Drawing

Discover, Create, Repeat

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When you go about rediscovering the world in middle age, you don’t feel like an adult — confident about what you know and comfortable with the things you don’t know. Suddenly, you know nothing.

I have joked to my husband that, for the last two weeks, I’ve felt a bit like Milton Wadams from Office Space, shuffling and mumbling as I reprocess each sensation and landscape — gravel under the feet, the plaintive sound of an orange cat needing to be petted just so, dishes arriving at the dentist.

Now, I’m actually learning to embrace the shuffling and robotic processing of sensory input. Rather than being a malcontented, midlife crisis, I’m trying to experience the world as if I were a child again.

My only source of malcontent has been how difficult painting has become difficult this week. The sensors still seem disconnected from output. Partly out of desperation (knowing that non-writing/drawing artist is a monster courting disaster) my post-labyrinthectomy journey of discovery seems to be bringing me back to my blog – my original writing and drawing diary.

Now, as I am watching every little detail around me, I mentally record the mundane and magical moments around our yard like a robot, searching, not for artificial intelligence, but authentic interaction with the world. This voyage of discovery will undoubtedly reroute my journey of creation. 

When I was first diagnosed with Ménière’s disease three years ago, I was told that it was a disability that automatically disqualified you from multiple professions. Two years ago, I was told to stop using stairs taking public transportation by myself because likely and actual unpredictable “drop attacks.” I was told the disease would end when I lost my hearing in the affected air. 

Last week, when I give up the hearing to prevent any more false, it would’ve been easy to see the change as a loss, as acquiring more disability. 

Instead, the opposite is happening. It may take some time to be able to drive again, and the shuffling will probably persist for a while. That’s OK because the shuffling is part of rediscovery, and that will lead to a whole new chapter of creativity.

Zoom Out

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Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man,Undeterred


For most of the almost 6 years that I’ve been writing this blog, almost every single post has been accompanied by an illustration. started to change about a week ago when my stack of unillustrated but otherwise just finished posts started getting that musty, too-long-in-the-drawer smell.

I don’t have anything against photography. I actually shot weddings and portraits for almost 5 years when Thing1 was little. Thing2 came on the scene, and suddenly I needed both my hands to focus on him, on a new work-at-Home-mom role, on everything except focusing lenses and clicking a shutter. 

I traded a DSLR for a point-and-shoot, and then the point-and-shoot for whatever camera happened to me on my cell phone, operating on the theory that the best camera for Snapchat‘s of the kids was the one I kept with me all the time. 

I thought art was secondary.

I still scribbled my notebooks. When we took the kids to the art museum, I sketched my sketchbook pretending I might one day a great artist. It wasn’t until I started my blog as part of writing class, that I began drawing again in earnest.

The funny thing was that the drawing was not about art – or so I thought. It was something to add to the writing on the blog. It was stock illustration I didn’t have to buy and images I didn’t have to wait until the kids were occupied during daylight hours to make. 

It was utilitarian. And then it became something more, it reminded me it had always been something more. The drawing took on a life of its own, enabling but also becoming an integral part of the blog.

I will never stop drawing again.

Just as drawing became a tool to enable the blog, however, an old creative outlet, photography – altered and not, is starting to re-emerge as a facilitator. I doubt I will purchase another expensive DSLR, but I have reclaimed a mirrorless camera I traded to the Big Guy before our trip to Iceland. 

Right now the photography is a tool. It helps writing progress without letting the creative and meditative but time-consuming task of illustrating slow it down. It helps make sure nothing gets in the way of responding to inspiration.

I’ve been at this a few years now. In that time I’ve learned that the art is never secondary; only the tools are, and allowing yourself to zoom out, to pick up a new one, can become a source of inspiration all on its own.