my word for the year // finish

I don't know if I've ever admitted this to anyone, but I've always considered myself somewhat of a quitter.

Geez, quitter sounds so harsh, doesn't it? Some words just carry so much judgment with them, and that is certainly one of them. But it's true - I've always had this habit of picking things up and then tossing them aside once the next shiny object comes along.

When I was little, like most little girls, I started as a ballerina (still don't understand to this day what the allure of a pink leotard and tights is. I mean, it doesn't really get more uncomfortable than nylon and spandex up your butt, does it?) But after one year I gave up my ballet shoes in favor of something more... exciting. Rhythmic gymnastics. Yes friends, I was a ribbon dancer. And boy did I ribbon dance my little heart out. Until of course I realized that I was the least flexible person in the universe (still am) and couldn't do a backbend, therefore banishing me to the back of the class in our recital. Um... nobody puts this ribbon dancer in the corner. After that, it was tap, jazz, and hip hop, but it didn't take long for me to realize I had more fun challenging my brothers to a game of PIG on our basketball hoop in our driveway. I wanted to do something competitive. So I started soccer, and after about twelve seasons of that I wanted a new challenge so I learned how to play volleyball. And flag football. And at one point in there I think I seriously considered joining the diving team in high school. Scattered throughout there were school plays, art lessons and an endless amount of fads and hobbies. As a college senior I took up piano lessons for pete's sake!

So why the constant change? Because there is nothing in life that I enjoy more than a new challenge. I've always been that way. Really I'm only half kidding about the whole quitter part. I honestly think this serial hobby thing has less to do with my habit of stopping things, and more to do with the fact that I love starting new things. There is something so gratifying to me about learning a new skill or picking up a new hobby. It's a fresh start at mastering something. I get bored easily, and constantly switching things up keeps my brain fresh and my interest renewed.

But here's the problem with serial hobbyism (yup, I just made it a thing.) Sooner or later, you're still always left feeling like a quitter. You look back and realize you never really saw anything through, never pushed through the plateau of slow and steady cultivation of a craft. It takes diligence and commitment. Well these are certainly qualities that I want myself to possess, so I started thinking maybe I should push myself to focus a little bit more.

A while ago I came across a blog post on Life As An Artistpreneur (yet another blog that my blog would love to be when it grows up) and it was all about choosing a word for the year. This one word would give you something to meditate on or work towards throughout the year. You can visualize a direction you want your life to go in over the course of the year just by being mindful of this one word (talk about pressure to pick a good one!) I read the post way back in January, and told myself I wanted to think long and hard about what my word would be. Well, (surprise, surprise) I completely forgot about it and for months I went wordless.

But now I know.

My word for 2012 is.... finish. A simple notion perhaps, but the word itself seems to compel. It begs to be acted upon. And that's exactly what I need and what I want to accomplish this year. Not only do I want to commit to my interests and really cultivate a craft like I mentioned, but this word stretches so far beyond that. I want to follow-through, to become reliable, to keep promises, to push forward when things get hard or boring or inconvenient. It's not just a word for my hobbies, it's a word for my life.

Yesterday marked the completion of my two-week challenge to myself to write a blog post a day here. I'd be lying if I said that some days I didn't want to call the whole thing off. My attention would be elsewhere or my creativity would be stunned, but I stuck with it. Because my word is finish. And finish I did.

I have such big dreams for this blog. Almost every day I read these other fabulous blogs written by these inspiring women that seem to be an endless wealth of wisdom, humor and inspiration. I want to be that. I want this blog to be that.

It's kind of like when you're 12 and you see an episode of Sex And The City by accident (at a friend's house obviously. As if we had HBO... ) and you just have this sudden and urgent desire to be grown up. You want to wear the big girl clothes and talk about big girl things and let your bra straps show under your tank top and have it somehow be cool. But then you look in the mirror and you are forced to remember - you're 12. You don't quite know your place in the world yet and you have absolutely no control over your hair and you don't even have bra straps (well, not real ones at least.) You're forced to realize you're still just a little girl and being in a rush won't get you to your twenties any faster, it will only frustrate you.

THAT is the story of my blog right now. I have all these ideas for what I know it can become. I want it to be better and more me. I want to update my design, I want to have regular features, I want to have guest bloggers. I want to learn how to be a better photographer, and I want you all to have a reason to come back each day. But here's the thing - I'm still 12! I do my best to remind myself that all of that will come, in time. As with all great things, it is an evolution, and my blog will be all grown up after it has put in the time. Maturity must be earned from experience. And commitment and diligence, as it turns out - those pesky, elusive qualities I'm working on.

This two-week challenge was my first step. The first thing I finished in a series of months that will hopefully be about teaching myself patience and focus. It's about making this blog a priority in my life and remembering how much joy and fulfillment I get from seeing it grow. It's about not only writing down goals for what I want it to be become, but dedicating myself to accomplishing those things. To finishing those things.

I haven't stuck with one thing this long in my entire life. While I can't promise I'll be posting every day anymore, I can tell you that these two weeks have been just what I hoped they'd be - a pleasant reminder that I am not, in fact, a quitter. Not if I don't want to be. So here's to 2012, and my new word of the year. Who knows what I will finish next.

the unfinished business of feelings

Today is another day, my friends!

I just want to take a quick second to say thank you to everyone that sent love my way after reading my last post. The support was overwhelming to me (in the most wonderful way), and it was really comforting to know that so many people out there were with me, hoping that I didn't remain a weird bumpy lizard for the rest of my life (see, isn't it just more fun to crack jokes than be all dramatic? Yes, yes it is. Like I said, today is another day!)

I actually read back over my last post today for the first time (I typically read back over at least once or twice to proofread after each post, but couldn't bring myself to last night after hitting 'publish'). Honestly, I found it to be on the verge of unbearable to read. I know why I had to write it, but I still really hated hearing my inner self in such a defeated position. Nobody likes to admit when they feel knocked down, so doing that just felt so unnatural to me. Also, I typically try to stay away from making things more dramatic than they need to be. (Okay, that's a big fat lie. I LOVE making things dramatic if it's going to make it funnier. But in serious matters where it actually counts, I do tend to avoid the whole "whoa is me" persona because I find it terribly undesirable.) So you can imagine why playing the damsel in distress card so publicly was a bit unsettling as well. Still, at the end of the day, putting all of that out on the table provided even more of a therapeutic effect than I had originally expected.

You see, I'm the type of person that needs to feel things.

We all have our own ways of coping with challenges and bad feelings. Some of us run from them, some of us mask them with humor. Me? I absorb them like a sponge. I let them creep into my whole being so that I can first feel them deeply, then spit them back out never to return again. After that they become old feelings - fulfilled feelings - and they have no business with me anymore. Kind of a weird analogy, but I think of it like the classic definition of ghosts - souls that have unfinished business, right? (Thank you, Casper, you gem of a film.) Once I let my bad feelings have their shot at simply being felt, they no longer have unfinished business and they can pass on to the other side. Like rain clouds that get heavier and heavier until eventually the bottom just opens up and everything comes flooding out. And once the cloud let's it all finally rain down, only then can it become light again. The point is, my coping mechanism is that I need to feel things in order to overcome them - sadness, frustration, fear... you name it, and I want to feel it so I can get rid of it.

And that's what yesterday's post was about. So thank you for understanding that. Thank you for allowing me to be honest, to write something that wasn't well-thought out or entertaining (not to mention something long! Sometimes you just don't know how much is on your mind until you uncork the bottle and start pouring.) Thank you for letting me be extremely vulnerable (like, trembling as I wrote the thing vulnerable) and for replying to that honesty with Facebook messages and comments, tweets and texts of love and support. To you all that went out of your way to say "chin up," your time wasn't spent in vain. Today I felt optimistic, hopeful and calm. I feel confident that soon this whole thing will be just a blip on my timeline.

I also want to say that there are those of you out there reading that are going through much worse. Whether it's a health struggle, an emotional struggle, or any struggle really, we all have things that kick us in the butt at some point. They are life's curveballs, and no matter how grave or trivial, how overwhelming or minute they might be, it doesn't matter because they are all curveballs just the same. Even the smallest of armies can win a war by catching the other side off-guard, and that's because there is great power in the element of surprise. My point is that I get it - it's a skin thing. It's not the end of the world. But the fear of the unknown can sometimes be the most paralyzing of all. And when something in life hits you so unexpectedly, it doesn't matter the circumstances, it's hard to adapt.

Either way, I just want to say thank you for making me feel that my feelings are valid, and that being upset can be okay. We all have sad days, but it's how you turn those around that defines who you are. I have a saying that some of you may recognize from earlier posts, but my personal mantra is that happiness is a choice. You can't always choose not to get knocked down, but you can certainly choose whether or not to stay down.

Today's visit to the doctor unfortunately didn't provide any definitive answers for me. But we'll keep trying and I'll keep hoping for the day (someday soon) when this isn't a worry for me anymore.

The feelings have been felt, the business has been finished, the rainclouds have been emptied.

Room has been made for some happier days ahead.

a mystery diagnosis

Today I was sad.

I realize that most of my posts on here tend to be in the way of inspirational, quirky and happy (it is in the title after all!) which is an accurate reflection of my mood and my life a majority of the time. But I also have other days. Days where something that life has thrown my way has me down, and no matter how many of my own lessons in strength, optimism and happiness I conjure to my mind, I remain in a bit of a funk. Today is one of those days.

I'm sorry if the following is not what some of you had hoped to read today. Maybe you came here for a laugh, or a new craft, or a silly life lesson I've been fixating on. These are the things I do love to share, and I promise I will get back to them shortly. But for now, today, on my sad day, I wanted to simply share with you why I'm in a funk. I wish I could say I want to tell this story to help someone or offer something of worth, but I think truly and honestly I want to share it just to be heard - to get these negative feelings out of the way to make room for more positive ones again. So feel free to read on, or don't, but please know that I'm about to let you in on a very personal, very unflattering side of my life the past month or so. And please forgive me for being a bit of a downer. It's not a side I'm particularly fond of, but it's a side nonetheless, and hence it has a right to be heard just the same. (I will also warn you, if you'd like to keep up the notion that I am attractive or desirable in any sense of the word, stop now because after reading this post it's quite possible you may never see me as those things again.)

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Some of you may have noticed my cryptic reference in another post to a topsy turvy couple of weeks I've had of late. I promise it wasn't my intention to be all "I'm angsty but I'm not going to tell you why." I honestly just didn't have the time (or the impetus) until now to sit down and write what I knew would be a very long and more serious post. The truth is I've been struggling with a very unexpected health issue for the past month, and I haven't been particularly keen on telling many people about it.

I actually started writing the long, drawn out version of this story when I realized that it doesn't really matter how I got here; it only matters that I'm here now. So I'll spare you all the details and feelings of the past month and give you the gist of it instead. (Believe it or not, the following is the extremely abridged, but still ridiculously long, tale of my last month as a case fit for Mystery Diagnosis.)

Exactly one month ago today on March 25th, I arrived home from a weekend away in West Palm Beach to find tiny, light-colored bumps covering the entire surface of my arms and legs. What I originally thought to be a simple allergic reaction soon turned into something that I knew needed professional attention when those bumps became even more abundant over the course of the next three days. When I visited my dermatologist that first time, she was stunned. "I've never seen anything like it before." (For the record, not something you want to hear your doctor say.) I was poked and prodded that first visit, but was told that in all likelihood it would be a bacterial infection - something anyone could pick up from a towel or a set of sheets. The doctor took a swab from a few of the tiny bumps and sent it away for testing. I left the office relieved and feeling like I finally had a good idea of what could be causing this freak occurrence.

Days passed and each morning I woke up to a more severe version of my condition. The bumps were not only covering the entire surface of my limbs, reaching from my ankles to my hips and from my wrists to my shoulders, but now they were beginning to itch. It was all I could do every second of the day not to scratch my skin raw. Finally I received a call from the doctor's office letting me know about my test results. I fully anticipated a simple confirmation of the suspected bacterial infection, a quick prescription for antibiotics, and bottabing, bottaboom, finally this nightmare would be over. Instead? "Miss Winegeart, we've ruled out a bacterial infection. Can you come back in today at 4pm for another look?" This was Friday the 30th. It had only been five days, but it had seemed like the longest five days of my life.

Back to the doctor's office I went. I sat in my paper gown once again being poked an prodded, surrounded by looks of bewilderment. Two more doctors from the practice were called into my exam room to give a second opinion and what did I hear? "It's like nothing I've ever seen before..." (This phrase was beginning to get a bit old.) They traded diagnoses back and forth as they walked around me, and I started to feel like the bonus question on a med school pop quiz. They reasoned through my symptoms, explaining why I seemed like "a textbook case of x, but a contradiction because of y..." I heard every explanation under the sun but finally they all seemed to agree that my symptoms appeared "consistent with" (fancy term for "we're not positive but it's close to") a viral infection. (Apparently viruses can manifest themselves in a number of different ways in our bodies - including skin. Chicken pox for example is a virus.) The suspicious part was that I exhibited no other symptoms of viral infections that are common, like a fever or sore throat. The only way to check for that would be to do a skin biopsy and send it away for testing.

I had never had a biopsy before. I hate needles, and blood, and anything remotely resembling pain, so imagine my surprise as I sat there on the exam table being told that they'd need to cut a small spot from my skin to send away to a lab somewhere. I felt terrified. And alone. And frankly just so confused as to how I got myself into this situation. I held it together long enough for them to perform the very minor procedure, and I distracted myself easily enough by cracking jokes with the nurses. They told me they would call me the second they received the results, which would be in a few days. A few days?! I left the office, headed to my car in the parking lot, and the second I put the key in my ignition, I lost it.

The flood of emotions in that moment was more than I could handle. I wanted to think it was no big deal. I wanted to act like it was just a stupid skin thing. But that's not how it felt to me - it did feel like a big deal and it didn't fee like it was stupid. It felt scary. What was wrong with me? I was frustrated that I still had no answers. I was miserable because every moment I felt compelled to scratch my now raw and irritated arms and legs. I felt helpless. I felt ugly. I felt terrified.


That night, Jason knew how down I was feeling, so we decided to stay in and watch a movie. I'll never forget that night as we both sat there on the couch with me rubbing bags of ice cold water over my arms and legs (the three different itch relief prescriptions up until that point had been ineffective), and Jason looked over at me. "Babe, it's spreading to your neck." I sprung up and ran to our hallway mirror. Sure enough, small bumps had started to appear on my neck. They were barely noticeable, but in my head all I could think about was What if it reaches my face? Every feeling I had leading up to that was only intensified. This thing, whatever it was, wasn't slowing down. I've never felt so out of control of my own body.

It never did reach my face (thank goodness) but each day it still got worse. It managed to get my stomach and my hands before the following Wednesday came along and the doctor finally called with my biopsy report. Again, I anticipated confirmation of a viral infection, a recommendation to wait it out, some prescriptions to help in the meantime, bottabing, bottaboom, back to my happy self. Or not. "Miss Winegeart, it's not a viral infection... Our report says that it is consistent with a reaction caused by an arthropod bite (arthropod is a scary word for insect, thanks Google), but the doctors here at the office have to disagree based on our assessment of the aesthetics of the bumps. The report also states that it could be caused by a drug eruption (meaning a reaction to medication.)" So based on the fact that we can't find a bite site on my body, and the fact that I literally hadn't ingested any medications leading up to the outbreak, they were telling me that they still had no idea what was causing this bizarre behavior. Another office fee, another dead end.

Luckily at that point I had called enough times for them to know just how bad things were getting with the itching. I would wake up in the middle of the night, and still halfway unconscious I would realize I had been scratching. I'd get out of bed to find that in my sleep I had scratched part of my arms and legs to the point of even drawing blood (okay, it's absolutely gross I know, but if I don't accurately express just how bad things got, I feel like I end up sounding like a big whiney baby. Or who knows, maybe that's how I sound anyway. Oh well.) To help with my symptoms, we agreed that I would take Prednisone for a period of time, a bad-mamma-jamma steroid known for its anti-inflammatory powers. This is some hard stuff, by the way, which is why they waited so long to prescribe it to me. It's so powerful in fact that you have to take graduated doses over time so you can ween your body off of it. Thankfully I didn't have any weird side effects (which I heard does happen) besides some mild jitters.

Thursday, the morning after taking the Prednisone for the first time, was the first morning in almost two weeks that I noticed any sort of improvement in my condition. Up until that point it had all been downhill. I'll never be able to describe that feeling of finally seeing hope again. (That sounded way more dramatic than I intended it to, but I swear it's true.) When you're going through something like that where every day seems worse than the one before, you start to forget what normal feels like. You lose sight of how it would feel to see your condition start going away. And when I finally experienced that moment of "this might get better," it was the happiest day. Each day I took the medication, things improved. I got to the point where I stopped thinking about it every second of every day, and I sincerely thought that these few weeks were just a freak incident that would fade into a distant memory.

My prescription for the Prednisone was for 20 days. My final dose of the pill was yesterday, and up until then things had gone almost completely back to normal (except the scars that remain on my arms and legs where the scratching got the better of me.)

So that begs the question then, why the sad day?

Two days ago while we were in the mountains on our retreat, I was washing dishes after breakfast and happened to look down at my bare legs. I instantly noticed that there appeared to be white blotches on my legs. These were the same white blotches that turned into bumps back on March 25th. Instant panic set in. I called my mom immediately (because I may be 23-years-old, but when something like this happens to you, nobody knows how to make you feel better like your mother.) She assured me that the second I got back home, we'd find a second doctor and get blood work done to get to the bottom of this mystery. Her confidence was reassuring, but I couldn't get over the heart break of seeing those familiar blotches back on my legs. I did my very best to keep calm, and over the course of a few hours, the blotches went away. Maybe I overreacted, I thought. Maybe I'm just so scared of it coming back that I'm starting to see things. 


Then today. This morning I woke up to bumps on the backs of my knees. The itching has returned too, though not as bad as it was before. My mom managed to get an appointment with one of the best dermatologists in town and tomorrow morning I wake up to go there and see if they can help me find out what's going on in this body of mine. Even though I thoroughly hate the thought of needles, I know it's what needs to be done in order to determine the underlying cause for all this madness. Still, I spent the entire day teetering on the verge of tears just thinking of what might happen if this issue flares up badly again. My brain instantly goes back to the misery I felt for those two weeks, and I want desperately to avoid that feeling again.

There are a ton of things I have learned from this process - ones I hope to share at a later date when I can look at this entire situation in a much more objective light - but there is one thing that has stuck out to me since the very beginning when this all started. You never know how much you appreciate your health until you don't have it anymore.

I don't know what this thing is yet and I don't know where it came from. I do know that it hasn't gone away, and that part scares me. Tomorrow I hope to wake up feeling like I'm on top of this whole thing, confident like my mom was on the phone when I called this weekend. "We will find out what this is. We will figure out how to make it go away." I want desperately to feel that way tomorrow. But for now, I'm just sad. Sad that it's back, and sad that this unpredictable and inconvenient thing has gotten the better of me momentarily.

Thanks for bearing with me through this downer of a post, but I just had to get the whole thing out on paper so that maybe it won't clog up my head anymore. I hope I can stay strong, and I hope most of all that this whole thing turns out to be nothing, because I must say, more than anything, I really hate sad days.

practicing patience

I like to think of travel as an extraordinary lesson in patience. Every moment seems to present an opportunity to either keep your cool or absolutely lose your marbles on a lady in a turtleneck and a drink cart.

I have finally arrived home from what seems like a long day of travel, even though in truth it was only two short one-hour flights. It doesn't matter how short the trips are, spending time in airports has this uncanny ability to make me feel like I've shaved years off my life. Nowhere else do I feel constantly confronted with situations that test my every last nerve, and so today as I felt my anxiety reach those familiar high levels, I couldn't help but think about patience.

It's funny because patience is one rare quality where we have complete and total control over whether we possess it. While some people seem to throw it around like it's some genetic predisposition ("I'm just an impatient person..."), the undeniable truth is that patience is something you simply care enough to exhibit or you don't.

It is the act of practicing self-control. Can I control my urge to hop across these twelve plane seats and yank that person's carry-on from the overhead bin since it seems to be causing them so much darn trouble? Can I control my need to step behind the ticket scanner and replace what must be the world's slowest gate agent? It's all about control.

When we were at the Asheville airport waiting on our flight out, we had the opportunity to catch an earlier flight from the one we booked but it would cost $50 each (we were traveling with five of us.) Instead of paying the fee, we decided to take the originally planned later flight, despite the fact that some of us (including me) had a tight 45-minute connection in Atlanta. About five minutes after the earlier flight took off, Delta alerted us that our flight would now be 30 minutes late (obviously making our connection seem darn near impossible.) If we missed our Atlanta flight, at least there was one more later flight into Jacksonville, but it would cause us to get home at around midnight. Midnight?!

My first instinct was complete dread. My couple-hour travel time would then become an eight-hour trip, plus we were so close to getting on that earlier plane. After a solid five minutes of sulking, I realized that our fate wasn't even set in stone yet and I was already making things more miserable for myself. We would still have a small window of time to dart to our Atlanta connection, which is certainly better than no window at all. So instead of slipping into a full-on travel meltdown, I just kept trying to keep my eye on the possibility our plans would stay in tact.

Now, you want to talk about patience... there is NOTHING more nerve-wracking than trying to remain calm when you know you have to rush to catch a flight. Suddenly it's like the rest of the world is moving in slow motion, covered in molasses, with their feet sinking into concrete. Trying to get off the plane in Atlanta was of course completely disorganized and far more difficult than it needed to be (by the way, have we not discovered a more efficient way to exit aircrafts? I mean, really.) Still, I tried with each fiber of my being to breathe through each moment and control my inner impatience. Was it really going to get me there any faster if I stared down the person holding up the line off the plane? Or if I acted snappy and short to the people around me for not walking fast enough? No. The only thing it would do was raise my own blood pressure and make my travel experience less enjoyable. If we made it, we made it, and if we didn't, we didn't. I just didn't want to be a raging b-word in the process.

As it turned out, our pilot clearly wanted to make up some ground because we got in about 15 minutes earlier than we had originally anticipated. We had to do a good amount of speed-walking through the airport (I avoid running through the airport until absolutely necessary because if you've ever seen someone run through the airport they look absolutely silly and I refuse to expose myself to such ridicule) but we made it to our gate in time. We boarded the plane with time to spare and as I sat down in our spacious exit row seat (the benefit of traveling with a 6'5" guy - he'll do whatever it takes for that extra leg room) I smiled at myself for being mindful of my own patience. I felt pretty darn good about how I handled things, and it was a great reminder for future encounters (not just travel-related) that simply being mindful of a stressful situation can help you exercise more patience.

I kept my cool today and made it home with blog-writing time to spare. Score one for me on the karma scale.

Whether it's holding your tongue with someone that gets on your nerves, not giving up when a task gets too hard, or preventing yourself from running over an old lady with your suitcase in an airport, remember that patience is just the act of practicing self-control.