Careful Kid. You Might Have a Piece of Glass in Your Eye.

Managing family life might just kill me before my day job does.

Approximately 680 days are left for me to prepare to leave my day job. So far, I have:

1. Bought a book on meditation but haven’t finished it or started meditating.
2. Been successfully juried into two holiday markets but neither have happened yet, which equals all outlay, no income.
3. Taken my friend out for an extremely enjoyable birthday dinner, the cost of which in no way aligned with the goal to build my savings.

All of these things have contributed to my sense of not making a ton of “all in 55” headway thus far, but perhaps the most difficult thing I’m having to navigate through toward goal attainment is my family.

I mentioned in my first ever post on Substack that I have two adult daughters and a third who is eight years old. My oldest daughter has decided that she must rescue a dog. We lost our 16-year-old dachshund in February. My daughter laments about how much she misses petting our dog. I have tried to reason with her about what she doesn’t miss is the walking, feeding, bathing, rearranging her life around, paying for and overall caring for a dog because she so very rarely did any of it – definitely none of the financing.

We have had many time-consuming, contentious and emotional conversations about her desire to acquire a dog and at one point I put my foot firmly down and said no, that one day we would get a puppy, but not for a year or two. She let it go for about a month. Then, a few weeks ago, she was back at it, sending pictures of dogs she wanted to adopt. Incredibly cute, pull at the heart stings type of pictures. A cruel, twisted and ultimately effective campaign. Simultaneously with the screen shots, she continued working on us to see it her way, to trust her intention and ability to fully care for a dog without relying on us, even though:

• she currently lives with us,
• she goes to her boyfriend’s almost every weekend,
• we mostly work from home and,
• she is still in full-time university and has a part-time job.

Just getting those details on the record.

Anyway, we are now staring down the tunnel of Adonis, a three-year-old street dog from Barbados that has a very real chance of moving in at the end of November. She played to her parents’ weakness. What else can I say?

Pictures sent to us of ADONIS! Seriously, what were our options here?

I have a good idea of how much of my attention this dog will command, and the vast extent to which I am capable of willingly giving it. This worries me because although my daughter refuses to capitulate that caring for a dog resembles caring for a child, I know from 16 years of it that I will be opening our door to a fourth child. More time demands from family means more opportunity to let my goal slide. I will have to closely monitor myself and the time I commit to (and yes, delight in) this pet. I say this in anticipation of my daughter’s good intentions competing with the reality of her 23-year-old life.

But the dog saga is just a warmup to the title of this story. I used it to demonstrate the time, energy and effort allocated to addressing the needs and decision making of all family members.

Which brings us to Monday of this week.

My workday had just ended and I’d wandered downstairs to my studio to continue to prepare for the holiday markets (that I’m hoping to make a killing at with my very targeted commercial crafting). Ten minutes in, I hear my husband and youngest daughter return from the walk home from school. Very shortly thereafter, I hear wailing coming from upstairs.

I found our daughter in the washroom, face red and blotted, tears streaming through tightly shut and squinted eyes, tissue box griped in hand and mouth wide open in full on cries. My husband was nowhere to be found, having apparently headed down the back stairs to look for me. Through large sobs and a snot and tear covered face, she was able to spit out that she had gotten something under her eyelid on the walk home which was painfully scratching her eye.

I immediately began filling the sink with warm water. At the same time, I shared a positive story with her of a time I was young and alone and got something in my eye which I eventually got out by remaining calm. I put her hair in a ponytail and had her lean over the sink and gently bring water up to her eye and try to blink into it, explaining that sometimes an eyelash can curl into the eye and be the culprit.

Between eye rinses, I held her eye open and had her look down toward the floor so I could examine the top of her eyeball. I reassured her that her eye was not scratched and there was no evidence of any damage or big cause for concern. She was still crying and squinting but asking questions and encouraging me to continue to pull on her eyelashes and wipe away the tears working to eject the foreign object. Half an hour later, we selected a board game to play and soon after, all was forgotten.

There’s a point to me telling you this and the dog story. It’s actually me attempting to further justify to myself my lack of progress in my first 20 or so days since declaring my intentions. Let’s just say – I’ve got 99 problems and my family is one!

Here’s what I came to learn about the eye incident.

It was after our daughter was all tucked away in bed that my husband nonchalantly fills in the blanks for me. He had felt stressed because our daughter’s distress was escalating, and he hadn’t been sure how to handle it. As a result, he had somehow got it into his head that it was helpful to tell her that she probably had a piece of dirt or glass blow under her eyelid from the construction site along a street they walk home on. GLASS. UNDER. HER. EYELID.

Just for a moment, appreciate that he said this to an eight-year-old who is in pain and tempted, as any of us would be, to rub her eye in response to the great discomfort. Yet, she was also smart enough to realize that she shouldn’t rub her eye and that even without rubbing it could be very dangerous to have GLASS UNDER HER EYELID. This kid was scared shitless!

I looked at my husband in shock. He’s not a dumb man but…

You told her what??

Crisis managed, but the focus of the evening had significantly shifted. I never did get back down into my studio and the clock doesn’t stop ticking…!

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Don’t Follow The Lion Down The Yellow Brick Road

As I seriously embark on achieving my goal of making my living through art and creativity, I’m forced to face things about myself that I’ve failed or refused to address.

Preamble: Well, I had hoped that a gang of folks would find my stuff interesting enough to subscribe to my Substack, All in 55. While that herd mentality hasn’t exactly materialized yet, I thought I’d post my latest here and see if I can’t sway a few trailblazers to lead the way!

I’ve used the word courage in a previous post or two and related it to having the courage to go for it. To cast off from the safe shore. In the last couple of weeks, I’ve come to a realization. Not only do I need to eventually find the courage to jump, before I do that, I need to build courage into my everyday life. I need to practice pushing up against times I feel afraid to do something.

I’ll give you a recent example of how I caved in the face of one of my fears.

I tend to operate under a longstanding self-assumption that people won’t find me interesting. In my mind, this translates to not being worthwhile to spend any time on or time getting to know. Here’s how this played out a couple of week ago.

I had the privilege of attending an after-party for a concert I was at called Dream Serenade. I go every year and love that it’s an eclectic mix of high-profile and emerging musicians raising money for kids with intellectual disabilities. If you live in the Toronto area, you should seriously check it out! But I digress.

So, I went to the after party with a purpose. I wanted to get a picture with one of the performers because he was not only excellent on stage that night, but an icon of the 80’s music scene. I thought it would be cool to snap a shot with him and that my friends would get a kick out of it. I wasn’t particularly daunted by this mission. This was an artist that would have taken a million pictures with a million people over his career. I could tell him how much I’ve enjoyed his music over the decades, just like all the other million people, and then watch him move on to the next person in a long line of fans. Mission accomplished and here’s the proof:

POINTS IF YOU CAN GUESS THE SINGER!!

Aside from the comically horrible shot, the real story here is that the other artist I really, really, really wanted to approach is much less legendary, much newer to the music scene, but growing here in Canada. It’s not just his music but something about him that draws me in. His music makes me feel things. It moves me. How he presents himself and the words he chooses when talking to the audience are so beautiful. He’s someone I just want to share energy with. I know. Weird. But I’m drawn to him.

So, I’m at the party and this artist is no more than three feet away from me, just standing, hanging out. He wasn’t even talking to anyone in that moment. He was casually sipping on a soda and looking around. It looked like he had a bit of time on his hands if there was anyone interesting enough to fill it. Yet, I froze.

While my body was still, about 50 different opening lines were running through my head, from “you were amazing” to “I love your voice” to “I just want to tell you how much I enjoy your music.” All of these and the other 47 one-liners I had on deck sounded unoriginal. I could only think, where do he and I go from there? My ego told me he would say thank you and immediately look for any exit while I awkwardly smiled and faded back into the crowd. I mean, how much more uninteresting could I possibly be?? Why would I even bother him?

I didn’t approach him. To me, the stakes were far higher than with the pop star who was in high demand and would have any number of legit excuses to keep it short. My need for this artist to see me as someone he wanted to engage with was incredibly important to me. I so badly wanted any interaction we had to have meaning. I wanted it to go deeper than a surface exchange. Unless I could somehow wow him, which I was quite confident I couldn’t, I had no right to get in his face and waste his time. I lacked the courage to even try.

The problem then became how I felt after I left the party. I was distressed that I hadn’t told this artist how special his music was to me. I wondered why I chose to keep that bottled up. What was it that made it reasonable for me to withhold praise? As I replayed the scenario over and over, it became clear to me that I lacked the courage to put myself on the line. I lacked the courage to challenge my self-assumptions. As a consequence, I felt horrible about purposefully missing the opportunity to tell someone how amazing they were.

GETTING THE “LION” OFF OF MY BACK

In case you’re wondering, this cowardice is not limited to approaching famous people! It consistently follows me into scenarios with any new people I’m in a position to meet and continues to haunt me well into the third or fourth time of interacting with that same someone. I’m always afraid that I am going to be found out as not really worth their time.

Feeling ready to acknowledge and tackle this identified fear, what is my approach going forward? If I start from a place of being uninteresting and not worthwhile, how on earth am I ever going to make it as an artist? What kind of marketing campaign have I been running on anyway? Don’t look over here, I’m not worthy? How much has this attitude already negatively impacted my years of art making and selling?

I need to get rational and brave around this.

• I’m not going to capture everyone’s attention and I’m not going to connect with everyone I encounter, but I need to courageously start conversations anyway and be willing to accept all outcomes without making assumptions or getting down on myself.
• Applying ration and bravery to art, not everyone is going to like what I produce but for people who do, I sure as hell hope they tell me how or what my art makes them feel. I need to quit presuming that any other artist will not think it worthwhile to hear the same from me, regardless of how far or deep the conversation goes.
• I need to work on building self-confidence and pride when someone asks me about myself so that I’m not afraid of initiating conversations to avoid these questions. I need to meet their inquiry head on and not always in flight mode, ready to shut an exchange down because I’m afraid of being uninteresting. When put in an environment to engage with someone – jump in, not away.
• It’s not okay to carry on with avoidance. To be unwilling to put effort into practicing doing that which I fear amounts to holding back what I have to offer fellow human beings and what they have to offer me. Where’s the winning in that?

“My own brain is to me the most unaccountable of machinery – always buzzing, humming, soaring, roaring, diving, and then buried in mud. And why? What’s this passion for?”

-Virginia Woolf