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.
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.
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.
Must. Create. Art. I have been creating things my entire life. From snow creatures to luxury interiors to kids art classes, rustic decor and more; however, my favorite thing to create is my artwork. Sculptures, paintings, photography or art journals, it just does not matter, I just need to be creating. Art is my therapy.
There are days I need a little more inspiration beyond positive thinking and just saying I am going to work on my art. There is that stinkin’ thinkin’ that gets in the way some days, and my way to deal with that (besides curling up in a ball and taking a day long nap) is to jam to music. The louder the better in most cases, except when there are other people in the house trying to sleep or talk on the phone of course. And my go to men are Kid Rock and Paul Thorn, over, and over, and over for the past 8 or so years. Now don’t get me wrong, my album collection is vast from Johnny Cash, AC/DC, Nina Simone, Carly Simon, Beethoven, CCR and the list goes on, yet I continue to go back to my two main men.
The same music that gets my heart pounding and my feet bouncing, also get the creative juices flowing through my veins. And when I am creating, the music playing often influences the piece I am working on at that time. If I am painting, I find myself painting a pattern to the beat of the music and when the song is over it messes with my flow, so I will just replay the song until that part of the painting is satisfactory. I do this with my large sculptures also, where I add heavy texure using my drywall hammer and carving chunks out to the beat of the songs playing.
I get lost in my art and the music while creating, it goes hand in hand for me. And may you find the beat that helps you Create Your Happy.
Until we meet again,
The Quirky One
I like chocolate chip cookies better!
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