Triumphant, the Phoenix rises yet again

Respresentative of my pre-design career creations, Tree of Fire is a black posterboard cut
on red posterboard, digitally enhanced, c. 2000. To see what will hopefully influence the
illustrations on this blog, check highschoolart tag on my Flickr photostream.

[Piggybacking off of yesterday's Recovery is Transformation post, I decided to publish this post that has been sitting patiently in the drafts folder for about a month waiting for me to illustrate it. Alas, the words in my head are demanding their rightful place on the page first. I've come to the resolution that I can illustrate a post at a later point. Pics in my head are awesome, though. I can't wait for you to see them as well as read them. Without further ado...]

A storyline that is developing + will continue to play out in these articles is the disconnect, discord + subsequent distress that is created when unrealistic expectations clash + collide hard with reality.

Understatement of the year: the internal devastation that results is difficult to traverse.

Recovery is Transformation

Assumption: "Just give me something to fix this... Now?!"

See also: "You just need to... take this pill" "... sleep more/less/better" "... eat more/less/better" "... pray more" "... relax" "... stop worrying so much" "... [fill in the blank here with your fave well-meaning yet overly simplistic advice that you've repeatedly received over the years in the aims to magically cure your problem of being anything that diverges from 'the norm']"

Fight the Power with Gratitude

There are plenty of articles out floating around on the web today + plenty of people tweeting about what they are grateful for on this Thanksgiving Day. I think it's fantastic. But, the assumption that I'm challenging today is: Why do we only give thanks on Thanksgiving?

Old Enemies, New Allies

Like the peacocks wandering
the walkways of the zoo
who have twice the autonomy
the giraffes + the tigers do,
saying:"No one can stop me.
No one clips my claws!
Now everyone watch me
scale these outside walls!"

—mewithoutYou, "A Glass Can Only Spill What It Contains"
  
 

We are a generation that rages against all kinds of machines. But, no one can rise against an enemy unknown; especially one that parades around as a fact of life.

You may have noticed the recently added subtitle: a depression-hacker's guide to challenging assumptions + living life uninhibited. I wisely chose 'assumptions' because they are the things we've learned are the 'givens' of life + the 'that's just the way it is'-s.

We've picked up all kinds of assumptions over the years: first through mimicking family, then through messages taught by school, community + society + finally through life experience; assumptions being the conclusions we've drawn to explain all of our successes + failures.

The more years, the more assumptions + the more deeply those assumptions are ingrained. They are both the things we take for granted + the things we assume to be true. Assume being the operative word.

The "Other C" Word

Earlier this year I road-tripped to NYC to for a MOVE Community Conference hosted by To Write Love On Her Arms (TWOLHA). It was an experience like no other for me.

At that two-day conference, we participated in about 7 lecture-style sessions as well as smaller break-out discussion sessions. We talked openly, candidly + honestly about brokenness, addiction, anxiety, self-injury, depression, eating-disorders + suicide.

You'd think it would have been the kind of conference I walked away from completely defeated + sure that all hope is lost in the world. Quite the opposite, it was the most liberating, refreshing + encouraging single event that I have ever had the pleasure of being a part of; particularly in the realm of mental health.

All Things Considered, I Choose Manual Labor

The crucial thing to live for is the
sense of life in what you are doing, +
if that is not there, then you are living
according to other peoples' notions
of how life should be lived.
—Joseph Campbell
 

Campbell also poignantly says, "The land of people doing what they think they ought to do or have to do is the wasteland." I read these two well-known quotes by Mr. Follow-Your-Bliss in the book Undoing Perpetual Stress by Richard O'Connor (highly recommend). They are so appropriately fitting for this post that has been brewing in me for some time. The inspiration comes from the NYTimes.com article, "The Case for Working With Your Hands," which overviews the book with the same title by Matthew Crawford.

What to do, what to do?
I discovered that NY Times article in September at a crucial point in my recovery from depression, when I was getting myself together to start working again. The questions, of course, that I have agonized over in search of 'the perfect answer' to (at least a hundred times since I was a kid):

"What will I do?"

"What can I do?"

"What am I good at?"