Birthday

I just got caught up on my schoolwork after being behind for an entire year. Yes, it's 4am, hopefully my last pseudo all-nighter for the year. It feels good to be done, although I really dragged my feet when it came down to the last few assignments. I realized that I was afraid to move on because I know that it means I'll have more time on my hands. When I'm less busy, thoughts and feelings surface that I've been keeping at bay. Now is the time for me to approach those things with love and courage, to give myself the space to deal with them. I got transplants for my vegetable garden this weekend and spent some time in the sunshine preparing the beds and irrigation. It was great to get my hands dirty and feel the satisfaction of a sore back after some (minimal) manual labor. I also cleared out my studio at school (two pickup truck loads of art gear!) and am looking forward to a shift in pace for the summer.

If you are interested in seeing what I'm doing in school these days, feel free to visit my artist website at www.ericabarajas.com. I drank some green tea to get myself through the last two papers I was writing and now I'm a little too wired to go to sleep even though it's been a long day.

I'm so grateful for the friends I've met here in Kalamazoo since we moved here in 2009. We had a lovely gathering today to celebrate my 35-and-still-alive birthday. Everyone brought something to share and it was warm enough to be out in the backyard. There were children and dogs and all sorts of diverse conversations going on. Mark made an amazing Devil's Food Cake from scratch and we grilled burgers, veggie kabobs, and polenta. There is so much beauty in the world if I look for it, and I'm lucky to be surrounded by so much of it. There is also a lot of suffering in the world, and I can face that with courage and love as well.

Responsibility

On the eve of my 35th birthday I'm feeling pangs of regret that I don't have children. Yet, I hope. My birthday last year was overshadowed by chemotherapy and the end of a semester that felt like a failure. I took three incompletes, which was a concession for me to admit that I couldn't proceed as normal with my plans. I'm now dealing with the consequences of those incompletes... 2 print projects and 3 essays piled on top of my normal end-of-semester workload. It has become clear to me that my number one coping mechanism is to get busy and stay busy. Sometimes I don't take responsibility for co-creating the situations I get into and I feel like it's something "happening to me." Last week someone asked me where I get the energy to do all the things that I'm doing (this person is a single parent) and I told them that it was because I wasn't responsible for anyone else but myself. (As if being connected to other people would automatically drain one's energy). As soon as I heard the words come out of my mouth, it didn't feel right. Sometimes it takes saying things like that out loud for me to process them. It didn't feel right in a few different ways.

• One thing was that I do feel some responsibility for others... to make sure people I supervise at work have what they need to do their jobs well (including funding), to be a good enough wife, daughter, friend, for others in my life. 
• It also felt strange to admit that I'm the only one who can truly be responsible for myself and to notice that I might not be doing that so well. I'm so focused on getting things done and staying busy that my wellness has slipped down the list of my priorities. I was reminded that I need to get enough sleep so that my body can continue recovering and can resist future mutations. These reminders came in the form of a loving intervention from my husband and a simple magazine headline at the food co-op: "Sleep to prevent cancer." This semester I've done a few all-nighters to finish print projects because it felt like the only way to get it done. I hope I didn't do too much damage by way of those choices. 
• The last thing that didn't feel right about my statement was that I typically gain energy when I'm around people. I think if I was around a daughter as awesome as my friend's 9-year old all the time I would be full of love and excitement about life. (I'll have to come back and remind myself about this when/if I'm up in the middle of the night taking care of a sick kid someday).

One thing I've done pretty well this semester is making sure that I have plenty of healthy meals and snacks around. I could always drink more water, but have avoided caffeine for the most part. I'm really looking forward to the growing season and all the farmers' markets that happen. This will be my first season since 2010 that I wasn't in charge of a market, so I'll be able to visit just as a customer.

I had a dream last night that there was a gnarly sapling growing in my bed, through my mattress, that made it impossible for me to lie down. It looked like this unwanted tree that I've cut back a bunch of times to try and remove it from the school garden I used to manage. In the dream, I realized that I needed to take it out by the roots to really get rid of it... that cutting the branches off of it wouldn't do the trick. So I took hold and pulled and it eventually came loose, leaving behind a bunch of dirt in the bed. I'm not sure exactly what that part of the dream was about, but I suspect it has something to do with getting rid of bad habits (of mind and/or body) for good.

With classes wrapping up last week, I have 7 days to complete 5 projects and 3 essays. I'm going to be gentle with myself about the quality of those assignments, and will focus on drinking enough water and getting a full night's sleep. Luckily, things are going pretty smoothly at work so I'm not very stressed about that part of my life.

I'm looking forward to an internship that I'm doing this summer at the Kalamazoo Book Arts Center. I'll learn how to make paper, bind books, and do letterpress printing. I'll also earn access to the entire center 24/7 so I'll have a place to do my own work over the summer. I applied for some funding through WMU to defray the cost of summer tuition for this independent study. I might convert one of our bedrooms into a home studio when Mark moves to California in July, so in the meantime I just need to store my work and supplies somewhere safe since we have to clear out of the art building on April 28.

Death is coming for us all. Sooner or later. It's something we all have in common. I'm reminded each time I here about someone close to me or close to someone I know getting cancer, committing suicide, or having their livelihood challenged. It's difficult to keep this in mind when I have a list of things to get done and I don't make time to think about whether or not those tasks really matter in the long run.

As the earth wakes from it's wintry slumber, I'm reminded of a lyric from Elisabeth Pixley-Fink's song:

"When the spring comes, may all that you planted rise up and greet the sun."

May we all plant the seeds that we want to see growing in our lives and in the world.
May we honor that which surfaces and face it with love and without fear.