Maranda Russell's Blog, page 63

Short Poetry – Doubt Lingers

I love short poetry, it is actually my favorite kind of poetry. There is something magical about being able to express a truth, or paint a vivid image, with only a few words. So, when I woke up today with these few lines echoing in my head, I had to write them down and share:

“From the first light

of the gods,

till the last tide

of the moon,

doubt lingers…”

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(Image from Pixabay)

Poetic Art #2 – Shadows and the Sun

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“I live for these days,

when colors abound

and truth can be found

in the shadows

and the sun.”

Check out my art for sale at my Ebay store!

A Genuinely Good Day! I Felt Like a Kid!

Yesterday I had a genuinely good day! My husband and I went to a little new age shop that is always fun to browse through. I love all that metaphysical “woo woo” stuff, and got some cool new candles, an awesome black skull container, and a book on aromatherapy. After that, we visited a local Native American mounds park, with a beautiful waterfall:

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For lunch, we stopped at a quaint little pizza place, which sat us next to an old fireplace with ice skates hanging on it (I love little details like that!):

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After eating, we drove by an old neighborhood park near a river and decided to stop and check it out. They had really old playground equipment, like the stuff I grew up with! I couldn’t resist the temptation to play on their bouncy toys:

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Or climb to the top of the jungle gym:

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I also played on their old, flat board swingsets and a big, bouncy dinosaur that looked a lot like Barney. After playing, we took a walk along the river. I did fall at one point and woke up with a huge bruise on my thigh today. I knew I would be extremely sore today after all that activity, but it was worth it! Days like that make life worth living.

 

Poetic Art #1 – Sleep Through Our Nightmares

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“Night, and the evening comes,

while we all struggle

to sleep through our nightmares.”

(Check out my art for sale on Ebay!)

Late Night, Can’t Sleep Thoughts

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The following is a journal entry of random thoughts and feelings I wrote down one night when I couldn’t sleep. As you can probably tell, I wasn’t in the best mood when I wrote it:

“Lately I’ve been deeply struggling with so many dark thoughts. Not necessarily dark thoughts about myself, but about the world and humanity in general.

I feel like I have lost all sense of personal ethics and could do anything if pushed far enough. Lie. Steal. Kill. Betray. I don’t feel guilty about this though, because I think it is a universal human weakness. I’m not sure that ethics and morality even exist once you push a human being past rational thought.

One thought resounds through my consciousness, that much of humanity isn’t worth the breath that is wasted on them. The twisted side of me wants to see the world burn, even if I burn with it. I am often confronted with the very real possibility that the world would be better off if humans went extinct.”

 

New Original Art Drawings! Feeling Creative Again!

I’ve been feeling artistic and creative again lately, which is an awesome feeling. Honestly, when I don’t feel creative at all, I don’t feel like myself. That in itself can add to my depression and anxiety. Sometimes I wonder if some of the meds I take don’t affect my creative output. It is a common belief among many artists that antidepressants and other mental health medications can dim or even entirely restrict the creative impulse. I’m not sure if that is entirely true, but I do feel there is at least a grain of truth in it. Perhaps, because anything that numbs you or tries to restrict emotions (even bad ones) can’t help but dull the creative spirit, which relies so much on the ability to feel deeply and be sensitive.

Anyhow, last night I made a couple new drawings and thought I would share them! There’s no particular theme with these two, I just went with whatever came out.

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If you like my artwork, check out my Ebay store to see what I have for sale!

 

New ACEO Artworks! Fireworks & Wedding Themes

The past few days have been rough, due to my back going out again, so I haven’t been in the mood to write much, but I figured I would share a couple ACEO artworks I made this week.

The first is just an explosion of color and motion. It makes me think of fireworks, which seems appropriate since tomorrow is the 4th of July:

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I also made a wedding themed sticker collage that I thought turned out pretty cool. I especially like the almost see-through effect created by laying the alcohol markers over the stickers:

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If you like these artworks or want to see my others currently for sale, check out my Ebay store!

When Non-Profits Only Care About the Money

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On Facebook I shared a post about some tax changes that are being made to churches and non-profit institutions. The debate that started, made me think about my own experience working for a non-profit organization and I wanted to share a little bit of that here. For around 6 months or so, I worked for a non-profit religious hospital system. My job was to be one of the people in the emergency department who collected patient information (especially insurance information) and processed payments.

From the beginning, it was drilled into us that it was about the money. We were hounded to make sure we collected certain percentages of money from patients while they were still there in the building, whether they could afford it or not. We were encouraged to apply pressure to them to pay at least a percentage that day, regardless of their personal circumstances. Although patients could legally ask to be billed later, we were told to NEVER tell them that, and only offer that option if they brought it up first.

We were told bluntly that the hospital had to make sure to look like they were doing enough “public outreach” to keep their non-profit tax status, so when they did run public assistance programs we were told to advertise them when talking to patients. It became clear that they didn’t necessarily do programs for the poor because they CARED about them, it was so they could continue to get the tax breaks and other non-profit advantages. I heard so much negative talk there about Medicaid patients and the poor. I was also told flat out that the company was purposefully looking into opening more locations in areas where the people were more likely to pay, and closing locations where the populations were poorer.

One huge issue I had was that even when someone was brought to the ER and died, we were pressured to try to get money from their grieving relatives. More than once, those in charge actually chose not to tell family members that their loved one had passed away until AFTER we collected insurance information and copays/deductible payments. They would send us in, and we would know the family’s loved one was gone, but we were told to lie and pretend we knew nothing. This killed me to have to do. One time a lady begged me for information on her husband who was dead, and I couldn’t tell her anything. I also struggled to go up to a mother whose child has just tried to commit suicide and ask her for money. I felt like scum.

In the end, I couldn’t keep this job due to my own health issues, but I couldn’t have kept doing it with a clear conscience either.

Feeling Like Shit Art

I’ve been feeling like shit for a few days now (honestly, it has been longer than that, but the last few days were especially bad). So, my creative side has definitely been expressing that. I decided to make a couple ACEO sticker collages, and as you can see below, my mood comes across loud and clear with my black graffiti scrawls on the colorful backgrounds. I wouldn’t exactly call it “good art”, but it is expressive.

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I am an Emotional Writer

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I am an emotional writer. I write from whatever my current point of view and mood dictates. Often my writing may be entirely contradictory or may not even represent my general consensus on a given subject, but is instead a snapshot of a moment in time.

Reading through my journal entries and blog posts may appear to be a debate between various personalities – and in a sense, perhaps it is. No, I do not suffer from some sort of multiple personality disorder, but I use writing to discover and decipher my own jumbled thoughts and feelings. When I start writing, I often don’t know exactly where it is going to go, what the end result will be, or what I will learn along the way, but that is part of the magic of the creative process.

Please keep in mind when reading this blog, that what is being presented is often unfiltered, barely edited, stream-of-consciousness prose that represents only a momentary glimpse of my overall experience of life. If you dislike what I write today, stick around, because you just might love what I write tomorrow!