“It’s not about passion. Passion is something that we tend to overemphasize, that we certainly place too much importance on. Passion ebbs and flows. To me, it’s about desire. If you have constant, unwavering desire to be a cook, then you’ll be a great cook. If it’s only about passion, sometimes you’ll be good and sometimes you won’t. You’ve got to come in every day with a strong desire. With passion, if you see the first asparagus of the springtime and you become passionate about it, so much the better, but three weeks later, when you’ve seen that asparagus every day now, passions have subsided. What’s going to make you treat the asparagus the same? It’s the desire.”
– Thomas Keller
Life
Closing The Book.
April 25th, this past Wednesday, was my university’s Senior Art Exhibition. It is the final art show for all graduating art students at West Chester University.
Many friends and family members came out to see my senior work, help support The New Gallery’s fist student show and also just to celebrate a very positive event. I won second place for body of artwork and am graduating with honors.
The book of my undergraduate career is finally closed. It’s been a long haul. I am excited, happy and tired. Over the next few months I’ll be recovering from surgery, getting back in shape and taking a look at what I want to do with my future. There are many roads ahead, each I will be open to and embrace with passion and love.
Live life and climb on!
Clear Margins.
Early last Friday morning I was having breakfast with my partner in a bed & breakfast just outside of New Paltz, NY. We’d spent the week hiking, exploring the Gunks, it was so beautiful. I received a call from my OB GYN, my annual PAP came back very irregular, so irregular that she scheduled me for surgery while I was on the phone with her.
If you’ve known anyone in this situation before, you as a reader, maybe able to understand how impacted I was, and my partner too when I related the information. It didn’t make the week any less beautiful, I did however feel like I had stepped into another universe.
Driving back from NY I thought about a lot. What did this mean for my partner and I? How much school was I going to miss? I had to clear my professional work schedule for 2 weeks due to recovery time. I needed to let my family and close friends know. That four hours was in some ways, the longest I’ve had in my life to date.
The weekend was hard, I kept a lot of emotions inside, it created a lot of tension, overall things went well despite the looming heaviness of the surgery day. My partner took me in for surgery Tuesday, I was home by noon. There weren’t any surgical complications, but now I had to wait for test results. The doctors explained best and worst case scenarios. I mentally prepped myself for everything. Talked with my family, my partner and my friends. There was a lot of positive emotion being sent around, and I think it’s easy to forget how strong those things can make you feel, and also too, to not take anything for granted.
So this is it, my story of the last week: I have dysplasia and abnormal cell growth in my cervix. What this typically means or is translated too is defined in terms of being pre cancerous. I underwent a Cold Knife Cone biopsy. Recovery period is no exercise for 2 weeks, no intercourse for a month. There’s heavy spotting, cramping and back pain (I’m currently sporting all three of these things.)
Yesterday I had the first part of a new sleeve tattoo started. Towards the end of my sitting my doctor called and gave me great news: clear margins, no cancer.
I felt like reality again had just snapped back in place. I was so relieved. So were my partner, friends and family.
Follow up treatment will be for now, PAPs every 6 months instead of annually. I’m also seeing an OB GYN oncologist.
Before all of this happened, I signed up for a great local bike ride with my bike buddy, and also a trail run/canoe race with another friend. Training is on hold for both, but I am still doing both, maybe with less strength, but now even more determination to just DO THEM.
I don’t know how other people feel when they find out their lives don’t have to change severely. I know how I feel as a woman, friend, lover and family member. Nothing is too small or too big to help you gain a better perspective on what this journey we call life is all about.
Now I don’t have to sacrifice the rest of my cervix or uterus. I can still have children If I want (if my partner wants!) Life is, today, really beautiful.
So take a deep breath and enjoy and reflect with me.
Networks.
Came across this short video on vimeo the other day, the ideas are inspiring and mind blowing. You should give it a short watch and listen. It’s under 2 minutes in length.
The narrator is speaking about NETWORKS: technology, organisms, and environment. Very interesting concepts!
“Networks are everywhere. The brain is a network of nerve cells connected by axons, and cells themselves are networks of molecules connected by biochemical reactions. Societies, too, are networks of people linked by friendships, familial relationships and professional ties. On a larger scale, food webs and ecosystems can be represented as networks of species. And networks pervade technology: the Internet, power grids and transportation systems are but a few examples. Even the language we are using to convey these thoughts to you is a network, made up of words connected by syntactic relationships.”
TO UNDERSTAND IS TO PERCEIVE PATTERNS from jason silva on Vimeo.
A Time For Change.
Happiness is not the belief that we don’t need to change. It’s the realization that we can. -Shawn Achor
Yes. 2011 is over. Did you celebrate?
I did, in my own special kind of way. I didn’t mourn losses or think about regrets. I did reflect on how amazing and wonderful 2011 did turn out to be.
It was a beautiful year. And now, I’m ready for 2012 to be even more amazing.
Spectacular even. I figure there will be some pain, some suffering and a lot of change, but it will all be worth it. Whatever it is.
Here’s some reading for you. Considering how many changes I went through and made personally last year in 2011, I think it’s appropriate to mention it here:
Happy New Year!
Superficiality.
Delete your facebook.
It will change your life, and clarify your friendships.
Here’s a short article to get the noggin a thinkin: Facebook is Making Us Miserable.
I’ve been facebook free for a little over two weeks. Feels great. If I don’t see this blog before the holiday, Happy Holidays!
Getting On With It.
figure sketch © ChossyGrl
“There’s a difference between meaning that is embodied and meaning that is referenced. As someone once said, no one should wear a Greek fisherman’s hat except a Greek fisherman.” Art & Fear
Classes for the fall semester are over. Next week I have a senior art thesis proposal meeting. This is, in large part, a lot of the work I’ve been doing the past couple of weeks. Along with essays for class and figure work, I’ve been gathering ideas and trying to conceptualize what it is that I want to say next semester, with my art.
I had a breakdown yesterday. I guess, that’s great, I needed it. Life is funny, sometimes surreal. All the things you think matter and are important really mean nothing when you strip away a lot of the external context.
I’m terrified of graduating. I’ve said this before, but not like this.
I have panic attacks. I’m not sleeping. And I have not been able to make art in over a month. Not a dry spell, but a brick wall.
So I took a good look at what I was really feeling yesterday and it’s fear. It’s fear of the unknown after college, it’s fear of not being a good enough artist. It’s fear of being content to be alone and not wanting to get close to anyone. It’s fear of not growing as a person, and only growing into myself.
I don’t know if the passage of time has anything to do with this. Time being a constant: it’s so intangible, but we count it in everything we do, it becomes omnipresent. Maybe getting older is affecting me this way. I had a thought about how I reached all the goals I had set for this year, and how maybe the constant of my momentum had just finally taken its toll.
I have three and a half months left of college. I’m researching graduate schools. I day dream a lot.
Sometimes those dreams are about rock climbing in other places. Sometimes they are about cycling. Sometimes I am hiking to the top of a mountain and I am by myself and everything is peaceful.
Job Reality.
I’m posting about this just so in a year or 5 years or 10 years, I can look back and say to myself, “yes, I did do that and yes I’m proud.”
Last night a family member compared figure modeling to striping for money.
Now, I stayed calm, and did not let the 18-year-old in me answer, even though I wanted to. Comments like that come from one place, and it’s really uneducated, un-tactful and ignorant. So I try not to join in on conversations where I know I won’t be able to “shed” light or speak reason, or just have a calm rational debate.
I’m typing this mostly to just affirm to myself that I really enjoy my work. That figure modeling IS NOT striping. I work aesthetically, for artists, for students, for retired painters, for people just starting. A muse in a way, but there’s nothing sexual about what I do. It’s hard physical work. Some days I really hurt and I’m really tired after work. I love my work because it’s emotionally and artistically rewarding.
Hearing this family say what they did about my line of work basically sucked. It was a slap in the face. And really, I felt small. This person doesn’t know me and doesn’t want to learn about me, maybe doesn’t want to be close to me.
Anyways, yesterday was mostly great. Had a long hard work day, got to get in my first wintry bike ride with my bike buddy and got to see my nephew all dressed up for his first Halloween. So this other thing is just something I have to reconcile.
Love what you do!
Thoughtfulness.
I have let this blog go, in a way. Or at least let it be. Life is busy, mostly good, sometimes bad but still good because it’s moving forward (and I can only hope that I am moving forward with it, and not just observing this.)
I graduate in a little over 5 months. I don’t know what that means. I spend a lot of time thinking about this. I don’t really talk to anyone about it. People talk about their problems, I listen and inside I think I stress out a little more each day. I know, in a way this is natural. Most people went through this in their early twenties. Here I am, ten years older, going through what other people maybe have forgotten. You know, classes, homework, stress, working on top of that, eternal questions like…
What am I going to do now? What comes next? What is my purpose.
I sold a portrait, well it was a commission piece, but selling still feels good. Almost as good as the sincere happiness the painting brings the person it goes to. A friend hired me to paint a series for them as a gift for someone else, so I’m working on that in my free time.
Doing some bike riding when I have time. Trying to climb a little when I have even more free time. Trying to get extra sleep and not really doing a great job at that.
Some days feel really easy. Some days I feel like I’m doing three times the work I usually do and seeing no results. I guess that’s just life.
Contemplating grad school.
Contemplating what it would be like to meet someone and be in a healthy relationship.
Contemplating moving out of state.
Life is life.
+75
I realized today that I hadn’t said anything about the MS city to shore and I made a note to write something.
And here I am, struggling a little, with what to say, mostly because it was such a positive event…
My sister picked me up around 4:30am Saturday morning. It was humid and damp from all the rain the night before and I had on layers in case of rain that day. We drove to Jersey, I had hardly slept I was so excited and nervous! When we got to the Woodcrest starting point in New Jersey I realized this was real. I think a part of me just hadn’t put all the pieces together before then emotionally.
The parking lot was a gigantic tent city, full of cars, tents and swarming with over 7,000 cyclist.
I’ve never seen so many riders and bikes at one time. It was unreal.
My sister waited with me until the rest of my team mates showed up, gave me a hug and a kiss on the cheek and wished me luck. Her calmness that morning helped me in the first few miles during the event, just to relax and really enjoy what was going on around me.
My team mates were amazing. Everyone that day was in great spirits, did an awesome job riding and kept positive!
We stopped at every rest stop as a team to drink, eat a little and stretch out. I think it helped with keeping up the spirits and with giving our muscles a break. None of us seemed to be in too bad shape by the end of the ride, and we all made it over the two bridge climbs into Ocean City at the end of the day, which was so great!
It was really one of those life-changing events. I got to see New Jersey from my bicycle, for 78 miles of road, smell the ocean and marsh while covered in road dirt, and laugh at having done this thing I never thought would be achievable (for someone like me.) All at the same time, helping out a great cause by raising money for MS research.
Looking forward to doing it again next year.
chossygrl 