The Way

Progressing into disability has given me more than enough time to think. Lying in bed for hours, day in and out, knowingly without end, til… the END, gives ample time.

Time to feel the physical chronic pain, time to grieve my life lost, never to return nor continue as my normal life should have, all the things I’d planned and would never get to do, all the things I would normally do … dishes, getting dustbunnies out of corners … leaving a store sipping a drink in one hand and holding a bag in the other, all the littlest things I can’t anymore. While I live anyway, in quite fierce pain and progressing daily.

Lying in bed, thinking, grieving. Alive, yet.

What to do?

I could be a miserable sot, a burden to my caregivers, and hate the world in resentment for my condition. It wouldn’t be hard.

Luckily, I’m an artist and a writer. Furthermore, I’m a sociologist and student of world peoples and religions.

It is because of my disability I have a portfolio of over 800 pieces of art and countless writings of varying lengths and forms.

It is because of my disability I’ve had deep and difficult talks with my children, parents and loved ones, the kind of discussions most are uncomfortable with and avoid, yet are vital and enduring.

Most importantly, I’ve come to terms with why. and what, and how.

Why am I here? What is the Reason? How do I carry on?

Not luckily, but through my life’s study, my passions and proclivities, and academic adventures, I’m a sociologist who has asked these very human questions and heard answers from every corner and every age. I’ve held and examined many beliefs both outside and inside myself.

I’m confident in my answers, because we will never really know, but I’m sure I have found the key.

I can’t say what comes next. heaven, reincarnation, nothing… is this real at all, or just a test? Am I in Hell?

I don’t know. What I DO know is, what I do now, from here on out, truly counts. If there’s a hereafter or not, if I’m really here or in purgatory limbo, if I’m on a karmic cycle or plain biologic one, what I do matters.

Whether I’m clearing a righteous path, or finishing a soul cycle, or leaving my children and the world my art, writings, videos, and essence, I must. I find a way to bear it, to celebrate the life I DO have in the smallest pleasures, to love my people and share my thoughts, to create my force with every tool available.

This is the way…

X Marks The Spot Where She Tore Out Her Own Heart For All To See – 36×36 oil by Darla Vaughan

New Toy – Old Tech

I didn’t have a keyboard for my Galaxy Note because it didn’t have a drive for my wireless keyboard.

My laptop is older and heavy and gangly in my infirm, progressing disability. Writing has languished, true writing.

TikTok and Instagram, social media generally has killed written discourse it seems. Nevermind, that’s not where my head is right now.

I’m dying. I need to get the the stuff out of my head before I give up the ghost.

I’m so happy with the feel of this keyboard. It’s keys are raised and separate. I can feel like I used to before laptop sleekness overtook the keyboard world. Ahhh this is nice.

Truly Independent

I have attempted to sell art and handmade goods online since there was an online marketplace to sell.

I had some success on eBay, selling vintage items, music, books, rarely works of my own making. My stuff never sold. just a drop in the ocean of online artists. I never had the time nor ability to dive in deeply and make it successful.

I developed as an artist, came into a passion and style, and finally plenty of time. MS disabled me quickly, but allowed time to art (it’s a verb). Still no time to market myself, what with creating and surviving the hell that is disabling chronic illness.

Finally, a portfolio of art works… with time and the inability to sell, it built. I felt the need to reopen my Etsy store and dive in to marketing myself and my work, from home where my condition has me often.

My first day I sold a painting

a favorite… an auspicious beginning, right?…

No. Etsy absolutely took any joy out of it for me. With their Etsy pay system, supposedly linked to my PayPal btw, it took 3 days for them to disperse the funds to my bank and THEN reported my bank would be holding it for 3-5 more days as some sort of verification process… anyway…

It took a week before I was paid, the next two I sold, 4 days.

The customers paid right away. Etsy doesn’t pay like I used to get paid from internet sales. I was paid directly to PayPal and it was done. I don’t care what or why anymore and this isn’t about Etsy or their policies…. nor the fees I’ve always paid to sell in online marketplaces

This is about me going truly independent. Again, PayPal has been the best system for online payment to pay and receive.

I got a PayPal.me link to be able to get paid for an item directly. I can also receive donations for art supplies and easy payments for commissions.

Simple as that, market myself simply through my social media outlets, hope someone sees, appreciates, purchases or donates.

I used Instagram to successfully auction a small watercolor of a recurring mermaid in my repertoire, Arrlene, The Pirate Mermaid: