Rachel L. Saunders's Blog, page 9

It Comes Back Around Again, I Hope

Anyone who has seen How I Met Your Mother has likely seen the episode(s) where the song I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles) by the Proclaimers comes back around, and around. I think the introductory episode was a road trip where that song is the only thing they have to listen to because the tape is stuck (among other things). They go through phases of singing along, absolute exhaustion/not listening...and reinvigorated singing along. This is often not far from my thoughts when I think of the seasons/cycles of life. And it gives me hope. Hope that the good seasons, the creativity, the gaming, the invigoration will all come back around.

I’ve been learning to let the seasons of life come...and go. As a recovering perfectionist and over-planner this has been sooooooo hard. I’ve always tried to be extremely organized, on top of things, always sticking perfectly (as I could) to goals/resolutions. But that isn’t fun, it doesn’t make life any more exciting to live. Honestly, it made life way less fun and way more stressful. Also, being so stressed about doing it “right” really edges you into the time scarcity vortex where nothing actually gets done.

Currently I’ve been in a slow, sometimes exhausted and sad season. I’m learning to reacquaint myself with healthy boundaries and set solid but flexible goals for myself...and yet EVERYthing is different now. Not in a really tangible way, it’s in that way that it’s literally all in my head, and some days things feel “normal” and others really not.

It’s not always easy to take the cycles as they come, and recently the cycles have been extremely noticeable and rather intense. Sometimes the scariest part of the season I’ve been in is that there is a very real chance that I could “fix it.” But I don’t want to “fix it,” I want to have my full self...and all the baggage and cycles of life that comes with. I want to stop ignoring/lying to myself and really live my life with hope that the good seasons will always come back around again.

I’m trying to take life WAY less seriously and I definitely recommend it...fair warning though, it’s not for the faint of heart. My life has been turned upside down...a lot. But I feel happier, even in the slower, sadder seasons.

with <3

—A Recovering Design Imposter

Jesus' Love | My Random Thoughts Poem #6

His love has no bounds, has no limits; he loves us no matter how many times we turn our backs

He is always there for us no matter where we are and what we are doing; we will never be alone

Jesus, God's son, and his love for us is something we cannot comprehend; it is so huge, so limitless, more than we'll ever know

All that we need to know is that he always loves us and will always help us, never leaving us

Commentary

So, obviously I went to a private Christian school. And going to a Christian school meant that part of my poetry requirement was religious poetry. I think this is one of two in the entire book...

I find that my relationship with God is much less embarrassing to me these days. But back when I wrote this, it was an assignment that I would have preferred to write about anything but religion or God. If you have read my blog post My God or Yours? you may understand some of my roadblocks there.

When I read this poem I see a young woman who, deep down, might actually know more about who Jesus/God really is to her but also someone that later in life got bogged down in the mire of conservative evangelical dogma. The words are a recitation of what we are told God is while we are also taught by example or subtext that he is something else altogether. It’s a confusing thing.

Taken at face value, it’s rather simplistic, but seeing it with the layers of my past in the Christian community it’s hard not to see all the baggage I have attached to these words. Behind it I see all the “but wait, you also must suffer…” addendums to God’s love that I’m working on deconstructing.

This has been a hard one for me to comment on, not only am I exhausted because noisy lumber yard (tell me how you’d sleep if there was a lumber yard next to your house that was consistently noisy and occasionally really LOUD...this week has been in the LOUD category), I’ve always been sensitive to noise, especially something that isn’t consistent enough to fade out. But I am also still neck deep in my deconstruction, some days are better than others. My feelings on all things religious are weird. It’s complicated.

with <3

—A Recovering Design Imposter

9/11 | My Random Thoughts Poem #3

I'm back with another high school poem to share! With the subject matter of the poem, I think you can understand why this took a bit to work up to sharing.

Day dawns bright and clear only marred by early morning classes

Disaster strikes like an explosion, everyone cannot escape, everything obscured by a thick fog of tears and sorrow

Tears flow and shock runs deep, nobody can work, nobody can concentrate, everyone vacant-eyed and weary

Day ends in pain and sorrow, no relief in sight, only nightmares of sadness, loneliness, and lost loved ones

Some Commentary

I had to dig deep for this one, and likely had to when I wrote the poem years after the day in question. I'm not sure that I like remembering that terrible day. Even many more years later that morning is still a numb shock in my mind. I was never close to anyone directly affected by it. I felt sadness and terror, sure, but it was muted by a numbness I cannot fully describe. I think I honestly was worried that I wasn't feeling enough that morning. I remember going through the motions but nothing was sticking, I barely remember anything from that entire day. We all were in such shock...

I do remember showing up at school and the extreme sorrow of realizing that someone could do something so horrific to intentionally take the lives of others. I don't know if I heard before or at school, there is this weird compression of time and place of that day in my head. But I'm pretty sure that this was my first big understanding that while there is good in humanity, there is also such darkness and violence.

As I don't remember the assignment details I cannot say for certain but I seem to remember that this was one of the "required" type of poems. I don't know that I necessarily wanted to write about this. (And I think it shows in the writing execution.) Either that or this was just one of the better poems I had at the time that fit the details. I have a whole stack of other poems that didn't make the cut. Someday, maybe, I'll share those that were not worthy of this high school project.

As for the design of the buildings and the flames, I have no recollection of what was intentional and what was my air of I just threw this together. Seeing it with more experienced eyes I find that the askew windows seem aptly appropriate for the subject matter, though I do suspect that it wasn't THAT intentional.

I again find myself in awe that I would share this with the world (both then and now) and cringing at my actual teenaged level of skill. It's a further lesson in humility and laughing at myself, in love, of course, always in love.

with <3

—A Recovering Design Imposter

The Beach (Sounds) | My Random Thoughts Poem #5

Listening I hear and remember things present and past

Waves crashing, calling to me like a special friend

Wind whipping by, whistling secret tunes only I can hear, so graceful, so moving

People talking, never stopping, always talking

They never stop to listen, to listen to the beauty of the silence

My paper crackling, urging me to write, to write haunting words of sound

Whispering thoughts encasing me, embracing me, holding me safe from the noise

Growling cars, roaring by, tearing at my silent world of peace, making me lose the winds tune

Birds chirp almost encouragingly, urging us to grow wings, to fly, to soar high and low with them

But alas my dear birds I am earth bound and so I will have to stay

Although if you listen you will hear the secret tunes of the wind in the silence of peace and be able to listen and hear, remembering things present and past

A Bit of Commentary

I love this one for the art. I think the crab, at the time, was my masterpiece in this whole book (though, no spoilers, but, there might be another crab a few pages later). I also think, looking back, that this style was so fun because it was so effortless, I just let myself slip into that space between thinking and doing. That space that I've found so much harder to find in the adult world of structure and responsibility.

Reading the poem I, yet again, cringe at the way I used the words. I see my teenaged self, sometimes, as a pompous ass. I mean, who talks like this poem, I reason, except someone who is trying to prove everything and more. But, to be fair, the poem has a wistful and sad center that speaks to a lot of my feels back then, and beautifully so.

These days I feel less sad but also less able to express such things with poetry. I've taken a long hiatus from writing poetry, mainly because I felt I wasn't cut out for it, or that, as was made abundantly clear to me by society, poets/authors/or really any writer often isn't going to make big money at what they do. One of my mom's biggest concerns when I started college was that the degree I pursued would make me money and too far secondly (though possibly unintentionally so) happy.

Really, I've been seeing so many glimmers of this part of myself, the one seen in the words and art of this poem (and the whole book, really, though much less sad overall), in the recent months. I feel like I've found myself again (again). I say doubly again because I thought I'd found myself when I rediscovered my introvert sometime last year but that was only half the finding. I found the rest of me in the process of taking control of my life, making it possible for me to stop taking my birth control without fearing an extremely unwanted thing.

Who knew that manufactured hormones could be such a self-obscuring thing? The glimmers are me, fully and completely, finally coming back to myself. It makes me so happy that I can see being an improved-by-age version of the young woman who wrote this poetry book again.

I also deeply and achingly miss living in a coastal town, running on the beach and being able to just bask in the beauty of the Oregon Coast on a daily basis.

with <3

—A Recovering Design Imposter

To Be Social...or Not?

I’ve been thinking about social media a lot as of late. We watched the documentary on Netflix called The Social Dilemma a while back and I’ve been trying to be much more mindful of when and how I am using my social media. What I found is that I have a huge problem of losing myself to hours upon hours of scrolling...endless scrolling. Turns out someone came up with the idea to have endless scrolling, makes me respect them but also hate them for my addiction. But here’s the thing, I can be the master of my own destiny. I do not need to bow to the small gods that are Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. I am stronger than that. I hope...

So far I’ve managed to cut back my social media time a lot, but not completely. Which is OK but I’d honestly like to be on it, like, only once per week...if that.

Beyond that I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about not posting about my blog posts on any of the socials. It’s honestly adding yet another layer to simply writing and posting...then I “have to” promote it on the socials because that’s just what you do.

I’m gonna be real with you, I dislike posting about my blog on Facebook. OK, maybe it’s more of a love/hate thing. It’s an extra step I often wish I could forget but it also makes me happy to see others engaging with what I wrote. I often feel like what I write is crap. Obviously someone else could do something better. Yet, I do like to write, so I do, ignoring the sinister voices in the back of my mind. Social media seems to add to the sinister voices more than it helps vanquish them, I think.

Further honesty, sometimes when I post to my blog and share on Facebook (sometimes forgetting completely about Instagram or Twitter...) all I want to do is obsessively check if anyone, anyone at all, has reacted to my post. I am desperate for the “love” that it shows when someone likes my posts. Though, if I dig deeper, what I really want is a real, honest, deep conversation. Unfortunately it feels that social media doesn’t really allow for that, especially these days with all the scary algorithms that feed you an echo chamber of your own world views.

I don’t want to get stuck being fed what I already believe. I’d like to be challenged, to discuss real issues without devolving into yelling nonsense at each other in hopes of swaying by verbal bludgeoning. It doesn’t work. Being real and kind to others and asking for their stories is a much better way to understand each other. And, yeah, sometimes you’ll never believe the same thing as someone you care about. Tough, that’s life, you should love them regardless. Maybe it could even open your eyes on a different issue, I don’t know. All I do know is that being kind is a far better direction that the yelling matches I have seen.

I’ve also been finding that social media takes time that I could be spending doing something I really want to do, not that scrolling and scrolling for what feels like hours...though sometimes that’s real. I feel like we’ve all spent hours on social media... The more I think about it the more I like the idea of taking a break from socials with an open ending in mind. Maybe I’ll be back, maybe not. Maybe I’ll lurk for a bit once a week. I don’t know.

What I do know is that I’m feeling kinda burnt out on all the virtual communication methods we’ve been needing to employ this last year of pandemic. Yes, I am grateful for the technology that allows us to see each other safely but it’s not the same. And while it can be less physically taxing (as a rediscovered introvert, this is no joke, I’m finding) it can be taxing in other ways.

So, I’m taking a needed socials break y’all.

I think there will be blog posts still but I don’t think I want to be on any social media so if you wanna read anything you’ll need to be checking my website. And, if I haven’t said it before, thanks for reading my thoughts; it means a lot that anyone actually reads this stuff!

with <3

—A Recovering Design Imposter

Glimmers

The whole world seems brand new. Everything in it seems fresh and untouched. It moves in ways not remembered. A quick view of the hills is breathless with wonder. Songs, old friends but new, again, dancing with all imaginable feelings. And descriptive, beautiful, wonderful, joyous words flit just below the surface. Is this what it is to be alive, to see the world again after so long below?

There is no boundary, no rules that say this is true, that this thing isn’t all in the mind. All in the eye of the beholder. And the existence of most, if not all. Own realities that gift uniquely. How can this be said to be true, real and happening? What is it to be most alive? What is existence but this?

What is this newfound insight, this joy that pervades even the darker moments? Glimmers. Glimmers of what is, was and has always been. Shrouded, though it was, for a time. Life is meant to be lived, loved and beautiful. Even the nasty bits, though, those, maybe, only later.

Glimmers of hope, of a better world, people, and words with which to describe the achingly wondrous, esoteric and ethereal things.

Finding them isn’t the trick, it’s believing that they exist, wholly real and tangible.

And today I’m finding that I can begin to believe that they are real. I’m not sure what I can attest them to, all I know is that increasingly I have these descriptive, beautiful, wonderful, joyous words welling out of my inner self. A place that I’ve long forgotten how to find that has somehow found its way to me.

with <3

—A Recovering Design Imposter

9/11 (My Random Thoughts Poem #3)

I'm back with another high school poem to share! With the subject matter of the poem, I think you can understand why this took a bit to work up to sharing.

Day dawns bright and clear only marred by early morning classes

Disaster strikes like an explosion, everyone cannot escape, everything obscured by a thick fog of tears and sorrow

Tears flow and shock runs deep, nobody can work, nobody can concentrate, everyone vacant-eyed and weary

Day ends in pain and sorrow, no relief in sight, only nightmares of sadness, loneliness, and lost loved ones

Some Commentary

I had to dig deep for this one, and likely had to when I wrote the poem years after the day in question. I'm not sure that I like remembering that terrible day. Even many more years later that morning is still a numb shock in my mind. I was never close to anyone directly affected by it. I felt sadness and terror, sure, but it was muted by a numbness I cannot fully describe. I think I honestly was worried that I wasn't feeling enough that morning. I remember going through the motions but nothing was sticking, I barely remember anything from that entire day. We all were in such shock...

I do remember showing up at school and the extreme sorrow of realizing that someone could do something so horrific to intentionally take the lives of others. I don't know if I heard before or at school, there is this weird compression of time and place of that day in my head. But I'm pretty sure that this was my first big understanding that while there is good in humanity, there is also such darkness and violence.

As I don't remember the assignment details I cannot say for certain but I seem to remember that this was one of the "required" type of poems. I don't know that I necessarily wanted to write about this. (And I think it shows in the writing execution.) Either that or this was just one of the better poems I had at the time that fit the details. I have a whole stack of other poems that didn't make the cut. Someday, maybe, I'll share those that were not worthy of this high school project.

As for the design of the buildings and the flames, I have no recollection of what was intentional and what was my air of I just threw this together. Seeing it with more experienced eyes I find that the askew windows seem aptly appropriate for the subject matter, though I do suspect that it wasn't THAT intentional.

I again find myself in awe that I would share this with the world (both then and now) and cringing at my actual teenaged level of skill. It's a further lesson in humility and laughing at myself, in love, of course, always in love.

with <3

—A Recovering Design Imposter

Backstory Time!

I think it’s about time that I shared the story behind my website and blog name. For a long time I’d been using my name as my brand and every time it was time to rework and/or rebrand I really didn’t like seeing my name all over everything. It felt uncomfortable in a lot of ways. To be honest I hadn’t really given much thought to be calling myself by anything else but my name and it had worked. This time, though, I needed something better. I needed something that showed the intentions behind my work and my creative journey.

Beautifully Functional was something that I kept coming back to. I know it’s not the most wowing or awesome name around and, possibly, it could be a bit generic, but I feel that it describes what I want to see in the world. I want to promote seeing that even if we are just functioning, that is still beautiful. Everyone is going at their own pace and in their own portion of the journey we call life. There doesn’t need to be such a strive for perfection. I’ve tried and it definitely didn’t make me happy. It was torture and stress constantly trying to pick apart and perfect every aspect of my life and creativity.

So I’ve branded my design freelancing Beautifully Functional Design and my blog The Wholehearted and Beautifully Functional Blog. I wanted to encourage others that they don’t need to be reaching lofty goals or doing things perfectly, as they say, done is better than perfect. Whatever effort we are putting towards our goals is something worthwhile.

Wholehearted: a word used by Brené Brown to describe living life vulnerable and present.Beautifully Functional: I use to describe living life on a mental awareness journey. Sometimes it's only functional and sometimes it’s beautiful but overall it’s the gestalt of being beautifully functional. It doesn’t describe an end goal, just always striving to live a beautifully functioning existence with yourself and others. This is a place where the process is important.

I’m still unsure where this blog will go, but I’m here for the ride. All I want is to share my journey (with its many rabbit trails and backtracking) to show others that there is beauty in the functional. But, to be perfectly honest, I’m writing this as much for myself as I am for anyone else. I need this blog, probably more than anyone who actually reads my ramblings.

Because I need to know that being functional is still beautiful. I need to know that it's OK to not be OK. I need to hear/see my own voice thrown back to me as written words (it helps me process). I need to see that I can love myself the way that I have loved others. I need to see that I am taking care of myself just as I have taken care of others. I need to know that taking care of yourself includes sitting with uncomfortable emotions...and feelings about those uncomfortable emotions. And all of this is OK, normal, even.

I want to be able to say what needs saying and open the door for more nuanced conversations about everything from hot button issues to just how someone's day was. I want to feel able to share opinions without feeling like I’m pulling a pin and throwing in the grenade. I want to open my heart to holding space for even those that don’t share my opinions, to meet them where they are and have conversation, not yelling matches that call for a change of their opinion. We are all humans, let us not forget to love each other!

with <3

—A Recovering Design Imposter

PS. For no reason outside of cuteness here is a timelapse of a teacup Bantha I drew whom I have named Fodda. Isn't he adorable? (Ok, maybe one further reason: Art prints are available on my shop, here)

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/0b27e5_2a1c63b741c24eb5b511b0bebbf853c8/720p/mp4/file.mp4

Killing My Superartist

You heard me, I want to kill my superartist. But hear me out, there are a lot of benefits, as I’ve been finding the more damaging blows I’ve dealt my delusions of perfection. You see, the problem is that just by existing, my superartist keeps me from being the best artist I can be. Sure, pursuit of improvement is great and I wholeheartedly encourage such, but the pursuit of perfection, of your superwhatever, is delusional at best. At worst it will kill you inside.

Now before you get all excited about such a cool original idea, it’s not. The husband and I have been reading through Velvet Elvis by Rob Bell and I was struck by Rob’s talk of his striving to meet the expectations of, basically be, his superpastor. I especially appreciated the uncomfortable image Rob writes of this:

“So I had one choice - I had to kill superpastor.I had to take him out back and end his pathetic existence.”

Followed a bit later by this:

“And the only way to not be killed by it is to shoot first.Yes, that is what I meant to write.You have to kill your superwhatever.And you have to do it right now.Because your superwhatever will rob you of today and tomorrow and the next day until you take it out back and end it’s life.”

It resonated so much with me as I’d experienced the near death of my creativity due not just to depression or life circumstances (though one could argue chicken or egg here) but also to my pursuit of being superartist. Nothing I did was good enough, nothing was worthy enough. I wasn’t worthy of being called an artist and how could I when I wasn’t living up to superartist? It started out innocently enough, shirking creativity for other things in small ways and then in desperation as nothing I drew/created stacked up to my ridiculously perfect ideal. It all happened so neatly I never saw it coming until it was way too late.

My mantra of late has been, “perfect is the enemy of good.” Which I checked into and apparently is attributed to Voltaire. Anyways, everyone, especially myself, can always find just one more thing to fix about a work. But the dogged pursuit of perfect means that nothing you ever work on will be complete, meaning you will never share whatever it is with the world. And I get it, the world is a big and often scary place with which to share parts of yourself. Often it can feel like you are screaming into the void because nobody seems to be hearing you.

On the other side of it. What will the response be if I mess it all up, if I make a mistake? God forbid, if I have a typo in my post. What then? Honestly I struggle with this a lot, especially in my art. If it isn’t looking good within the first mins of a sketch I have to consciously push myself to continue. The translation from the pretty image in my head to paper (or iPad) isn’t ever going to be a perfect process.

And, I try to remind myself, the only way to ease it is to practice. But practice, especially for me with my art, makes me stare my imperfections straight in the face. That makes it hard to pursue, specifically when things are still so raw from my delusions of perfection.

So, yes, I’m working on killing my superartist one deft, hopefully critical, blow at a time. Unfortunately I don’t see it as clean cut as what Rob Bell wrote, I have to battle my superartist daily to retake the beauty of the imperfect and flawed that is my creativity.

The damage is stacking up against superartist, slowly but surely. I bought an iPad and Apple Pencil to start creating digital art, started seriously drawing and creating art again this year, started an art shop (still as shocked as ever on this one), and the most recent and damning blows against my superartist: buying myself an art app for my iPad called Procreate.

Each step has shed new light on the stupid stories of perfection that I was using to hold myself hostage to constant failure. A main thread of which was that I wasn’t a good enough artist to deserve a good art app (even though it was a mere $9.99 on the app store). I wasn’t a good enough artist to even deserve the joy of creating...that’s how bad it had gotten.

The craziest thing of the whole situation is that I am happiest when I am creating and my superartist led me into believing that I would be better off not doing that because I wasn’t good enough. I’ve been happily overwhelmed now that I’ve been creating again. I’ve got sooo much going on this year, and I couldn’t be happier. Even the discomfort of the hormone shift from stopping my birth control will not get me down for long!

with <3

—A Recovering Design Imposter

PS. This is a video of me trying to do some art and would be an oversite not to share on this post. Especially as this is one of my current projects that nearly didn't make it beyond a frustratingly abandoned sketch. Work in progress. This week has been somewhat rough but I'm actually excited to get back to this scary sea serpent piece.

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/0b27e5_6d301b1a103d4584b4f6277909d542ce/1080p/mp4/file.mp4

Is My Art on the Internet?

I’m so glad you asked, why yes, yes it is! Wait, you didn’t ask...weird, I could have sworn someone asked.

Well, it’s true, my art is on the internet. And not just in that I’m posting some of it on social media. I’ve taken a big step this week and started an art shop on Society6. I know, it’s huge!

I never, in a million years, thought that I’d ever have the courage (or want) to try selling my art online. But somehow, getting my creative mojo back has uncovered a previously untapped part of myself. I started this year with a loose goal of creating something artsy at least once a week...then I started drawing/painting way more than that, nearly daily, actually.

So, to be clear, I’m still baby-stepping my way to a full shop. Currently, as I write this, I have one piece that is active in my shop. But hey, it’s a start! I have plans for a couple more pieces and then, who knows. I’m hoping the creative juices keep flowing and I keep finding art ideas that I can add to my shop.

It’s a tough process, especially being a continually recovering design imposter. I enjoy the act of creating a piece, but as soon as you add the “would someone buy this” filter to it I can’t even see how that would ever be possible. Why would someone buy my work when there are other obviously more talented artists out there?

Now that is the question. Why? Well, I’ve had a lot of practice answering this...but no luck with a solid answer. I’m currently going with the quality control of “do I like it?” If the answer is yes, maybe someone else will buy it, who knows. So far it’s working...unless I fall into the old habit of overthinking everything...or the vortex of time scarcity (more on that in a later post).

The moral I’ve been finding in all of this is that, really, we shouldn’t be pushing so hard towards things we feel we should be doing. We should be trying to live a happier and more fulfilled life and maybe, just maybe, your next step/goal will find you when you’re least suspecting it. I know I was definitely not looking to sell my art. I’ve probably never been at a point in my life before where I even thought my art was remotely sellable. I’ll even let you in on a big secret; I still don’t. Not really, it’s the joy that creating and sharing with the world brings that allows me to sidestep myself into selling some of what I create.

Well, without further ado, here is the link to my new art shop: https://society6.com/beautifullyfunctionaldesign

with <3

—A Recovering Design Imposter

PS. This is the art piece that you can purchase on my shop right now, I call it "Star Nursery"