The Inaugural Post for Jo-Everlasting

 I do not know if I am a sucker for punishment, in denial, or someone who refuses to quit but I have started one or two blogs in my day, in times past. All of them eventually trickled down to nothing and all of them took me in a direction in my personal life I had not expected to go. One lead to a short stint as a journalist. One lead to the creation of a Youtube channel, and last but not least, one lead me straight into the eye of the hurricane called divorce, complete with conspiracy, piracy, hearsay and infidelity. My life seems to be nothing short of an unwinding mellow-drama at all times even though, I will admit, I have tried my best to avoid that terrible thing called drama to the best of my ability as I get older. Nevertheless, it seems to find me in the most unlikely of places. And today, I present you with my first blog post here, my latest offering to the world: Jo-Everlasting. 

The success or failure of past blogs notwithstanding, I find myself already (less than 500 words in) relishing the fine art of cleaning out the cobwebs in my mind, of which there are many. They come from out of nowhere and accumulate when I am not looking. A dullness of mind sets in, sort of like how the stomach feels after eating too much junk. I have surmised if you stick your toes in the proverbial waters of life, something is going to bite them. If you seek, you shall find. Curiosity killed the cat. 

I fancy myself an artist. I paint. I draw. I think. I absorb the world around me and attempt to regurgitate it back into the world in some sort of palatable way, even when times get dark. 

In my artwork, I made it my personal intention to reflect the goodness in this world, always drawing upon a conversation I had with a very dear friend long ago. Well, to be fair, I can only say I try to do so. I do not always succeed, so do not put me up there within the realms of the saints just yet. I make the attempt, that is all. 

Does being an artist make the world a better place for anyone? That was the question we posed to each other through the course of one particularly intense midnight chat. At the time I responded with a resounding yes. I believed, even at that time, my talent as an artist was given to me to bring something into the world that would not otherwise be there. I felt it was my duty, in fact, to use my talents to make the world a better place, somehow, someway–naive as I was at the time. But my friend bravely reminded me that there are more basic needs going unattended in life. People need real boots-on-the ground help. Was I willing to provide that? He mapped out the context of the more mundane chores concerning my fellow humans and most of them I recoiled at. It's not that I felt I was too good for these kinds of things (personal care, for example). It's just that I truly believed I could not do it. You hear people say "I could never do that..." for a reason. I felt I could just never do that. But, you live and you learn. 

Without putting too much emphasis on the details, let me explain the I feel I am on the other side of a very difficult journey from feeling out of place and very unhappy, to finding my sense of home and balance once more. The space in between point A and point B has meandered back and forth, around and around. I've relocated numerous times. I've lived the life comparable to the stereotypical gypsy. I even wrote a song about that, in fact. You can listen to it here. 

Within that timeframe,  without getting too specific, for obvious reasons, I can say I willfully put myself in a place where I was tending to the basic needs of my fellow human beings because I had become so bereft in my own life, my heart was filled with ice. I needed to find a way to feel connected to the world around me again. I had endured an extended period of isolation and it had to come to an end. I had been alone for too long. I drew on the advice that compels you to help someone else if you are in need yourself. It seemed perfectly logical and I was desperate to find my way forward. In hindsight, I can't believe life pushed me so far away from me, but it had, and I needed to find my way back. As recommended so long ago, a friend's advice shone a light to the way ahead for me, like he always used to do. Some things never change, thankfully. 

So, I took a job where I helped others with their basic needs because my needs were also very basic. I needed to show and to give love. It was very simple. It turns out these basic needs are not basic at all, of course, and our basic needs become the most important thing in the entire world, when we cannot meet them ourselves. This should be common sense, world-wide, but alas, it is not. It wasn't to me. I believed I could get by without love, but I couldn't. I was starved for it, in fact.

Pivotal moments occurred throughout the course of the year and things just got better, plain and simple. I made and lost a friend when I met a woman of 93 years, as beautiful as an aged apple tree, twisted with the burden of life, but with a sturdiness of character, knowing who and what they were meant to be in this world, and knowing they would leave it behind soon enough, for starters. If you are sensitive, like me, you can sometimes feel the electric charge that hovers around someone close to death. It's like their spirit is half in and half out. Hers was nearly moved on but her body held on. I believe she must have been holding on for my sake. How I needed to feel like I was needed. She made me feel like that. It brought my heart back to life, a little more each day, winter's day after winter's day. She passed away in early Spring. What a precious gift our time together was to me.  

 After a few weeks in this line of work, as a home care worker, as they call it, I realized how right my friend was. I also realized I wasn't necessarily wrong. As I moved forward through the various relationships within this career, it was made evident to me that the ones who had reached an elderly age became somewhat dismayed when I told them about myself as an artist. Immediately and invariably, they indicated to me that being an artist should be paramount in my life. From their angle, they seemed to see me as someone lacking in practicality, as a result. It baffled me for a while because, so many times, I had been lead to feel it should be the other way around. I should have forfeited the artwork for their sakes... right? A personal inner conflict ensued over the last few months, creating a serious sense of despondency within me. I didn't want to show up at someone's home with a dark cloud of doubt hanging over me, but I knew they felt pity for me. They just couldn't understand why someone with some other choice to make, would choose them. That made me sad.

From the comfort of the arm chair, gazing out the window, they do not realize how much the world is changing, I thought. They do not see that I find refuge within the peace and quiet of their company. The lack of technology, the lack of frenetic energy, which constantly surrounds us all. It soothed me. It dulled the ache in my heart. As the time passed, and as the folks I worked with got to know me, it became obvious to me they saw me as someone who was missing her calling and I knew it made them sad, too. So, I was presented with a moral conundrum. I had to step back and reevaluate everything. 

I mulled over the conversation my friend and I had all those years ago. I turned it around and around in my mind. The weight of it reminding me of a stone in the palm of my hand, like that of a paper weight. And in fact, I feel like a paper weight this evening, as I write on this digital platform. Am I important for the function I offer, for the mystique of the visual components that make me who I am, or am I a curious mixture of both elements, more or less?

I think of a clear glass bunny paperweight my mother used to have. It was like a gigantic marble. A glass orb with bunny features, saturated with bubbles at the centre. It was a whole other world to stare into the glass of that rabbit. It was like the rabbit and the rabbit hole all at once. Each time I held it to the light, I got lost. That's how I often feel about myself and my life, in fact, if you want to know the truth. I don't exactly know what to make of the impressions I make on others, nor do I fully comprehend the value within the functionality of myself as a person. I always feel sort of half in, half out.   

So here I am. I am back to the drawing board. I am here to explore that proverbial rabbit hole, and I am here to be the rabbit that goes down in it. I am doing this to prove to the seniors in my life that I care about their hopes for my future, even though I know most of them will never ever read this blog. Even so, I am going to keep trying, to the best of my ability, to show up for those who need me most.