Loneliness and Connection

Recently I read an article on loneliness that was forwarded to me by psychologist and life coach Dr. Eric Maisel. I took a writing course with Dr. Maisel and have found his books on creative stumbling blocks and their antidotes to be on target with my experience of the creative life. His daughter Kira Asatryan, also a life coach, wrote this particular article, 4 Disorders That May Thrive on Loneliness. In it, she posits that if you suffer from depression, social anxiety, addiction, or hoarding it may be worthwhile to consider the loneliness factor. Let's face it: in our modern society, the ability to achieve real human connection is often hindered by our fast-paced lifestyles. And the connections we do have through social media tend toward superficiality.

Before moving to Arden, I had experienced many periods of deep loneliness. Probably the most pronounced period came after college. While at the University of Delaware, I lived in the Belmont Honors House. Inside a huge house that used to be home to the president of the university, I lived with nineteen of the most intriguing and inspiring minds on campus. Today I keep in touch with many of them. They live all over the world and are tops in their fields. I loved living in that environment. Sure, I had to wait in line to use the bathrooms, but I wasn't lonely. Not ever. Then I graduated.

Mark and I got married within months of my graduation (which I completed a year ahead of schedule). Soon I landed a job as a CAD operator, designing fabric on second shift. We worked in shifts because the design computers and the software were so expensive back in the late eighties, early nineties that we need to run them at all hours to make full use of the investment. On my shift, I worked with two other co-workers. I never saw my new husband who worked first and third shifts as a computer operator. None of my high school friends had graduated from college. I had nobody to go out with and was too tired at 11:30 PM to even consider it if I had. We had few people besides our relatives who we saw with any regularity. I didn't realize that this wasn't normal adulthood. I daydreamed about recruiting people to live in a commune just so I would have people to interact with during the daytime hours. This was 1990-4, before we even had email to stay in touch.

I joined a step-aerobics class with a bunch of grandmas who were available in the morning hours. I took up knitting and watched soap operas before work. My favorite soap of that period was Another World. I was so caught up in the characters (Anne Heche as twins Vicky and Marley, etc.) that I would dream about them. If one the actors from the show was in Soap Opera Digest, I would buy it and read it over my dinner break at work.  I would go to the mall on Mother's Day Weekend when cast members made special appearances. One time, I even won a script signed by the cast of Another World. I kept it on a shelf with the video tape containing the actual episode. (Boy, could I work a VCR.) To this day, this is the only time I have ever won anything in a drawing. The characters on that show were my friends. I had no idea just how much I clung to them during that period of my life until I looked back on it. Was I depressed during that period? I don't think so. My rich inner life kept me from that. I also knit some mighty fine sweaters during that time period.

I gained more ties after we had kids. We joined a church. We got connected to the World Wide Web in 1995 a year after our son was born. I started working day shift which was much more amenable to social interaction. Still, it wasn't until I moved to Arden that I began to see what a boon community could be in a person's life. Now I have multiple close friends within walking distance of my house. If I go three days without seeing one of them, it would be highly unusual. I see other neighbors at dinner nearly every week October-May when we go to Arden Dinner Gild, and I have so many other venues for human contact that sometimes I have to lock myself inside my house for a day to have 'me' time. I was so starved for human interaction, I don't think I could ever imagine wanting that before. In my previous life, if someone had suggested an outing, I would go. I didn't care where we were going--or even who it was with. I get to be discerning now.

I have compared living in Arden to being back in the Belmont House. So many interesting people who live so close and make themselves available. Always something to do and someone with whom to share the experience. And I don't have to share a bathroom with anyone except my husband and daughter. It is a chance to be alive and to be grateful that I am living in this place with other awe-inspiring souls. I think back to that young woman with only her soap opera for friends. I don't feel sorry for her, so much as I wish I could give her a hug and take her out for lunch--because I have something really big to tell her. The woman who was head writer for Another World during those early years of my marriage lives in Arden, perhaps a half mile from our house.

I knew that Donna had written for the soaps. She is a Facebook friend, and we have friends in common, but I am not the rabid daytime fan that I was twenty-five years ago, so I didn't linger on the fact except to note that I had yet another fellow writer who lived in my village. I only recently made the connection to my past world when she posted a Throwback Thursday photo on Facebook. I saw the photo which prompted me to research exactly which soaps she wrote for and when. Imagine my surprise when I learned that the woman who authored "my friends' lives" lives across town from me. I know it is just the universe winking at me, showing me a "then and now" moment, a thread of connection through time and space.

There is lonely, and there is relationship. That human connection is available to us, in real world terms. Sometimes, we just need to turn off our screens and find it.

Good Morning, Arden.

photo by Heather Auman

A friend of mine told me a story about one of the former owners of her house. Legend has it that the woman used to rise each morning, throw open the windows to Arden's busiest road, and greet the day wearing nothing more than a smile. In my head, I imagine her waving at all the passersby.  I, too, am a morning person, but have not quite settled in on my morning routine. A regular pattern of action eludes me, which is strange because I so crave ritual in this part of my day.  It is like a puzzle I want to figure out.

I have mentioned before that I took a course at Omega in October of 2012 with Eric Maisel, renowned psychotherapist to us artist types. His wisdom came down to the fact that as artists, we must make meaning first thing in the day or risk spinning into depression. Have your morning pee, grab your cup of coffee, but that is it. The first hour of your day is spent in meaning making.  This isn't the Julia Cameron Morning Pages where you write stream of consciousness for thirty minutes without pausing to lift your hand from the page. I've tried making that my morning practice. It was a very whiney way to start my day. Dr. Maisel has you using your clear morning mind to tackle your art.  I could really get on board with this practice. I could! Certainly if I get in a writing groove, it might mean I skip breakfast or that I am still in my pajamas at noon when the mail carrier knocks on my door with a package. I could live that life.

Here is the problem. I want to do everything first thing in the morning. I want to get my exercise out of the way first thing because it makes me feel good about myself. And if I don't do it then, sometimes I let it slide. I want to walk with the Misty Morning Walkers who come by my house at approximately 8:12 AM on their loop around the three Ardens. I am so stiff when I get out of bed in the morning that I should stretch, probably do at least thirty minutes of yoga, before I sit myself in a chair behind my computer or worse, sit on my soft armchair with my feet on the ottoman. When I go get a massage, it is as if my therapist is untangling knots that would make a sailor cry. It is getting so bad, that my mobility has suffered, and not just a little. I want to meditate. This morning I did a guided meditation from Deepak Chopra in which the centering thought was "I use the organizing power of my awareness." Apparently the key is to become centered and to meditate myself to an organized morning. It didn't happen. Last but not least, I want to make the bed and empty the dishwasher first thing in the morning. My son used to put away the dishes for me when he was home. I love starting off the day with a made bed and an empty dishwasher.

And then there is the fact that I feel as though I am always waiting for my husband to vacate before I do anything meaningful. It is one thing when it is warm enough for me to be out on my screen porch where I am out of his way. But I don't want to be in the middle of a meditation and hear the ironing board screech. Plus I want to make sure I get my goodbye kiss before he leaves. Sometimes he dawdles.  Is it too much to ask for him to pick an exit time and stick to it? Now I have to help him with a morning routine.

I do not know what the answer is for me. I will continue type hack my morning into Google search engine, but my Goo-ru has not figured out all the answers for me yet. We do have a great balcony off our bedroom and probably live on the quietest rode in town. Even though the only person I would scare would be my neighbor, Debbi, I don't think I am ready to greet the day with full nudity. Maybe the same thing could be accomplished with a stylish kimono. Good Morning, Arden.

Art Asylum

I have long been a fan of Eric Maisel's work. He is a psychotherapist and coach who specializes in creative and performing artists and their emotional and virtual challenges. He has written many books including Fearless Creating, The Van Gogh’s Blues, Coaching the Artist Within  and one of my favorite little volumes, A Writer's Paris.  After reading many of his books, I had the good fortune of taking a workshop with Dr. Maisel in 2013 at Omega institute. The gist of the workshop comes down to this: Get up in the morning and write for an hour first thing. You are allowed to get coffee and relieve your bladder, but that's about it. One of Dr. Maisel's biggest contentions (and I am oversimplifying here) is that most artists' issues stem from the struggle to make meaning. If you start your day off with an attempt at meaning-making, you combat a cycle of depression that comes from producing nothing. Dr. Maisel's work is fascinating and practical. I recommend it for anyone in with creative ambitions.

I live in a colony of artists now. That doesn't just mean I live in a village that is dotted with wonderful little studio spaces. It also means I live in a village where creative people are pulling out their hair in sizable clumps when they run out of money for the meds. I am joking, sort of. My friend Joe called Arden an "art asylum." I don't know if he coined the phrase, but knowing Joe's way with words, I should give him credit. I don't think he was talking about artists specifically. Arden attracts people who are out-of-the-box thinkers (and doers) in many subjects. There are those who were born into this community, but they are descended from the original lot of off-beat philosophers who created the Georgist sanctuary for artists in the first place. I have heard it said that the Ardens are home to people who wouldn't fit in anywhere else. I can see the truth in that. This makes town meetings especially interesting.

I am proud of our offbeat collective, proud to be a member. Just ask the people I drum with in the drumming circle--I am plenty offbeat. But there is a dark side to all this creativity run amok, and that is we sometimes find ourselves contending with real mental illness. I am not a mental health professional. We have plenty of those living in the Ardens probably for the same reason that foxes live near rabbits. I am also someone who can be naive and idealistic. I want to see the best in everyone. So when I see behaviors on social media and in person that raise red flags, I am flummoxed. I can discount some of the behaviors as coming from people who care deeply, think deeply, and who just have an underdeveloped grasp of social interaction. I'd like to sit those people down with my dad who is trained in Nonviolent Communication, a process which focuses on empathy and more effective forms of self-expression. Can't we all just get along? Other times, I fear that people need more help than toolbox of communication practices can provide.

We are human, and we are all striving to make meaning in this world. In the Ardens, I feel the drive exists more strongly than in other places. Cookie cutter answers are not going to cut it for us. We need to ask the hard questions starting with, Should Peanut's character Lucy set up her psychiatric help booth at the Arden Fair this summer? Maybe. She would probably have to lose her trademark bored demeanor. I came here to Arden with my own foibles, the monkey on my back. Remember? I started this blog entry with the admission that I am reading books by a well-known psychotherapist. I am here for the complexity. The journey with others who understand what it takes to be a crazy artist. It might get tricky at times, but people don't move to Arden for our smooth roads.
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