Counting Down...

... to what, exactly?

To walking across a stage in a big black robe, and turning a collection of strings on top a piece of cardboard on my head. Knowing the whole while I still don't have a job because I'm too qualified for the entry-level positions and not qualified enough for the mid-level.

BUT, I'm still excited about it!!! Graduation is 43 days from today. I just have to get through five classes with passing grades (and hopefully better than merely passing!) and then I can breathe a huge sigh of relief. Graduation is near, signaling a chapter in my life complete.

***

I miss my daddy. A lot. I can't believe he won't be standing with me 43 days from now, telling me how proud he is. I know he is proud of me, but it's just not the same.

***

I've gotten my creative juices flowing once again. Yesterday, I dug out all my painting supplies, which haven't been used in, oh, almost 8 years!! I made a not-so-good painting that started out abstract and ended up looking like an 8-year-old drawing a sunset. But, now that I've written that, I realize that it kind of WAS like an 8-year-old's painting, since I haven't painted in 8 years!



Anyhow, so I painted this and while I know it's not great, it made me happy. It gave me the inspiration to play with colors on the three new webpages I'm making, and I'm itching to not only paint more -- really paint this time -- but also to write!

I'm making a list of things to do tonight, since I have yet another night to myself thanks to 4 12-hour shifts my hubby is working this week (in a row!). So far it includes: dinner, paint, write, watch Buffy, do at least 2 pages of writing on each of my Capstone projects, and read half a chapter of Anatomy. I should probably do the ugly stuff first, and save the creative stuff as a reward, huh?

... 43 days. That's it. After that, I can take the "ugly stuff" off my list!

Spring!

I took my last mid-term a couple hours ago and now have 11 days without school! Spring Break rocks (I only wish we got Fall Breaks of a worthwhile length, too)! I get to spend those 11 days with Lillie, who is getting so big so fast.

But, here I am, only 2 hours out from taking my test, and instead of celebrating 11 school-free days, I'm bored. I keep pulling up my school online panel, looking for work to do. After 7 years of college and 12 years of K-12 before that (yes, I realize there are 13 years between K and 12, but I skipped a grade so I only had 12), I guess I don't know how to handle myself when school isn't an issue.

I should probably learn pretty soon, though, because I have only 59 days until graduation, and I've decided to take a year off before grad school. During that year, I hope to make some money to get caught up on bills and live comfortably for a while, instead of stressing about money all the time. And hopefully be enjoying life with a job that allows me to be myself.

But for now, I'm trying to play New Mario Bros on my Wii but it froze up. This is the 2nd game in a row from GameFly to freeze, so either GameFly is shipping me some low-quality items (though they are scratch-free, so it's weird), or my Wii is acting up. Anyhow, without that option... what is there to do? Per my most recent post, lots of things. But I'm so tired I don't have the energy to be too creative. Maybe I'll take my guitar mid-term (yes, it's due in the middle of spring break), or maybe I'll curl up with the Michael Crichton I've been reading (Airframe) and relax.

Yeah.... relaxing.... I think I could do it. Maybe.

Blank Canvas

There's something amazing about a blank canvas. Just moments ago, I opened a brand new, completely fresh document in Dreamweaver, to start brainstorming for a new website. On one hand, there's a sense of being overwhelmed by all the possibilities and not knowing which to choose. On the other, there's all the possibilities.

I read something yesterday while helping my husband with his homework. In Jack Foster's book, "How to Get Ideas," chapters 5 and 6 are about failure and creativity, respectively. Last night, as I spent 6 hours trying to load my website to its server, the lesson about failure really set in -- Without failure, we cannot learn, and we cannot grow creatively because failing forces us to try out new options, find better ways to do something, and draw inspiration from unlikely sources to meet our goals. Which is what chapter 6, Get More Inputs, was about.

The two things Foster emphasizes in Chapter 6 are 1. Get out of your rut, and 2. Learn how to see. He says to try something new, such as learning a new language, taking a new route to work, re-reading an old classic, find a new hobby, go to lunch with someone different, and just all-around shake up your life. In doing so, you will receive new inputs, which ultimately means new sources of creativity.

Reading those chapters inspired me. I already have a new-things list I update every year. This year, I'm already learning guitar and Greek, which have both been on my list for a while. I've met new people, tasted new foods, and learned to think of things differently. And it's only March.

All of this new stuff you experience, whatever it is, goes into the blank canvas. It's up to you to mesh your new inputs with the old stuff you had jangling around in your brain, and the result is the most brilliant thing imaginable -- creativity.

So, I sit here still, with my bright orange screen glaring at me (a quick "color: #f60" made it that way, but I'm sure it'll change once I play around), a guitar propped up against a wooden artists' easel, and my laptop open to Liquid Story Binder, my writer software of choice. And after the brief moment of fright at all the possibilities, I'm now ready to get my hands dirty, make a few mistakes, and see where they lead me. I'm sure I'll learn something new, and that will inspire something else to spring forth.

Creativity is a wonderful thing, a gift I often have taken for granted. Helping my husband, who wants to be creative but not to expand his horizons to do it, with his homework has helped me see that it's not something you're given, like a gene you can't turn off. Creativity is a curiosity to seek out new information to help you fill your blank canvas, and seeing every one as an opportunity instead of an overwhelming task.

March 1, 2010

I just realized what the date is. It's already March 1. Two whole months of 2010 have flown by. I can't believe it.

So much is going through my head, and normally writing helps me get it all out. But sometimes -- rarely -- I am so highly emotional that I can't write anything. And that's how the last 6 weeks have been for me. Even now, I'm not sure how much I can get out.

On January 14, 2010, my daddy died unexpectedly. It was a Wednesday. No, really it was a Thursday because it was 12:32 in the morning. Wednesday the 13th, I got a call that he was going into the E.R. The flu he'd had since Monday the 11th wasn't letting up, and he was having trouble breathing.

Let me back up and say that my daddy was fine Monday morning. He sent me an IM saying he was on his way to his first class at IUK, and he'd call me when he was done. I sat there (my first class wasn't until 6pm) waiting anxiously for his call, to find out how his first day of college after 18 years away was. After several years of talking about it, my daddy was going back to school for a Bachelor's degree. He wanted to study psychology and become a counselor and work within his church to help others. Somehow, instead of all that making it easier, it only makes it harder that he's gone.

So, Monday afternoon I called him and found out he didn't go to school. He was very sick -- suddenly and awfully -- and couldn't come to the phone. My brother was at his apartment sitting with him, and he was worried. I got this nagging feeling that he needed to see a doctor immediately. With my daddy's bad heart, a normal bad cold or mild flu could land him in the hospital. But he wouldn't go.

Tuesday came and went and he wasn't feeling better. The bad feeling got worse, and I considered skipping school to go see him and force him to go to the hospital. I didn't, though. I would have, in a heartbeat, if I'd known that the next time I'd see him he would be unconscious, on a respirator, with a balloon pumping his heart because his body couldn't do it. Because I had this bad feeling -- one I couldn't shake but kept trying to tell myself was an overreaction -- I passed a message on to him through my brother. I told Daddy that he needed to go to the hospital, if not for himself, then for me and my brothers. And if not for us, then for school. Because he needed to know whether he had to withdraw, and if so, he had to do it early enough to get Ws and not Fs. And if he didn't have to withdraw, he needed to know so he could start catching up on his work.

Wednesday evening, when the rest of my anatomy class was listening to a lecture on blood, I was sitting in the ICU waiting room in Kokomo, where my mom told me that the reason my daddy conceded to get checked out was because someone had told him he needed an excuse for his teachers. I felt good about myself for a minute, knowing it was my words that got him to the hospital.

That good feeling didn't last, though, because the doctor said his prognosis was bad. Real bad. I got to see him, and tell him that he had to get better so he could come to my college graduation in May. I wanted that picture with me in my cap and gown, standing between my smiling parents. I didn't get it in high school, and now I won't ever get it because it took me seven years to get through college. I told my daddy that I still wanted him to walk me down the aisle, that I know I disappointed him by eloping and when I have the money I want a real wedding ceremony -- primarily so that he could do what he'd always dreamed off, and give his only daughter away. And I told him that I wasn't going home until he was better, that I'd miss all the school I had to to make sure I didn't miss anything.

Most importantly, I told him that I loved him and not to worry about anyone but himself. I guess he listened.

Three hours later, he started a series of cardiac arrests, and each time the nurse would come out to tell me his heart had started beating again, another would be on her heels to tell me it had stopped again. I got to watch, to see that they were doing all they could for him, but it was so brutal. CPR in real life is nothing like you see on TV. It's not a quick series of calm, small thrusts and a doctor with just the right amount of angst in his voice counting to 15. It's much more violent, and horrible.

At half past twelve, his doctor asked me to make the toughest decision I've ever had to make. The CPR wasn't helping, and they'd given him all the medicine they could give. He'd had five heart attacks, essentially, and we already knew that even if he came out of this he might have severe brain trauma from the lack of oxygen. He needed my permission to stop trying to resuscitate him.

At 12:31am, I agreed. The doctors didn't have to save my daddy. He was already with God.

At 12:32am, the doctor called it. At that second, my heart shattered.

I planned the funeral, I picked out the casket, I ordered the grave marker (which, by the way, doesn't come with the cost of the funeral itself), I picked out the flowers, I wrote the obituary, I bought an outfit, I endured the fighting between my brothers, I held my 14 year old brother while he made the worst sound I've ever heard, shaking uncontrollably, I explained to my 10 year old that Grandpa Bob went to be with Grandma Boots in Heaven, and I gave all PR responsibility to my husband. The poor guy, who was in his own right devastated, spent hours calling and texting my friends and family members. I love him for that more than he might know. And I love all my friends and family members who answered the correspondence at 1 in the morning, some of them even offering to come sit with me despite 8am work schedules. I met with the funeral director, I picked out his gravesite, I paid the bills, I went through everyone's pictures for the DVD (which Mike, bless his heart, made so it would be done right), and I wrote the worst poem I've ever written, both from an emotional standpoint and actual wordage. It probably sucks so bad, I'm embarrassed to reread it. But it was for my daddy, and he knows I anguished over every word, and read it with love.

In all of that, I forgot to eat, I couldn't sleep, and my nose ran so much I went through two boxes of Puffs with lotion.

It is now almost 6 weeks later, but it feels like I just buried my daddy yesterday. The wound is still raw, but I've managed to get a little of my life back. Enough to get caught up on my schoolwork and put together a collection of the poetry and songs my dad wrote.

I even took a shot at revising the novel we were collaborating on, but I couldn't do it. I will, but not yet. More on that later.

It's now 3:12am on March 1, 2010. But the date means nothing, because I feel empty. I'm counting down to graduation on May 9, but I can't get excited. Without my daddy, it won't be the same. And I know he's watching me, and that he'll be there in spirit, but it's not the same, and it never will be.