“Owed to Ramona”, or “Hope Springs Eternal”

Ramona (who is a fellow traveller on the Art Journal Caravan) commented on my last post that I should post that I was okay. She’s right. I should post that I’m okay. I’ve done some lighter, “funner” pages recently that my companions at the AJC have seen that I haven’t yet shared here. I’ve been putting it off. And the reason I’ve been putting it off wasn’t clear to me until I read what Ramona had to say.

You see, the lighter pages are not really how I feel yet…they’re how I WANT to feel. I’m not thriving. If I think hard, I can see that I am better than I was a couple of months ago. But I’m not really good, you know? I still spend considerably more time in bed than out of it. I’m still not back to where I was in Sept/Oct, which was able to take care of my family and my life. Overall, I’m feeling a bit discouraged because it’s been over a year since I’ve been able to drive and I hate (yes, HATE) being so dependent on others. I’m still brain-herxing, although not often, and not nearly as bad as it was. It’s still scary. Things are still so much more dark than light in my head.

I’ve made some happy pages…but they aren’t BECAUSE I feel happy, they’re to MAKE me feel happy. So I kind of felt uncomfortable putting them up here. You know, showing you that I’m feeling good? Because I’m not. I can see more clearly that I WILL feel better, but I’m just not there yet. All my recent pages are about my hope for the future, not about where I am at the present, and until I realized that (today) I couldn’t post them here. It seemed premature. I instinctively felt it would be dishonest, although I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.

Thank you, Ramona, for helping me to PROCESS all that. (Process is, as you will see shortly, my One Word for the year.)

And so, without further ado, here is my most recent work:

Rather than making a New Year’s resolution (which I never do anyways), we were asked to choose a word to focus on this year. Mine was PROCESS:

At some point, I’ll use this as my computer desktop. To keep it fresh in my mind, since I’m such a good forgetter.

PROCESS also happened to be our first assigned word this year. Well, okay, it was our assigned word first, and it struck me as highly fitting so I chose it for my One Word.

THE CENTRAL PROCESSOR:

Our next task was to examine the word “thrive” and how it applies to our life. I can’t say I feel like I’m thriving yet, but I can see where I will one day be able to step onto that path.

ENOUGH WITH THE WEEDS:

So, there we go. That’s what I’ve been working on…trying to be cheerful and positive in spite of the fact that I feel crappy and wish the process of getting better wasn’t such a long slow one.

Thanks for reading!
Jane (Again)

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