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Interpreting fear

by Henk ter Heide on Monday March 30, 2009

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Examining some feelings that prevent me from drawing.

Eye problems

Twenty years ago I tried my hand at studying to be a programmer. I went to school for a year and got the basic papers you need to get a job. Then I went on with studying on my own to get a perspective on a better job.
It was then that I run into a strange problem with my eyes.
Every time I picked up my books to do some studying my eyes would go out of focus and the letters on the paper would get vague. At the same time I felt very tired. Although I didn’t know why I felt tired I assumed it had something to do with the eye problems.
Although I had my eyes examined I never found out what the problem was.

Examining a feeling

My involuntary holiday of, coming up to, 4 months as a result of breaking my hip gave me a lot of time to examine a few things you never get to.
So I’ve been spending a lot of time on Twitter, a lot of time thinking about several problems we have at my job, and examining a frighting cold feeling I have in the sauna and when taking a hot shower.

I don’t know about other people with broken hips, but I found that it became very easy to take really long showers. Sitting on my shower chair. Not having a lot of interesting things to do. Not having any appointments. I found I could easily sit in the shower for two hours.
Which would have been very nice if it wasn’t for the cold feeling on my back I always have when taking a shower.
I tried making the water hotter, as I always do, but that didn’t help. It never does.

But since I didn’t have a hell of a lot to do I decided that I might as well examine what was going on. Why I would feel cold under a hot shower.
Although it was very frightening I tried to concentrate on the feeling. It took me two weeks but I finally realized that the feeling I had wasn’t cold but the feeling of water running along my skin.

I also realized how it came about that I misinterpreted the feeling.
In autistics the part of the brain that recognizes feelings doesn’t work as it should. Which makes it very hard for us to recognize our feelings.
It has happened that I only found out what I was feeling by going by the authority of other people.
Someone would tell me: “I think you feel such and so”. And since I didn’t know what I was feeling I took his word for it.

In this case I learned to interpret the feeling I was having standing on the edge of the swimming pool on a cold Saturday morning 40 years ago, by listening to what people told me.
“You must be cold”. Yes I must be.
In reality it wasn’t cold that I was feeling. It was the sensation of wind blowing along my back.

Dealing with panic

Of course this blog isn’t about recognizing feelings. It’s about drawing, what I learn while drawing and what I need to draw.
I like to draw.
But being autistic I don’t really recognize that feeling. I interpret it in the same way I interpret all my feelings. In this case by the fact that I can’t get myself to stop drawing.
I don’t draw very often so after a time I tend to think that I don’t need it any more and store my drawing stuff away.
But every time I do, I get new ideas of drawings I want to do and get my drawing stuff back out.
But then I can’t get myself to sit down and draw.

After I figured out that I misinterpreted the feeling I have in hot showers, I thought that it could very well be that I also misinterpret feelings that have something to do with drawing.
So now I’m examining several annoying and frightening feelings of which I don’t think they have very much to do with drawing.
Yesterday, for the first time in twenty years, I ran into my little I eye problem. While using Twitoria to unfollow inactive Twitter profiles I got very tired and my eyes went out of focus.
At first I though that I should stop and relax for a moment but then I recognized what was happening to me. I was experiencing some type of panic attack. So I went on with what I was doing and after a while the feeling past.

Knowing what the feeling is I now realize that it’s something I have quite a lot. While writing this kinds of entries for my blog for instants.
Translating the pictures in my mind to words is hard, sometimes even painful. Many a time I’ve stopped writing and walked away with the feeling that it would go easier when I came back. It never did.
Writing this entry I also felt the need to walk off but knowing that I was experiencing a slight panic attack helped me to go on. Although the writing process is still hard to do, the panic attack did pass.

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Art showcase postponed

by Henk ter Heide on Thursday January 29, 2009

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Due to the pain and lack of energy that are the result of my broken hip I’m forced to postpone the 4th edition of the Art Showcase.
If recovery goes the way my surgeon predicts (until now he isn’t doing a good job :( ) I will be able to publish the 4th edition of the Art Showcase on the 26th of March.

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Dropping of the face or the earth and other stuff

by Henk ter Heide on Sunday December 7, 2008

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One week of silence

My regular readers must have thought I fell of the the face of the earth because I stopped posting after the second edition of the Art Showcase blog carnival.
I didn’t. Actually you could say that I fell on the face of the earth. On Tuesday the 25e of November we had some local patches of ice on bridges and bicycle roads. On route to my work, about ten meters from my home, I hit such a spot. I even though I recognized what was wrong it was too late to react to it. My bike and right leg went one way and my left leg went the other way. A second later I lay on my back on the ground and the pain in my left leg told me that something was very wrong.

I was rushed to the hospital and, after an examination, told that my hip was broken and that I would be operated upon to put some screws in the bone. By 11.00 AM (only 4 hours after the accident) I was brought to the operating theater and the bone of my leg was set.
After that they told me that it was only a question of rehabilitating for a few days. The nurse told me that I would most probable be sent home the next Friday.

When they told me that I thought that would be not nearly enough time to learn to walk again. But in highensite it’s clear that it might have been true if they had taken into account that I’m autistic.
I told every doctor and every nurse I talked to but they seem to think that it was not very important.

So at first they had my practice walking with crutches. Which was less then successful. I nearly fell flat on my back. Then they had my practicing with a walker. Which worked a little better.
I could have learned to use the walker and I can learn to walk again. But not simultaneous.
It was only by Monday morning that I realized what was going wrong and suggested that I would be given a rollator. After that walking became a lot easier. Or rather less difficult.
I’ve been told that it will take only 2 or 3 months to learn to walk again.

Henk’s art showcase

The regulars will have noticed that I started posting pictures and pictures of paintings without any text.
Early November I thought it might be a good idea. So I tried it for a few days on a blogger blog and then moved it to this blog. Only I never stopped posting pictures to the blogger blog.
The thing is that I find hundreds of pictures and paintings a day. Of course most aren’t beautiful or interesting enough to post. But I’m still left with far more pictures then I could post here.

Thinking about my readers it dawned on me that it wouldn’t be much use to subscribe to the RSS feed of both blogs if I post the same kind of pictures to both of them.
I’ve been thinking about the difference between the two blogs.
Henk’s art showcase is going to be kind of cosy. I’ll be selection pictures and paintings for there beauty and for the feeling of normality and cosiness. Most paintings and pictures will be of landscapes and buildings. Maybe some people.

See me draw on the other hand will stay the main outlet of my thoughts and feelings.
The pictures and paintings I’ll be posting here will be selected more on what I find interesting then on beauty. Although they can be beautiful. They will be different. Different in the way they are painted or the kind of subject the artists choose.

For a while I thought that I would stop drawing. I even put my drawing box away and was thinking about changing the name of this blog. But I’m getting some new ideas I want to try.
This afternoon I got my drawing box back out and tomorrow I’m going to draw again.
Let’s see where this takes me.

Twitter

This afternoon I found out that I’m on the 11the place of Twitters with most followers for the Netherlands. That’s nice.
Of course it would be much nicer if I were to reach the first place for the Netherlands. So I would very much appreciate it if you would be willing to follow me on twitter.
If you do you’ll get several things. First you’ll get a listing of all the articles I post on this site. Second you’ll get at least one post a day from Henk’s art showcase. Usually the last post of the day so you can find the others by clicking throught to the older posts.
There’s also a bonus you’ll will only get to see it you subscribe to Twitter. Ones in a while I find a site or a Flickr set with so many beautiful or interesting pictures or paintings that it would be a waste to post only one or two on See me draw or Henk’s art showcase.
I’ll post those sites or Flickr sets only to Twitter.

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