this is 50

My title sounds like a Netflix movie about someone who drinks a lot of red wine and sees a murder and then no one believes her for 50 minutes until she almost gets murdered and finally a man takes notice and saves her.

BUT NO.

It’s just me, folks.

After my last post I wanted to post a quick announcement, and also some rando pix of my latest thrift haul because it’s my blog and I can do what I want. But actually these two things (the pix and the blog) are connected, so continuity for the win!

Announcement: My website is about helping people get their creativity back. It’s about a creative “reset,” and especially aims at those who find themselves stuck in addiction or negative behavior patterns and coping skills. I like to term this very scientifically as: STUCKEDNESS.

But: (and this is huge): IT’S GOING TO HELP ME, TOO. I too am stuckedness.

Further proof that it really is all about me.

Stuckedness is a symptom of a lot of things, and for me, it came back in the form of low self worth, insecurities and anxieties about my writing, and big-time sad feelings. BTW: “Big time sad feelings” is not in the DSM, but it should be.

So, yesterday I took a break from my colossal to-do list (I like lists! I actually love them. They give me comfort and a locus of control. See exhibit A below where I actually have a main list (cute colors) and a whole different notebook that made a LIST of FUTURE lists.

Exhibit A: Yes, I know Wed. and Thur. look empty but it’s all a ruse. I had a whole separate stunt-woman list for them.

My break from writing consisted of dropping of dry cleaning and buying more food because I am an adult. But it also included a trip to my happy place: THE THRIFT STORE.

I do so love thrifting, for so many reasons. It’s about the thrill of the hunt, and finding really cool stuff that is colorful and different and a little bit weird. Like me. So yesterday, I hit the jackpot in dresses section – I’ll share my haul on IG later because it’s on my list – but I want to talk about this divine thing:

I mean. Honestly.

Handmade. From the seventies. All the color. It makes me so happy.

But then, as I was gazing at it on the rack at the Goodwills, there were other emotions that joined in, because happiness in my head always seems to come with annoying mosquito-ey suckers that say things like:

“This is never going to look good on you.”

“You are simply too old to try this amount of color. And the sleeves. Really Dana. Are you seventeen.

“People will not understand. It’s too much. You’re too much.”

And I faltered. I really did. But she’s home safe with me now. And I will wear her. I’ll be in the picture. I’ll not hide behind my age or my insecurities anymore because that doesn’t work for me. My inner critic can shut the hell up.

When you get to be fifty you can say stuff like that. But I highly recommend you try saying it at whatever age you are.

So, that’s kinda what Dana Bowman Creative will be about too. Brightness and whimsy and creative, funky choices that feed my soul, or yours. And we will learn how to be IN the picture, not on the sidelines or behind the camera. It’s uncomfortable a bit, and there might be some really floofy sleeves, but how else can we wear the color?

At some point I’ll thrift flip her a little. Update her, transform her into a skirt or something a bit more modern. Maybe.

But until then:

One does not intend to disappear. But I did, for months.

There are a few reasons. And, if you are at all familiar with me (it’s been awhile, I know), you know I love lists. So…

A List of Reasons Why I Disappeared:

Uh. Covid.
Covid again.
Depression. Probably b/c Covid.
Menopause. ???
Yea, no, I’m not going to put “???” with “Menopause” like it’s not a thing. It was a THING y’all, and it still is. Mix it liberally w/ #1-3 and it was craptastic.
I left my original publisher, for other reasons that are just my own, and then promptly felt all adrift and lost and didn’t know what to do with myself.

Perhaps this list is similar to a creative list of your own. I mean… #6 might be a bit niche-y. But, have you felt stuck and small and adrift? Well THAT’S BEEN ME FOR A WHILE NOW.

But, in the incandescent words of my muse, Eminem: “Guess who’s back. Back again. Shady’s back. Tell a friend.”

Look. I’ve had a lot of time to sit and ponder. A good portion of my summer was me, literally, lying on my back and pondering the ceiling, as I was so sick that reading, writing, and even Netflix were impossible. It was like I was simply forced to just… be. And be very still. And at first I hated it, and then I hated it some more. And then? I noticed something.

I kept getting ideas.

The reason I am a writer is because I have all these ideas that keep floating up, and then I write about them. But while I was dealing with #1-6 above all my writing stopped. But the ideas? They quietly, flutteringly, floated up at me. They kept coming. And one evening, stuck in my sick room, just me and my ceiling, frustrated and sad about it all – I started to cry and as the tears slipped down my face (gravity) to pool into my ears (you know you’ve had this happen) and I had an idea: Tears are ways to stopper up sound. And sometimes silence is good. Total stops are good. Being STILL is good.

It was both an idea and medicine at the same time.

That idea and all the others that would gently float by me – they gave me hope. And I recorded some of them (I texted myself or wrote them down in on a notebook, as one does when one is a Writer) and I realized two things:

I still have ideas and God kept them coming even in my darkest hour. Maybe even because of my darkest hour.
In the incandescent words of my muse that old guy in Monty Python? I’M NOT DEAD YET.

Thanks for listening, folks. Keep listening, if you want, to hear more about creativity, our brains, and how we must value our creative selves if we want to survive this world.

I’m honored to have ye.

Oh! And actually? I did a bit of shopping while I was prone, and I bought this. It was a crucial purchase.

The woman in the picture

After Silence, better.