Coming Home to Gems

Rolling life lessons; making magic from the mundane.

[gemarahome]

Creative Home

Day 3 of my personal retreat was all about getting back to my creativity. When I was a kid, I used to draw, paint, and craft. I got supplies at Hobby Lobby and made a bunch of those feather pens from Clueless and sold them at school. I even took custom orders. I loved assembling little gift bags. When Victoria’s Secret used to have that zodiac line of perfumes, they had pens with perfume-scented ink - I was ALIVE finding my friends’ signs and putting them with love in their Christmas goody bags - that has carried through to adulthood in curating the ILLEST party favor bags for my daughters’ parties - and when I have the capacity, sending goody bags to friends for milestone birthdays. 

I lost the drawing/painting/crafting as I entered young adulthood but picked up writing in the form of blogging - and met several people who I consider close friends til this day. Then I lost that too. I picked up nature, landscape, and abstract/macro photography subconsciously, though I wouldn’t recognize it until years later. 

This past summer, I thought I wanted to make jewelry. I always have these very specific ideas of what I want in my head. I got a jewelry-making book and as I flipped through the pages of get these wires and those clips and deez crimps, I was like mm, no. This has been a “problem” (it’s not really a problem) with me and creative things - I typically have big ideas but I don’t like the execution, the making, the supplies, the process, the small things. I’m a curator and big idea generator by nature, and there is a place for curators; I just have to find my specific place.

After throwing the jewelry-making book to the flames, I took a few different “What kind of creator are you” quizzes (I love a quiz) and they all pointed to poetry/writer. That was odd to me because while I really do enjoy a good poem and creative literature, I’ve never been that kind of writer. Well what better time than #TheseTroublingTimes amirite. I found a writing prompt challenge, grabbed 1 of my approximately 970 billion unused journals (you know it’s hard to resist a pretty journal cover) and started writing. I got to Day 11 or so and was like, I don’t like this. So I literally wrote in the journal “This writing challenge has been helpful in identifying the types of writing I do and don’t like, and I don’t like this.” For posterity and record-keeping, and the anthropologists who unearth the journal 500 years later. I gave up on writing.

In the meantime, professional DJs and photographers had been telling me I had an ear for curating music and for photography. I started making little music vignettes on my Youtube channel of a theme or mood and songs that fit that and flow well with each other. It’s often 3-5 songs that really partner well together. That has been pretty rewarding and I’ll likely start posting on here. I wouldn’t mind a really niche DJ gig so when the world gets vaccinated, I’ll explore that further. I started saving my nature photography into a separate digital album. Then I finally took the leap and bought A Real Camera. It should be in the mail any day. I would eventually love to do photo art prints in different sizes and when I really advance my skills, get into mixed-media and mixed-medium art. For that part, my goal is to be in a museum one day. I’ve never spoken or typed that out loud. There it is. I’ll start with a photography Instagram page that will call back to a former blog title soon, and painting, stealing my daughters materials when I can.

You know I had to take a few What Kind of Photographer Are You quizzes and I kept getting street/fashion photography, which I’m not actually interested in. I had Glowing Color going for a while as a creative outlet, but monetizing it turned it into a burden for me. I probably will incorporate my eye for color into photography under the macro/abstract umbrella rather than people.

Another far-reaching dream I’ve never mentioned is I would love to get into voiceover or narration work in the future. Several trained and professional singers have told me they love my voice over the years and I often get told it’s soothing. I’ve shelved that in my mind in the Post Pandemic closet as well though.

Part of the reason I haven’t gotten to explore my creativity is I don’t feel like I have the set-up for it at home. That’s why a complete home overhaul was on my retreat agenda as well - I’ll save that for a separate post. I’m already so pleased with the space and knowing my daughters’ can easily access their arts and crafts will lessen the anxiety I get when it’s time to explore my own creativity. 

Anyhoo, I got the urge to blog the Food Manifesto post and quickly activated Tumblr and got the words out and then went to bed. A dear, explosively creative friend took the time to send me a voice note and tell me she didn’t realize how much she missed my writing and how I make mundane topics interesting, that I was a great storyteller, and so on. It blew me away. Maybe *this* is my writing lane. Non-linear narrative writing. I don’t know if that’s the proper term but it fits.

All of this to say, I can’t believe there was a time I thought the creativity within me was dead. I just had to give it a home.

[gemarahome]

Food Manifesto

I am doing my annual personal retreat before the new year arrives and Evening 1 was about food.

I am fortunate to be in a position where I don’t have to cook, as meals are provided as part of my role in my job. However, the options during the pandemic haven’t been optimal for me outside of breakfast.

To know me is to know I have a complicated relationship with food. I grew up an extremely selective eater and did not adventurously try anything. I didn’t want to be surprised by the wicked taste of an ingredient I hated, so I just didn’t try anything at all. Then I went vegan for 8 years, which taught me how to cook. I transitioned out of that and dove into the deep end of Tex-Mex and BBQ. Now, I have a much more adventurous palate (but it was a really low bar before) and am coming home to what my tastes truly are.

In short, I need to start cooking more. I hate cooking. If I struck it rich, a personal chef would be the first extravagance I’d go for. I hate cooking. It is very satisfying to eat a delicious meal I prepared myself but the process to get there is stressful for me. Add in 3 daughters - 1 who is an extremely selective eater similar to me as a child, 1 who has sensory issues and food aversions to the point that the main source of her diet is Pediasure, and 1 who has Autism Spectrum Disorder diagnosed and actually is a really good eater, but strongly opinionated about what she wants to eat and when. Cooking is a source of stress for me in a current life where I’m maxed out on stressors. So, I made it an agenda item for my personal retreat. While working through some ideas, I came to some realizations about myself.

I like what I like, and I don’t like to cook a lot of what I like. For example, I don’t like cooking with raw meat and bones and will avoid it at all costs. If I must cook with meat, give me a nice and tidy frozen, boneless cut of whatever. I don’t cook seafood. I just started liking seafood in the past 3-4 years and even then the list is very short. Shrimp? I need it blackened to hell and back or fried. I don’t like pink-looking shrimp. I want to barf when I see frozen shrimp and grayish shrimp waiting to be cooked. Fish? I can do a salmon or flounder or something filet every now and then but not frequently. And by do, I mean eat it somewhere that is not my kitchen. I’m not cooking fish. I just tried scallops for the first time and they were delicious and actually seem easy to sauté so those are good with me. Crab? I don’t want to see a hint of a shell, just give me that lump meat (...). Lobster? Gross. Crawfish? Nope. Mussels/oysters - I haven’t musseled up (HAHAHA) the spiritual strength to try them. Calamari, conch, and friends? Leave me alone. So, that limits obviously what I can and will cook. But I’ve embraced that about myself. I will only eat that complicated stuff out at a restaurant or someone else’s kitchen. I even considered getting the vegan shrimp I used to eat back in my vegan days from Whole Foods, and cooking it with a non-vegan rest of the meal. And that’s just who I am. There are no rules or limits to relationships with food, if you have the access. Yes, I am a weirdo about food. It is known.

Given the aforementioned limitations, I’ve also had to accept (particularly with my daughters’ eating limitations) that there won’t be things like Taco Tuesdays, at least right now. The thought of assembling tacos and nachos is delicious but exhausting. The logistics, the mechanics, the separate individual bowls....it’s just not worth the effort. Another thing I’ll just enjoy as takeout. That brings me to my next point - I don’t like preparing shit. I am definitely in the demographic of marked up pre-cut veggies and pre-cut whatever. Chop it up for ya girl please and take my money. Some people feel peace when they’re preparing ingredients. I do not. I need simplicity. One of my friends has been sautéing everything this year and that resonated with all of my chakras. Let me just toss some stuff in a pan or the instant pot and be done. As someone with a Taurus Venus, I experience things through my senses more than most and a bad taste/flavor can really derail my whole day. Life is too short to eat food you don’t like or be stressed out in the kitchen when you have other things to do. If the food isn’t delicious, I’m not eating it. 

I went through my Pinterest food boards that hadn’t been updated in years and deleted tons of old recipes. So many recipes I had on there because I thought other people would like them, or maybe if I learn this one cooking technique I would like them or I’m sure I’ll want to try cooking this cut of meat at some point - no. Delete, delete, delete. I noticed even some things that I used to love, I don’t have a taste for anymore - simple things like quesadillas and chicken teriyaki. Cooking those things were a part of an era of my life that is over and curiously, my taste for some things is over as well. So I’ve gone out of my way now to prepare a simple, reasonably attainable cooking plan for when work/school resume, keeping my quirks and being true to them at the forefront of my mind. I’m coming home to myself as one of my best friends told me last year, and I intend to stay there.