07 February 2018
JUN 06
It’s the first Friday of June! Can you believe that we’re at the half way mark of 2014 already? It feels like the snow just melted here in Minneapolis but everything is blooming right now.
- Come back here on Monday to watch a video interview with Dorkys Ramos from Porcupine Hugs. We’ll be talking about the madness behind starting a small business and dealing with chemo at the same time.
- The Mayo Clinic just published a study finding that immunotherapy might be a new tool in treating chemo/radiation resistant breast cancer.
- Heather Ordover (of CraftLit fame) has blogged at length about the benefits of cognitive anchoring with knitting and doodling. She passed along this New York Times article which says, “Not only do we learn letters better when we commit them to memory through writing, memory and learning ability in general may benefit.”
- It’s national doughnut day! Rebecca from Hugs are Fun put out a free cross stitch pattern in celebration. How cute is this cat doughnut? I might have to break out the floss and aida fabric today.
- And it’s also the 70th anniversary of D-Day. Walk off that doughnut while you listen (and learn!) more about World War 2 with the Stuff You Missed in History Class podcast.
- Last bit of neat news: Doughnut Day started in 1938 by the Salvation Army to honor people who fed World War 1 soldiers (“dough boys”) doughnuts.
JUN 04
I’m filing today’s post under “things I wish were around when I was going through chemo”. Full disclosure: I was not asked to review Instapeer. I just love the idea and I donated.
As some readers may know, I absolutely adore the young adult cancer non-profit Stupid Cancer. It was one of the new places online that made me feel like I wasn’t alone and things were going to work out.
I also didn’t feel like I was in a competition to see who has had the most treatment done. There was one forum that had a ‘tradition’ of everyone listing their diagnosis date and list of what type of chemo, how many rounds,the dosage of radiation and if they’ve had any stem cell transplants. The most active users were people who had a very long list in their signature. While there wasn’t an explicit competition (“Oh you’ve only had six rounds of CHOP? Whatever, n00b”) it sometimes felt implied.
It also scared the pants off of me.
Was I going to have to go through more chemo after Hyper CVAD? Radiation? A stem cell transplant? I had no idea what would happen after I exhausted all options. Would I even need to exhaust any options? The future was a huge unknown for me so where was I going to fit in? And on top of that, here I am at 25 years old and I’m trying to find my voice in a forum full of people twice my age. I had no kids, recently married and no job to juggle. Just a pile of student loan debts, a gap on my resume and pondering if my “middle-aged prime” was 13-years-old.
I had difficulty finding people who understood that horror. Then I found Stupid Cancer.
And suddenly, I had a place to go. A place to vent. A place to make sick jokes and not be judged.
Instapeer will fill that void for so many other people, regardless of age.
Click on the video below and then head over to their Indiegogo campaign page to learn more. PS Are you going through chemo or just finished treatment? Contact me and we’ll talk about it.
ATTENTION: I am currently interviewing my fellow cancer survivor friends! Come back next week and have coffee with us!
MAY 30
Boy, was my feed reader filled with great stuff this week! Here’s some of my highlights from around the web:
- Have you seen FreshStitches’ newest vlog, Coffee with Stacey? This week’s a thoughtful chat about Memorial Day. Listen to the conversation and keep your eyes peeled for chickens.
- And Ruth from Rock + Purl also has a vlog up! Her wonderful Spanish accent takes me back down memory lane. Go knit along with her after you’ve finished your Coffee with Stacey.
- Sarah from Yes and Yes posted something that I’ve been saying for a while: “ Our identities are so, so deeply influenced by the stories we tell ourselves and ourselves. Are you really “bad at sports” or did you just hate volleyball in fifth grade? Are you actually shy or do you just take 10 minutes to get your social bearings? Are you really, actually bad at managing people – or did you just have a terrible intern for one summer?” Read more from “You Get to Choose Your Story“.
- Minneapolis/St. Paul people: I had the best duck gnocchi at Ward 6.
- Great prices, wonderful food and drinks (do try the Don Draper Says What?) and excellent service.
- My newsletter goes out later today, be sure to sign up and stay in the loop!
Shredded duck with potato gnocchi and roasted squash. I had to take a picture!
My wonderful friends and family members on Facebook have all been bugging me about not taking enough pictures of my Disney vacation. There’s the photo of me with Belle and four here on Instagram. A week away and I took a grand total of…FIVE pictures.
Everyone’s flipping out but I did this on purpose.
- I don’t enjoy photography. I’ve been figuring out how to take better product photos for Survival Organs and my skills are slowly improving. That’s great for a visual based business but it makes picture taking feel too much like working. Because it is!
- It’s really hard to take pictures of the rides. I saw way too many people with their tables out trying to film the darker rides like It’s a Small World. The ride is beautiful but you’re moving too fast for the computer to focus! Which leads to my next point….
- Getting the right shot, for me, interferes with enjoying the moment and taking in what’s going on. The grounds are immaculate, there’s topiary and interesting architecture galore and there are Hidden Mickeys everywhere for you to find. Personally, I find that if I’m absorbed with making sure my point-and-shoot is cooperating, I miss what’s really going on around me. I’d rather carry the personal memories than have loads of photos that I’ll most likely never look at again.
- Photography can interfere with creating memories. The research and conclusions are a little slim at best and are a bit conflicting, too. I was more focused on creating great moments with the SGT. By not worrying about pictures, we were able to walk slowly, have great meaningful and meaningless chats and we ran into the Magic Kingdom’s Mayor!
- This was a low-stress vacation for us. Anything that was stressful (like picture-taking!) was dropped.
- I did spent some time drawing, though! I kept a ‘doodle diary’ during my rock climbing trip and I kept a less structured one this time again. I found it to be a fun way to stop, smell and draw the roses.
Have you made the conscious choice to leave the camera at home? How did that work out for you?
P.S. I’m going to go more in-depth about this in my newsletter tomorrow, Friday May 30, 2014. Sign up today, get a free printable and get an exclusive look into my art journal!
MAY 27
I spent all of last week at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida. It was our super belated honeymoon/can you believe we’ve been married for five years anniversary trip. This was our first real vacation in over six years for either one of us. Sure we had gone to visit friends and family but never had we spent time just the two of us anywhere.
We totally deserved this trip.
Having been to Disney World before, I knew what to expect and what to look forward to but I still did some research before hand. I learned two things:
1. There’s a military (and their families) only resort called Shades of Green. The resort is near the Magic Kingdom, is owned by the Army but run by Disney and has the cheapest (but largest!) rooms on property. There is a ticket counter where we could buy the discounted Disney Salute to Armed Forces tickets and tickets to the other parks (SeaWorld, Universal Studios) in the area.
2. So many people go crazy planning out their every waking moment at the parks. I found blogs that had printable itineraries telling you which ride to get on at what time, where to eat and what to order. It just seemed like a sure-fire way to have a miserable time, to me. But those bloggers and their readers insisted that it was the only way to really “do” Disney.
I decided to prove them wrong and here’s how I did it:
- I took whatever dinner reservations I could find. The two restaurants we really wanted to eat were Liberty Tree Tavern and the ’50s Prime Time Cafe. I also reserved an afternoon tea at the Grand Floridian to break up our Tuesday. If we couldn’t get a seat at Be Our Guest or another super fancy place, that was no big deal. Ditto for the FastPass system on rides. We didn’t hit all of the rides and we still had fun.
- We set our intention to just be together and have fun. I thought about the qualities of what the “perfect” vacation would be: relaxing, reconnecting and fun. We only did the things we felt would be either relaxing, reconnecting or fun for us. If it was making us stressed out, we stopped.
- We didn’t obsess over taking pictures, sorry Mom! So many people would try to photograph or record the rides (tip: it’s too dark and you’re moving too fast, so don’t bother) and would miss really experiencing everything. While I did take some that you can see on Instagram, I mostly wanted memories rather than hasty photos.
- When we hit a wall energy wise, we took a break. We went back to our rooms and napped in the afternoons. That left us feeling refreshed to back to the parks for dinner and hang out for the fireworks in the cooler evening. If we missed a parade or show, so be it.
By going where the spirit moved us, we had a great time together. Neither one of us was grumpy from the heat or being over tired. We saw what we wanted to see, we got a chance to reconnect with each other and our time was magical. So I was right: you can have a great Disney vacation with a Type B personality.
P.S. Want to know more about my trip? Contact me and I’ll be happy to dish. Do you want to learn how to be more zen-like? I can help you with that too!
MAY 16
Hooray, it’s Friday!
The internet’s been swarming with neat-o things this week. Here are some of my favorites:
- The hardest thing about having an Etsy shop is taking great pictures. Daft Crafts has an article up about styling your shots.
- Do you have a ton of fabric scraps? There’s a swap going on over here.
- I’ve been staying up most nights reading Make Money, Make Art by Elizabeth Hyde Stevens. Read this if you’re a Jim Henson fan and an artist trying to make a living. “Fraggle Rock” gave a lot of people the impression that they could do what they love for a living [...] because Fraggles never fool around and Fraggles never shirk!
Have you seen anything cool recently? What are you reading?
By the way, if you like this, you should sign up for my super free super secret ninja newsletter.
MAY 14
I have been super stoked about doing my very first craft show. Getting the acceptance email was a huge ego boost and made me feel like all the hard work I’ve put into Survival Organs was paying off! I would be able to put my biz on a literal map.
The show’s been canceled.
Deep down, I feel like it’s because I suck. Crazy but emotions aren’t (always) rational.
So what do you do when you feel this way?
I gave myself some time to cry, whine and sulk. Then I rolled up my sleeves and I had a good think. I came to a few conclusions.
- Poor planning on someone else’s part is not a reflection on me and my planning.
- I was initially accepted because someone (or a group of someones!) liked my stuff. They liked it so much they had to include it.
- I now have loads of inventory (and new organs!) already made. I can now concentrate on photography, photo editing and listing them at the shop.
How do you stop yourself from taking rejection so personally? Do you actively try to find meaning in failure?
MAY 12
It really boils down this:
No One Else Is.
During chemotherapy, I was hungry for real experiences. While I didn’t want to read any memoirs written by famous people, I did want to hear first hand accounts by other twenty somethings who also had non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. I also had a bad case of magical thinking. By comparing myself with other people, maybe I could do things a bit differently and not have to go through some of the harder parts of fighting cancer.
Like what? Like, if I saw that person A was blogging about staying home a lot, well then I had to go out all the time so I wouldn’t end up in the hospital. None of it worked, since it was all based in silly wishful thinking.
It also made me feel more normal. Lymphoma is pretty rare as it is and I got my diagnosis coming out of anesthesia. I was stuck in the hospital not really knowing what exactly was going on with me. I was also stuck in the hospital with just my smart phone and a crappy wi-fi connection. I brought my knitting with me but the stitches that sewed my chest together again would be aggravated by my arm/hand movements oddly enough.
By reading how real people were dealing with this very real disease made me feel so much better. That I wasn’t alone, that I didn’t do this to myself, that I was just having the worst luck ever.
It’s been four years since I finished chemo and I’ve been in remission ever since. I won’t shut up about this because it needs to shouted about. As a young adult cancer survivor, there are few places where I fit in. I’m not a St Jude kid and I’m not an old woman (yet!) who can look back on her entire life; I was just getting started with mine. I didn’t need to research early retirement options, I didn’t have a career started!
There’s some research that indicates young adult cancer survivors are growing in number. Our needs are different from what most hospitals have in place to deal with. I didn’t need someone to talk me through Medicare Part D, I needed help with explaining the gap in my resume!
Mostly, though? I’m not done talking about this because I keep learning new things about me that I never knew before. It’s in my bones to be introspective and what I keep uncovering has just made me a more confident and self-assured person. It’s the driving theme in my manifesto: with a little bit of exploration, we uncover the fact that we all know what we’re doing. The what-if bullshit tends to obscure the answers we have!
MAY 09
A sunny week in Minneapolis has drawn to a soggy close. This weekend is looking to be equally rainy but I’ll take it over rain.
- Saturday, I’ll be wandering around Craftstravaganza. I went last year and had a blast.
- Are you on Twitter? Do you use Bit.ly? Go change your password, says Lifehacker.
- My personal habit to focus on in May is to take up walking again. My neighborhood is full of parks and sidewalks. Aimless walks are a dying art according to the BBC.
- Thanks to the rain and thunder here, I’m spending most of my day treating a headache.
MAY 06
Last week, my friends and I found out our Enneagram personality types. While we all agreed and assumed there’s nothing really scientific backing up the results, we did find the descriptions to be both enlightening and sobering. The flaws associated with our respective types was on the money and we were all a little embarrassed.
My personality type is a 4, “the Individualist“. I am sensitive, introspective and self-absorbed. Basically, I’m a special snowflake and a delicate little flower if I let my ego go hog wild. However, being a reasonably healthy and well-adjusted individual I can fully agree with this description:
Healthy Fours are honest with themselves: they own all of their feelings and can look at their motives, contradictions, and emotional conflicts without denying or whitewashing them. They may not necessarily like what they discover, but they do not try to rationalize their states, nor do they try to hide them from themselves or others. They are not afraid to see themselves “warts and all.”
powered by Fotopedia
And that’s my problem with beauty and Pinterest-fueled perfection. At my worst, I strive for perfection right away which has discouraged me in the past from improving my skills, especially when it comes to fine art and drawing. When I’m at my best, I keep going.
Then this morning, I come across Austin Kleon’s blog where he recently showed how messy his sketchbooks are. He even has a tag called “sketchbooks should be sketchy”!
My notebooks are shitholes where I go to dump my brains out, say things I wouldn’t even say out loud to my wife, places to find what I’m looking for, find out what I know. They aren’t pretty. (Full post is here.)
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The desire to “find what I’m looking for” appeals to my personality (and the type 4 that I am) but it also appeals to an innate need for freedom we all have. What good comes from limiting my creativity? If I stick to doing things perfectly the first time, am I really going to find out whatever it is that I’m looking for? Am I letting my brain grow by having inflexible boundaries? Or by putting up such tight constraints am I just hamstringing healthy growth?
Think about your personality. Where are you keeping yourself from growing or just having fun? As Miss Frizzle once said, “it’s time to ask questions, get messy and make mistakes!”
MAY 02
It’s Friday! This week has been very exciting here at the dojo.
- I’m gearing up for my first craft show next month! I will be selling my organs at the Junk Society’s New Found Glory show June 12, 13 and 14.
- I’ll also be at the LoLa Art Crawl in August, right in my neighborhood. I love Minneapolis!
- Have you seen these cute stickers? I love Scrawny Girl’s sticker of the month club. I wonder if I still have my old sticker book somewhere.
- It’s also Children’s Day in Japan. Wendi Gratz put out a cool koinobori carppattern. Put the carpe back in your diem.
- And a new F. Scott Fitzgerald story has been uncensored and published. My literature loving heart is flooded with joy.
- Last, but not least my friend Mei from Tiny Hands has made me a slamming early birthday gift because I’m going to Disney World this month!
Have you found anything cool online this week? If you enjoyed my wrap up, you’ll enjoy my now!
APR 30
I’ve (finally) started really editing my book that I wrote in November. I’m now currently wrestling with whether to add in a potentially controversial essay or not.
The thrust of the essay is: I’m not brave. I’m not inspiring. I’m not a martyr for cancer. It’s just an awful thing that happened to me and I made up my mind to make the best of it.
For me, cancer treatment was straight forward. Show up to chemo, take my meds on time and keep in touch with my doctors. That was all I had to do, just show up. Whether treatment worked or not was out of my hands. I didn’t (and still don’t) understand what is so brave about doing what I had to do.
Most of all, having people throw those labels at me created this huge gulf between us. I was no longer human, it felt, I was this beatific being to be locked in a curio cabinet to look at and not touch. It denied me my very human right to be super angry and frustrated with my situation.
So what do you say when someone mentions that they’re a cancer survivor? “That must have been a difficult experience,” is a good one. Or, “Wow. I’m sorry that you went through such a trial by fire. Those “character building” moments are awful, aren’t they?”
Major issues like cancer create uncomfortable situations. As an outsider, just remember that you’re speaking with a real person with real feelings. Not some super human Lance Armstrong (ick) type.
P.S. I talk about balancing chronic illness with building a new business over at Tara Swiger’s blog. If you want to stay in the loop about my book’s progress, sign up for the newsletter. There are TWO free gifts if you do!
APR 28
I’ve noticed a trend going around the internet, lots of people (myself included!) are blogging about ‘gentleness’ or ‘gentle accountability’. I’ve been pondering the difference between being gentle with you and just letting yourself off the hook easily.
What does ‘gentleness’ mean?
I’m an unapologetic English major. I loved the work I did for my degree and I find myself thinking about what I learned. I firmly believe that words have meaning and should be used carefully. (Note: I hate corporate-speak because it’s overused and have become meaningless. Also, not everything needs a hashtag!)
For my clients, I define gentleness as this: it’s respecting your feelings, acknowledging that it’s okay to feel, especially negative emotions, and not berating yourself. It’s about taking a hard look in the mirror, figuring out why there’s a block between where you are and what you want, and how you can get through it.
Gentleness is not saying, “I just can’t do that.” Or “I wasn’t made to be a “. It is acknowledging that things may not be ideal and you may not be where you wish to be but you’re going to try hard to make the best out of a bad situation.
Letting yourself off the hook is really about avoiding responsibility we have to honor our goals, talents and dreams. I think it is possible to get what you want, you just may have to shift and change the path to get there.
Need a guide to get you there? I can help you with that!
APR 25
APR 23
I am a notoriously difficult “stick”. My veins are small, they’re hard to find and thanks to chemo, they collapse immediately. Putting an IV in me is painful and super hard. Getting a blood draw? Near impossible.
At least it was! Here are my three super secret tips to make it easier:
- Drink up! Pound back as much water as you can. By hydrating your body, your veins will plump up. The most painful times getting blood taken have been the times where I (voluntarily) had nothing to eat or drink that day.
- Ask for the smallest gauge needle. I tell the phlebotomist that I can be a difficult stick and I have small veins. The tech is usually very gracious about accommodating my request. I also tend to get woozy during or after the draw so I make sure to speak up when I’m not feeling well.
- Deep mindful breaths and a pep talk. While the technician is setting up, I turn my focus onto my breathing and I tell myself that my body is working well and this will be easy breezy. This isn’t a magic cure-all but by putting myself at ease and in a better frame of mind, things just feel a lot easier.
Do you find it hard to get your blood drawn? Share your tips in the comments. Have a phlebotomist in your life? Give them the gift of a (fake) white blood cell!
APR 21
Yesterday was spent feasting out on the patio of a friend’s home. She graciously made a delicious spread of ham, potato salad, spinach and strawberry salad and roasted asparagus. (Be jealous). As I was eating, my mind wandered back to old friends that have faded out of my life.
Picture by Rebela_wanted
In the weeks following my cancer diagnosis, I was met with a flood of visitors, friends texting/writing on my Facebook wall and helped us out. It was a wonderful outpouring of love, sometimes from people I would not have assumed would have stopped by.
And yet…
And yet, a few people stopped returning my calls, said the absolute wrong thing or stood me up. Boy, did that sting!
Then I learned about Dunbar’s number. Evolutionary psychologist Robin Dunbar conducted a study and determined that there is a maximum number of relationships our brains can handle.
It is suggested that the number of neocortical neurons limits the organism’s information-processing capacity and that this then limits the number of relationships that an individual can monitor simultaneously. When a group’s size exceeds this limit, it becomes unstable and begins to fragment.
Pretty crazy, right? While it hasn’t totally removed the pain of losing friendships, it has given me an answer to “why?” Some of those former friends were people I was just starting to build a closer relationship.
“Interestingly”, he says, “the literature suggests that 150 is roughly to the number of people you could ask for a favour and expect to have it granted. Functionally, that’s quite similar to apes’ core social groups.”
Perhaps I was friend number 151; just far out enough to be dropped out of that person’s mental social circle. As a “newcomer” to their circle, there wasn’t enough of a direct tie between us to make him/her remember me.
Learning this made it easier to forgive my old friends for fading away. It also gives me energy to focus on the friendships I currently maintain and to focus on deepening and growing them. Our social circles are in a state of constant flux and I’m open to riding out those ebbs and flows.
APR 18
I’m currently reading Daphne du Maurier’s classic Rebecca and this passage immediately jumped out at me:
It sums up nicely how I feel about my cancer experience and it’s what I tell my ninja training clients. Take the transitional and scary situation you’re in, pick through the hurt and suffering and find the lessons that are buried in there.
It’s very easy to let the intensity of the situation keep you from feeling like there is hope or an overarching reason behind the suck. It’s even easier to give into the bitterness (it’s more than OK in small doses!) and let it become a permanent feeling.
If we push through the suck, we can find out how awesome we are. We will emerge finer, stronger and happier than ever.
Are you having trouble seeing through the crappy details? I can help you!
APR 16
Cody from the wonderful Lu an Ed shop, pointed out that my lymph node looks like it’s dancing.
Take him home and he’ll teach you his secret moves. Dance, my little lymph node! Dance!
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