Kaleidoscope

I am listening to 'Eat, Pray, Love' during my commute right now. (I drive to the office three days a week, and it is 45 minutes away...so I 'read' my books via my iPod on the way to and from...)
And I know it is so Oprah cliche...but hey, it is making me think, so that is good.

So back to the point...she references how places have a word that defines them, and goes on to say that people have a word that defines them. The word can change with what they are going through, but it should encompass the point of the journey they are on. While she is in Rome she is told by a friend that Rome's word is 'Sex.'

So this got me thinking about what my word is right now. My first thought was 'create,' but maybe it is 'kaleidoscope.'

I know that the first year of motherhood can be stressful. I understand that I need to be patient with myself. Over the past few months I have oscillated from deliriously happy to extremely unstable and worried. I know a lot has to do with hormones, but it is also just part of the transition.

I did go back to therapy - because I believe it is my responsibility to work through things rather than just suffering. I will not live like chicken little! The sky is NOT falling!

Still, I do not just wake up one morning and become a different person. It is a process. And at first it was making me kooky, then I suppose I started moving to the next phase. Oh, but I AM becoming a different person. Not entirely someone else...just more than who I was.

I like it.
Actually, I love it.

My job is moving into this new phase where I get to be uber creative. Okay, so it is uber geeky creative - but not in the 'look-at-this-cool-formula-i-built-in-excel' or the 'i-just-spent-35-hours-writing-specs-about-site-security' or the 'look-at-my-fancy-SQL-query'...it is a clean slate. It is starting at ground zero and designing something new.
I have spent all of my working life inside a box...a specific platform...going from supporting to training to implementing to managing that platform...but it has always been within that platform. There is creativity there, but mostly creativity with bandaids...doing what we can within the confines of what exists, the path of least resistance...

and now we are making a transition to get away from that box....and it is a paradigm shift for me...but it is fracking cool...

and oh the baby girl...the amazing Zerker...she makes me want to be creative...assuming a new role in life...becoming the momma...means i have to change my view...so if I am changing, I had better know what stays and what goes...

reinvention of self...reclaiming what is me and adding to it...it is awesome.

- I installed Gimp and Inkscape (Free photo editing and illustrating software) and am teaching myself how to use them.
- I played around with scrapblog one weekend (hence the new header for the blog).
- I made a new lanyard for my work ID badge out of girlie ribbon belts.
- I got some cool new shoes (they match my new lanyard - haha).
- I made a notebook by covering the binding of a scrapbook paper tablet with a brown paper bag and am using it to take notes at the office.
- I cut bangs in my hair! I have been thinking about this since december.
- I bought a bass guitar and I am learning to play it so I can play bass when I jam with some friends next month. I am a singer and I have 'talked' about getting a bass guitar for ten years. I had guitar lessons in college and used to play in church. My bachelors is in Math and Music...I am not getting any younger. I really want to do it. I think it would be k*ck*ss if I played bass and sang in a band. We will see if the band happens. We WILL jam though, and that will be fun.

All of these mods...I keep feeling like a Kaleidoscope. Like things are switching to a new cool view...they may change again..but I am holding the lense and watching things as they change...it is beautiful.

The lense is my marriage. The lense is my daughter. The lense is my vocation.
And it shifts and it brings different colors. Not everything is easy, but it IS beautiful.

I keep thinking of this song:
My life has been a tapestry of rich and royal hue
An everlasting vision of the everchanging view
A wondrous woven magic in bits of blue and gold
A tapestry to feel and see, impossible to hold
Tapestry - Carole King

And I made this with Gimp....