep last night for sure. Crazytown.
So, in the midst of this transition, I’m thinking more about the importance of self-care. I read a good article about preventing dementia yesterday, and all of the points made were solid ideas for a healthy life in general. So, I’m working on making them my priority. This morning, despite feeling like bear dooky, I got about 20 minutes of early morning sunlight before I had coffee (do not recommend - coffee should be first). I moved my agility obstacles around in preparation for a video I need to record for my online class. I threw some balls for my dogs, and it was generally a good start to my morning. Later, I walked 30 minutes on my walking pad, which was more challenging than usual due to feeling a bit off-balance, presumably from my lack of meds. I chose my meals with my various disorders in mind and now, while I still feel crappy, I feel like I did my best for myself today. So that’s a win.
The last piece of the puzzle is to get to bed tonight with enough time for 7-8 hours of sleep before I do it all again tomorrow. I haven’t seen 8 hours of sleep in a long while, so we’ll see how that goes.
As part of the process of improving my health, I’ve been doing more destressing with art. It is so addictive! I’ve worked in my Zentangle workbook, but what I’ve been enjoying even more is working on a loose interpretation of something called neurographic art. I dislike having a lot of rules involved in my doodling, so I tossed some of it out and just focused on enjoying the way my brush pens felt gliding across the paper.
The idea is to choose a word to focus on and then let your pen sweep across your paper, making lines that cross in places (I love these pens for Zentangling and drawing lines). When you feel like you’re done with the lines, you can darken some of them, emphasizing the places they intersect, and maybe add a few circles or other designs (even Zentangles!) if you feel like they belong there. Then you choose a colored pen, marker, pencil, crayon, or something similar, and… color. You go by feel and pick the color and the areas that need that color. You repeat this until your drawing feels complete. I loved using these brush pens that felt a bit like painting with concentrated watercolors. Sometimes my colors went over the lines, so I just drew a thicker line or otherwise embellished the area. In this practice, there are no mistakes. There is no specific outcome. The journey is the destination.
It’s weird to talk about focusing on your chosen word and using the way you feel to create something. It seems very woo-woo. I can’t even call what I’m doing “art” because that sounds far too fancy. (And while I say “I can’t,” I probably should. But I’ve told myself that I can’t draw or paint for so many years that it’s going to take a while to let that go. I’m a work in progress.)
What the “choosing” part means, though, is simply that you don’t need to think. You just go by feel. For someone like me, who isn’t very in touch with her feelings, this is an excellent exercise in acting without thought in a safe and fun way. I highly recommend it.
Here are my 1st three neurographic art-type doodles:
#1
#2
#3
In the interest of getting a reasonable amount of sleep as previously described, I’m going to leave this newsletter as the scattered mess that it is. I don’t have the perfect wrap-up. Can you get something out of it? I hope so. Maybe at least you were entertained while you had your morning coffee.
Have a great week!
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