I Went Beyond My Comfort Zones and Now I Have the all the Feels
Not that long ago I felt deceased on the inside, and wished to be deceased on the outside. Matchy matchy.
A buuuuunch of shit has happened since then. From where I sit now almost everything looks different.
I was finally forced to take time off from working.
With time, the wherewithal to actually do some of the things I’ve always wanted to do emerged. Then, I found more and more things I wanted to do. I started doing them. I do them. I did them. All of them.
And then what?
I grew.
OK?
I fucking grew. I am growing.
Time to be outside of my comfort zone
I left my comfort zone and actually took the mental health leave my doctor recommended.
Usually they recommend I take time off, and I do not take time off.
I ignore them and go right on doin’ what I’m doin’.
That’s been a revelation.
So many positives: Hobbies, interests, feeling good, finding peace in solitude, sleeping, waking feels good, blah blah life is joyful and full of possibilities and even in the moments when it sucks it’s still acceptable.
And the negative: constantly feeling like an asshole for needing and most of all for taking time off of work. The stigma of mental health malfunctions. The silence around them and the super awkward way that nobody really can fucking talk to you about it because nobody knows much and can’t or won’t ask and don’t know how to talk about it. It’s unchartered territory.
The stigma of being on disability. Legitimately using my disability insurance, for the first time in 20 years, because my brain evidently needed to fully unravel and reboot — that feels really fucked up to me. My doctor has recommended 6 more months of time off, but disability won’t pay for that and I’m not ‘Long-Term-Disabled’, I’m just going through like, a whole bunch of shit.
Who makes these rules?
On writing outside of comfort
I left my comfort zone and started putting my writing out on the regular. Tried different styles, and voices and genres and all the things.
Many of them sucked.
Like all caps, SUCKED.
And that’s fine.
That’s fine. I keep trying new things. Always fun and always humbling.
A writing practice, a routine!
I am prolific when I’m in the zone and I can churn and burn if my pantser-pants are on fire.
Often they are.
I’ve also slowly embraced the reality that some days, the words won’t come, or the ones that will are not for the general public consumption.
The words that come are so fucked up, so sad, or so true, that I need to sit on them for at least another decade before I share them.
I’m a writer, damnit
Perhaps if only out of need to feel legitimized as a writer — largely (though not completely) self imposed, I’m now back in school. Kind of.
After numerous attempts to parlay my medical background in veterinary medicine into a lucrative, hilarious and soul affirming writing career and having little ‘luck’ — I stumbled upon a medical writing program at Harvard University!
Impulsively, I immediately applied.
I got in.
I didn’t think I’d go — but hey — fuck comfort zones.
I went. I mean — I’m going.
I’m one of only two veterinarians in a class of other medical professionals (mostly human-medical-doctory people)and I’m about to voluntarily be forced to learn a whole bunch of shit I don’t already know, which sounds scintillating.
Maybe it will make me a better writer.
Maybe it’ll turn me off of medical science careers of any kind completely — most days I feel like I’’m already 50% there. Maybe it’ll inspire me to do things I can’t fathom in this moment. Who the fuck knows.
I’m outta my comfort zone and anything feels possible.
Textiles, textures, colors and light
Past the edge of my comfort zone, I found a desire to be immersed in art projects of all shapes, sizes, colors and textures.
Only, I’m not an artist.
I mean, I wasn’t.
But that’s what I wanted to do. Play with colors, textures, textiles, shapes and touch things, make things and look at things.
I jumped into that.
Like a bungee jump. A pattern has emerged over the past 6 months. Rather than fighting it, trying to contain or control it, I just allow the natural ebb and flows of concurrent creativity and motivation to exist as naturally as I can muster. As the pattern goes — I plunge down into the art hole, I bouyantly bounce back up above it for a few beats, and then as if I’m a heavy-hitter — I descend back into the art hole.
In my art hole, the following things have happened. In no particular order: I started rehapping old furniture, reupholstered chairs, tables. I learned how to make stained glass, which evolved into my rehabbing old window frames and replacing glass panes, sanding and repainting frames, making things look…. different.
Ever the impulsive bitch, I joined an upcycling community that posed a challenge for their summit (which I also enrolled in and attended not enough of). The challenge was to create something with a piece of cloth bearing the summit logo.
My preferred “textile” of choice, is old windows. Enthusiastically, erratically, incorrectly and creatively — I built a ramshackle greenhouse out of old windows. It has fairy twinkle solar lights and houses a baby dogwood tree and a bunch of succulent pups.
Art Class — You’re never too old!
Didactically, I took a bunch of art classes at our local community center, and then started making prints at home. I love color, multiples, repetition, words, and texture. I can and do do all of the things in my art studio and I love it.
- Watercolor? Yes.
- Spraypaint? yes.
- Refinishing furniture? yes.
- Upholstering old chairs? Yes.
- Stained glass? yes.
- Caulk a new window pane into an old frame? yes.
- Monotype print? yes.
- Linocut print? Yes.
- All of this fucking yes. I love it love it love it.
Oh you found some cool beads and string? Great lets macrame the shit out of that together.
Studio/Shop/Future
It’s bright and messy and then clean and then messy and I have all I need or could ever want to play with in there. Permanently suspended in 3rd grade Art class — that’s where I’d like to be for a while.
My 3rd grade art teacher played Violent Femmes cassettes on her boombox, seemed to me a hot wreck of a woman and I now deeply identify with that complexity.
I had a lovely time in her class.
That segued into an Etsy shop that I openend a couple days ago.
I have little idea what I’m doing, (or maybe I do but I’m afraid to try 100% because what if I fail?!) Like, yall.
I’m a goddamn veterinarian.
Maybe my shit is super amateur and will fall apart in shipping. Maybe not. Maybe these initial prototyes are just a starting point for a craft that I will master like a motherfucker. Maybe this will just fizzle out into another one of Emily’s idiotic plans that she pooped out on (thank you ADHD etc.)
Maybe this is just a necessary stop on my life’s journey towards where ever the fuck I’m going. Which, hopefully is a plot of land with no neighbors and a tiny house on it. And goats and chickens and dogs.
I don’t know man. I’m happy to be alive. And it’s been a long while since I’ve said that earnestly.
Big finish
I’ve learned a shitload about myself and I now understand that what I thought was my comfort zone was actually just what was familiar, not what actually brings me true comfort in my soul and bones.
I’ve had this epiphany, and I’m motivated to create a new world in which my actual comfort and personal peace and well being are my primary concern. Not money, not status, not cool job title, not looking like or being the embodiment of a ‘having her shit together person’.
