My Mind is Exploding with Ideas for You!

My Mind is Exploding with Ideas for You!

The change of seasons to Spring is like my creative brain. Renewal, growth, care, and color are all showing up again after a cold winter. And my creative brain is doing the same. The S.A.D. (seasonal affective disorder) is lifting, the longer days are GOOD for me, and that blue sky with the big ball of yellow heat is even better. It is all leading to growth.

I have ideas, so many ideas growing. I know I might not be able to do them all, but here is the current list:

  1. Start offering in-person kids and adult paint parties again in The Barn during warm weather months; then on-location during cold weather months
  2. 6-week Art 101 in-person class for ages 5-10 and 11-18
  3. Themed adult paint/craft events in The Barn on Custer Avenue during warm weather months
  4. Online healing, intuitive Art Journaling 6-week course and monthly membership
  5. DIY, maybe: “Doin’ It with Dayle” membership group, featuring DIY projects, painting cabinets, furniture rehab, fixing items, tool time/introduction to tools, contractor interviews, and a community for your questions for fixing and DIY projects in your life
  6. Private, individual in-person or virtual weekly art lessons (already taking appointments)
  7. Online, virtual paint parties
  8. Art and craft take and make kits
  9. 6-week Art 101 online or virtual classes for adults, so you know how to do the basics and we can move into more complex techniques
  10. 1:1 Family Story Canvas painting (1 family creates a abstract painting reflecting their stories)
  11. Finishing www.designbydayle.com “Shop” section offering some of the above ideas. Please check it out this new site, and sign up to receive email from me to “stay in the know” with all my creative ideas and what comes up. I always love hearing from you on what you need and want to know!

An Epidemic Inside a Pandemic: Un-Wired Connections & Loneliness

An Epidemic Inside a Pandemic: Un-Wired Connections & Loneliness

Artists are lonely.  We are stereotyped as loners, but are we? We appreciate and see a beautiful sunrise unlike others, we notice everything, or we focus in on one specific thing. Our brains are wired to connect things in a different way. But are we “loners”?

One The Edge – Dayle Sundberg

It is quiet when the sun rises, birds chirping, water rippling, wind rustling, cool air touching your face. Quiet. Peaceful and beautiful, another new day filled with hope.  A new day.

“She holds the day in the palm of her hand” – Photo: Dayle Sundberg

It is quiet. But like TOO much quiet. A type of hellish quietness that just continues day after day.  An epidemic within a pandemic affecting every age. A type of hellish quietness, also known as loneliness.  Maybe you are watching a parent sit alone in a care facility with little to no interaction with the world outside the staff. Maybe you have a young person who should be chasing others at recess, having big birthday parties, attending rite of passages like first dates, Prom, or other cultural events that mark significant points in life. We are missing that connection in the wiring.

It does not take much searching online to find studies and research on the rise in loneliness, or how the past year has affected not only physical health, but mental health.  Harvard, the CDC, and others have scary rates of the rise of loneliness, depression, anxiety, and suicide. I could link all the articles for you, however, that would take up pages.

I admit it, I am lonely. It is TO DAMN QUIET.  I am an artist, self-proclaimed “loner”, we spend hours upon hours in our own little worlds creating without any disturbances and we get all flubery-busted when someone interrupts for something trivial, like food, water, or sleep. 

Working quietly in my studio.

The quietness of being socially distanced is, well a deafening silence.  Humans were made for connections and thrive from that connection and intimacy of a relationship.  Keep us isolated and things happen, like thoughts that repeat over and over, chewing nails, cutting, over-eating, sleeping too much, binge watching movies, addictions to substances or screens, and the list goes on, but it looks a lot like anxiety, depression, and yep, you guessed it, loneliness. We are un-wired, with connections missing.

Here, but not complete.

Not only are adults feeling it, but young people who are developing social skills needed to become productive adults that shape out future are suffering with it.  Because of the obvious risks during the pandemic of needing to social distance, and depending on technology to connect, learn, shop, and interact it has become un-normally normal to be apart. Being physically distanced and separated from other people puts one in a state of physiological stress, and when it continues day after day it can become a chronic condition damaging to your physical and emotional health, according to former (and recently confirmed again) U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy. 

“I found that people who struggle with loneliness, that that’s associated with an increased risk of heart disease, dementia, depression, anxiety, sleep disturbances and even premature death,” Dr. Vivek Murthy told NPR.  

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/05/11/853308193/in-together-former-surgeon-general-writes-about-importance-of-human-connection

Now, knowing how art has trained me to be a “loner” and I practiced this loneliness thing in my studio for hours upon hours, I also know how art has helped my mental health.  Connecting your thoughts and feelings in your head to paper, canvas, or another media can help one maneuver through the mess of crossed wires in our brains and bodies. 

Art helps heal and can bring connections and community together through creating and sharing.  I have created a way to help move my dark, deep thoughts from my body to art and create a safe space to share.  Art heals. Art re-wires. Art creates connection.  

Healing House – Dayle Sundberg Art

Are you ready to try art for a connection?

https://designbydayle.com/

How Being on Crutches, Taking Selfies & Trusting blurred from 2017 to now!

How Being on Crutches, Taking Selfies & Trusting blurred from 2017 to now!

January 2019, we do not know what the calendar days will offer. We do not know what stories you will add to our life by the end of December 2019. But what I do know is that 2017 & 2018 added stories that impacted my whole outlook on life of late. (Yes, it’s 2021, just keep reading.)

These crutches have been with me for about 9 years, I just keep adding my artistic flare to them while I sit and heal.

In December 2017, I broke 3 bones in my foot and the x-rays showed the severity of the breaks. I was scolded by my doc and had to be non-weight bearing on the foot and it was the end of May before I could gingerly walk on it. In that time, I had to learn new ways to do my daily routines; I had to ask for help (& I really do not like doing that); I had to be extra cautious, because being on crutches in a South Dakota winter is hazardous, and in turn, I tended not to leave the house much or get to my art studio. I isolated and protected myself.

We traveled to Biloxi in May 2018 & with help from family, I managed to get my toes wet in the sand! Crutches and sand are not an easy combo.

For me 2018 was all about hurting my foot, asking for help, maneuvering crutches, and trusting my feet to walk on again. Or was it?

Not only had I hurt my foot in 2017-2018, but I had also gotten hurt in a way that is not physically seen, and it can easily be masked. I had gotten an emotional sledgehammer bashed into my head and heart. It was an awakening that shook me to my core, my values, my ethics, and everything in my world that I THOUGHT I knew to be true turned upside down.

And because of that sledgehammer whack, I lost my trust in people. All people; not just a few. All, except a select group of two or three that I have always held the closest in my life. It has always been hard for me to trust since I was young after some traumatic events and I had worked hard over the years to trust, and I had the illusion that I was “peopling” well. (Insert the sledgehammer whack sound here).

With my foot healed in July 2018, and the inner bruising of the sledgehammer whack, I just wanted to run away, who wouldn’t? So I took my teenage daughter on that 3 week long summer road-trip of over 1500 miles. I had to get a new point of view, I had to see the goodness in people from somewhere besides the recliner I sat in as my foot healed. I had to show her that it is a big, beautiful world and remind myself of that also. I had to learn to trust my instincts again; find and trust my story; and trust what I saw through my artistic lens.

Washington State overlook

Fast forward to 1/18/2020. Add another sledgehammer whack, this time from a one day summer stalker who instilled fear back into the budding trust I was regaining. And those crutches, they may not be physically by my side but they are still invisibly holding me up as I learn the walk of trust again. My feet still gingerly walk, being cautious about stepping forward into anything. My healing is mine that only I can maneuver my crutches through. But at least I have my crutches sitting by my side. My instincts tell me to keep the faith, it’s holding me like my crutches have been. I am in a story, I am a sentence without an ending at the moment. This chapter WILL eventually get written and move to the next.

The trusty trio

I snapped a selfie to see what this masked untrusting one looks like. It’s filtered, it’s not to be trusted because it’s not the “real me”.  It was me I saw in the phone photo, but I did not like it, so I filtered it, like one filters thoughts. The reason I took a selfie was to show a jewelry line I started to carry and grabbed a necklace that said: “TRUST DREAMS, TRUST YOUR HEART, AND TRUST YOUR STORY”. How fitting that I grabbed THAT necklace, right? But what I reflected on after seeing my photo was: when stuck in your mind, thoughts can often give you a skewed and fearful view. What you see and what is felt, can easily be “filtered”.

2019 Selfie

The fears take away the trust in how you see yourself, that you may not be good enough, look, or act the right way. The fears make you not trust your instincts, and sadly the intentions or actions of others. My goal in 2019 is that I will take unfiltered selfies…and I need to trust my story is going right where it is supposed to go.

This is my first step, without crutches in 2019, to trust you with this post.

Wait a hot minute. 2019. What? 2019 you say?  Yes, I wrote this blog post in January 2019, but I don’t know if it ever was shared. Here I am reading it going, “Hmmmm, this story sounds familiar for…oh I dunno, 2020?”  If you know me, you would know I broke the same foot again in October 2020, have been on those crutches ever since.

I do not recommend collapsing ladders or
broken navicular bones.

And just this past week, slowly I am trusting my walking on my own again. Crutches and faith sit in the corner carefully watching over me.

Also, Covid arrived in March 2020, JUST as I was ready to start reconnecting and gently, slowly trusting again. Globally, many of us got connections and trust taken away. Covid instilled a different type of fear and trust factor that each of us has experienced in our own unique (and isolating) way. And now you may be learning to walk without crutches again, slowly trusting, and reconnecting.

I have learned in the past three years a way to use my art to help me get all the dark, grimy, fearful thoughts out of my head and soul onto paper to find that healing path. 

Maybe you will walk with me a bit and I can show you how I have been working on a more positive mental health journey.

My art journal and healing path

-The Quirky One

And, I Hope You Dance 😉

My art is stupid: Broken Glasses

My art is stupid: Broken Glasses

Seriously? Are you frikken kidding me? What else? I cannot deal with this today. I don’t have time for this. What else is going to go wrong this year? I can’t wait until this year is over. Do YOU know what I mean? Are you feeling it? That unease? A moment of complete overwhelm? Frustration?

I have plenty of other words to express my frustration about my glasses, this is not the first time they have fallen apart this year. It is the third. And my backup pair, well let’s just say they have a scratch across them that just skews everything I see. Just like all my feelings and what foul curse words I want to really say, they all are related to the overwhelm I am feeling today about everything else going on in my life and this crazy world.

I can see far away in the distance almost perfectly with little correction, I can see the big picture, the horizon. The things close up, right in front of me that I need to focus on, I need extra help. Each eye has their own focus and needs. I cannot see what is in front of me without them, one eye focuses much differently than the other. Which means the use a regular, “normal” pair of store-bought reading glasses, just are not the right fit. Not the right vision. Not the right perspective.

Today is first day in weeks I have had the news for very long in the morning while I am working, I usually catch the local new and daily forecast, now I remember why I turned it off! I get frustrated, grumpy, pissy feeling, dumbfounded, yet I do get a random smile or laugh when they show the fun little up-lifting segments, but then it goes back to analysis, science, debunking myths, vaccines, markets, results, counting, rumors, and well, you know all that stuff.

Now do not get me wrong, I like to be informed and see all the perspectives, do my own research, examining and forming my own views. But there just some days you are just at your end. Or so it feels. Like these glasses breaking AGAIN. Notice, that the bows do not even match anymore! I am at my end of these and so ready for the new pair. But I cannot have those for weeks, I cannot access them, it is out of my control of when I receive them.

I will have to find a way to make this work, to use the one-armed glasses sitting halfcocked on my nose like they are now, or maybe trying super glue, but I know how things roll with super glue and I would have the frames stuck to my fingers for a few days, not being able to see close enough to figure out how to get them off!! The thing that helps me gain my focus back is creativity, music, release, and renewal. Sounds corny, yep, I know, and if you know me well, you’d say something like “you’re so creative, that is easy for you” or “I can’t draw a straight line, it’s so easy for you” or you might be thinking what good does it do or why bother?

I get it. I hear ya. I feel ya. I have been there. I get in those slumps of not thinking I cannot make or do anything worth anything to anyone, why bother?

My art is stupid, no one will buy this, no one understand it, it’s terrible, I’m not going to show anyone this crap, why bother?

Lift is stupid, I hate everyone, I just want to binge on Netflix, wine, food and not talk to anyone anymore, why bother?

I don’t want to get out of bed, life is stupid, I’m fat, I’m stupid, I’m worthless to anyone, why bother?

Why bother? Because you matter, that is why. Life may not feel like it, may not look like it, you may not think trauma, grief, illness, sadness, and the crappy days will ever end. You may just be acting normal, faking it to get through. Like my glasses, I’m just trying to see things normally, through a broken, loop-sided view until someone helps me see things a different way through a new lens.

Do you cover up your feelings to appear normal or do you face the feelings and uncover them? What is normal?  Do you cover up a subject to cover it or should you uncover it and reveal it to others?

I am sick of acting normal, most people will explain me as quirky, a bit weird, and other things. Never “normal” and I am good with that. But normal, break that mold! I have found ways to work through these broken glasses’ moments (or days) of mine. Right now, too many times (as my kids would say) music helps me, and it is one single artist, over and over and over and over since 2008. I do not know if it is the rhythm and primal beats, the lyrics, the sound of his voice, the messages in the songs, the power behind some songs, the raunchiness of others, the sadness in some or just that I plain o’ like the musician. I got to see only one concert, friends back out because of the weather, but dammit, I drove 5 hours through a blizzard to get there! That once performance added so much recharging energy to my soul that why by NORMAL when you can find something, one thing, that helps you recharge and renew?

I CRANK IT!

Kid Rock Ryan Hermens
Kid Rock performs at the Sturgis Buffalo Chip on Thursday during the 78th annual Sturgis Motorcycle Rally. Photo: Ryan Hermens

When I have broken glasses moments, when I’m overwhelmed and all that others stuff that comes up, I turn on the music, 95% of the time it’s Kid Rock, 5% is Paul Thorn. And I mean I crank it, and I am sure if you were to walk by my house at times you would wonder what the heck is going on in there! A good friend even gave me every Kid Rock CD for a gift a few years back, BEST GIFT EVER! (all well-loved & scratched up now, but I will never throw them, we’ve been through too much together).

That is how I interrupt “normal” and the mask and the broken. I crank Kid Rock, I mean CRANK and JAM. My creative juices, my brain and amygdala light up and releases renewal into my life. Sometimes I write, like right now, this blog took less than twenty minutes to spew out. I was having a pissy thought about my broken glasses, needed music, cranked it up and started an Instagram post about it. Then it got longer, and I thought wait, let’s turn this moment into a blog post! And here it is.

Sometimes, it is cranked, and I am doing homework at my highest levels, or working on pivoting my art business plans; other times I am creating crazily weird, wonderful, emotionally charged artwork. I have it cranked, and I function at MY level, MY normal, feeling MY renewed views through the beat of music.

Again, I ask. Do you cover up your feelings to appear normal or do you face the feelings and uncover them? What is normal?  Do you cover up a subject to cover it or should you uncover it and reveal it to others?

“On The Edge” | Dayle Sundberg

“Stand the Pain -Kid Rock