Page 48: A Birthday Party at Hatch Studios

October 18, 2015 LibbyArt, Birthday, central kansas, friendship, Hatch Studios, Hutchinson, Hutchinson Kansas, life lessons, things to do in Kansas, Wine and PaintLeave a comment

I’ve made a very intentional point to stop saying, “We should hang out sometime” to people that I have no intention of hanging out with. I’d say for the past year and a half or so I’ve done a pretty good job of not tacking that statement onto the end of a conversation that I’m trying desperately to get out of. It’s an easy way to end the conversation right now but it doesn’t serve our future selves. Because you’re just going to have to deal with it again. And we’re just going to have to say, “we should get together,” again. Forever and ever. amen

Life tip:
The best way of ending those conversations? “Hey, it was really good to run into you, today. Have a good one.” Period.

I’ve been working part-time for Hatch Studios in Hutchinson, Kansas for the past four months or so. Hatch is a studio devoted to providing space for people in the community to create art. I’ve been a fan/ patron of Hatch since they opened their doors. I love the whole idea and vibe of the place. And one day I reached out to Lacey, the owner, and told her that I believe in her work and listed off all my skills and asked her if she had any need for me. And lucky, lucky me, she said yes.

My work is all done online. I believe the job title that we settled on was “Virtual Assistant” and I answer emails and help people to plan their parties. But eventually the feelings of jealousy caught up to me. I was envious of everyone else’s parties and decided to just throw my own. So, I hope this doesn’t come off as a marketing ploy but really I just want to give you an idea of what a night at Hatch is like.

I reached out via text message and Facebook and real life to some local people that I like a lot—people to whom I have sincerely said “we should hang out more/ for the first time ever in real life!” As I mentioned before, my birthday is this week. So I used it as an excuse to get a lot of random people together. People that I have only known on the internet, people that I have known in real life but admire, people to whom I am related but we don’t see each other enough, people that I see all the time and can’t get enough of. I set a time and a date and most people said “sure!” And most people were able to make it and it turned out to be so much fun.

So I booked a Wine and Paint class for last Friday night with all of my friends. I instructed everyone to bring whatever they wanted to drink. I brought cupcakes. Some people brought presents. They sang happy birthday to me—okay, this was officially a birthday party and not just an excuse to get rad people all into the same room.

Lacey taught our class and it always strikes me what an incredible teacher she is. She’s so good at identifying potential problems and helping us to avoid them, and providing a lot of information without getting too overwhelming. She’s also really, really, patient. This is probably her most mesmerizing talent. Even when, in the middle of painting, I reminded everyone that there were cupcakes if they wanted one and it ended up turning into a snack break, she didn’t even seem annoyed. If the tables had been turned, I would have been giving so much side-eye at me.

So we walked in, the tables were all set up with easels, water cups, the necessary brushes and a pallet. We got to choose any colors that we wanted, which means that even though we’re all painting the same picture, everyone’s finished product ends up looking so different and full of personality. Everyone grabbed whatever they wanted to drink and we got to work. Lacey said some very nice things about me and then walked us, step-by-step through how to awesomely execute our painting. It took about 2 hours and in the end, everyone had a gorgeous painting to hang in their home.

A couple of life lessons that I learned through this experience:
1. It’s natural to really hate what’s happening on your canvas at the time that it’s happening. Through out the whole night, someone (or three or four someones) was saying, “I don’t know about this…” or “oh, no! I’ve definitely ruined this!” But in the end, you have to just keep going with it. Which leads to life lesson number two.
2. Trust the process. Understand that you’re not going to start with a masterpiece. You’re going to utilize a relatively messy method to create a masterpiece and there’s a lot of pride in that.
3. Know when to leave it alone. Otherwise something that could have been lovely is going to result in a big, conjumbled mess just because you couldn’t help yourself from ~~fixing~~ meddling.
4. We’re all going to make it through, in the end, and we’ll have something colorful to show for it. There will also be cupcakes.

So thanks to my friends who came to this fun night. And thanks to Hatch for having us. And thanks, other people, for reading this and for leaving nice comments.

xoxo, lib.

Page Four: That Season

March 8, 2013March 8, 2013 Libbyabout me, friendship, kindness, real talk2 Comments

To make this point, I’m going to have to tell you a really boring part of my job.

The bulk of my everyday activity at work is inputting the same information about patients over and over and over all day long. There is an option where I can click a button and it will just magically fill in all of the information itself if we’ve seen the patient before and previously filled in this information. Great, right? Well, we’ve only had this software since last February and since most of the population is recommended to visit the optometrist only once a year, I’ve been doing a lot of inputting tedious information since I started this job last May. For the record, I adore every single other aspect of my job so it’s totally worth it.

Anyway, somewhere around November, I kept thinking to myself, “I can not wait until we’ve had this software for a year so that most of the people who come through here will probably already have their info taken care of.” Every day I would curse, “I wish I could just push that [stupid] button!”

The other day, I realized that it’s March. We’ve had this software for a year, and by now the majority of our patients are repeats and I can just push the button! And, oh, I do. I push it with complete glee and relief and it occurred to me that I am in that season that I was so looking forward to–I had been for weeks–and I didn’t even notice it.

I tend to run into that a lot. I would watch movies and see the single girl who has her own sun-bathed apartment and I couldn’t wait to have that for myself. And sometimes, usually when I’m stepping into the shower or lugging groceries up the stairs, I remember– I am in that season that I was so looking forward to and I don’t even notice it.
A few weeks ago, I pulled up to my house after a long and stressful day and I saw my boyfriend descending the stairs of my apartment, carrying a trash bag. He was a little embarrassed that I caught him in the midst of what was supposed to be a vaguely anonymous good deed. But I sat there in my car and I thought, ” I am in this graceful season that I could have never imagined to hope for and I so rarely notice it.”

I am moving around so fast, just barely getting through the day sometimes and other times daydreaming about the future so much that I so rarely take a moment to look at this life that I am living–that I am immeasurably satisfied with. I am happy. Happier than I remember ever being, and I almost never look around with grateful eyes.

I have friends who have re-defined “friendship” as my mind has ever known it, I have a job that I want to have forever, I am dating the most witty, talented, kind man that I have ever known, and I have two–two plants in my home that, as of this morning, I have not killed. Things are difficult but things are perfect and worth acknowledging. Worth fighting for.

And I hope you can see that, too.

XOXO, Lib

Page Two: The Golden Rule

February 24, 2013February 26, 2013 Libbyfriendship, kindness, self talk3 Comments

Towards the end of the first season of HBO’s Girls, there’s a scene where best friends Hannah and Marnie get into their most epic fight ever. It starts out over something small and escalates (as these things so often do) into some much deeper, silent issues. They’re going back and forth saying mean things about one another and finally Hannah says, “There’s nothing that you can say to me that hasn’t already been said to me, by me, probably in the last ten minutes.”

There is certainly an enormous part of friendship that implores that if you recognize flaws in the other person, you will accept them without question unless and until those things start to cause harm to someone or to the friendship. And then they will be tackled, if the friendship is worth it, or abandoned all together, if the friendship is not. This is just how basic friendship works ordinarily. You don’t say mean things about Friend A’s annoying laugh and she doesn’t talk about how you sometimes speak in hash-tags and then we all get on with life.

If someone else were to make disparaging comments about your friend’s laugh, you would probably not be thrilled about that, right? And then they’d go on to pick at little things about her that you didn’t even notice before. Like her muffin top or a bend in her nose or the way her boobs are two different sizes. I’d like to think that we would step in and say, “woah, woah, woah, uncalled for.” Right? We stand up for our friends but we don’t stand up for ourselves against ourselves. Well, I think we need to start doing that.

I mean, if we’re really going to employ the Golden Rule in our lives and treat others the way we would want to be treated, then the way we treat ourselves should be the precedent that is set, by which we decide to treat other people–right?? But that’s not what happens. We treat other people awesome and then we treat ourselves like garbage (constantly picking on the jiggle in our thighs or upper arms or lack of planning) and we find that we’re never really happy. And who would be? Who could possibly be happy when there’s someone following you around talking shit on you all day? “You’re not smart enough, you’re bad at dancing, you have a bulbous nose, you’re too bossy, everyone only puts up with you.”

Yesterday, I was experiencing severe cabin fever and restless brain syndrome so my boyfriend took me to the grocery store so that we could buy enough toilet paper to last us through the next rumored blizzard. I was happy to be out of the house but my attitude persisted. Silently, to myself, I was playing this tape of, “You’re not brave enough and you’re just never satisfied and nothing is ever good enough for you and your boyfriend is totally picking up on your bad attitude and just can not wait to take you home and be rid of you…” Finally I just couldn’t stand it anymore and I whined to Ryan, “I am in such a grouchy mood!!” I stomped my foot–in the produce section. It was a sliver of a tantrum–only the tiniest fraction of how I actually felt inside. He squeezed my shoulders and said, “but I still want to hang out with you.” And that went right to my heart. It made me feel warm in my spirit and it spread to my mind. He didn’t deny what was completely obvious to the both of us. He just got right to the point: there are things about you that are not entirely pleasant all of the time but they do not define you and I like you.

I’m not going to tell you to stop acknowledging the things you don’t like–because that’s just hard and a measure of self-awareness is nothing to sneeze at. It helps us to know what to change and what to embrace. But maybe if we appended those gripes with a kindness. And accept kindness as fully as we accept meanness. “My thighs have carried me miles and miles and miles without acknowledgement or complaint,” is just as true as, “my thighs appear pretty jiggly when I’m wearing these shorts.” So maybe let’s try to find some kindness.

XOXO, Lib.