Caroline Ellison Price

Faith

By 2 Comments

It was mid-2010. I’d been thinking about getting a tattoo for a couple of months. I had no idea about how to go about choosing a design or creating something meaningful to put on my body.

I walked into a local tattoo shop, looked at their portfolio, told them I wanted a particular design in purple ink, and got a tattoo on my left wrist. It is an ambigram in cursive: “serenity.”

Fast-forward maybe a month, and I got tired of the asymmetry of the tattoo on my left wrist not matching my right wrist. I’ve always been matchy-matchy like that. For instance, for my 40th birthday I decided to get a black camera tattoo behind my right ear. But something had to be done to the left ear, so I got my left ear’s cartilage pierced. I’m nothing if not consistent– I like to be edgy, but in a preppy way.

So, the Faith/Hope ambigram came to be on my right wrist as well.

A Backstory

I started talking about the tattoo thing in February of 2010 while I was hospitalized at Willowbrooke. I’d spent a year working as a food stamp/ Medicaid specialist and it was stressful, to say the least. My co-workers were nice but they were mostly jaded, convinced that 99% of the people who came in were trying to game the system. Maybe that was true, I don’t know. I got customer service awards for my interactions with clients but in the actual functions of the job (processing applications efficiently) I was terrible.

I ended up having a psychotic episode in the aftermath of leaving that job.

The me before that episode was never interested in tattoo’s. Piercings, yes….I’ve had both tragus pierced since I was 21, my belly button pierced twice, my tongue pierced three times. But I’d never been a tattoo girl.

I don’t know what flipped other than a desire to be edgier. I guess some part of me knew that a conventional job wasn’t really something I needed to be trying to do, so there was less of a reason to NOT do it.

Meant to Be

These days, I would have been much more particular about design. With the camera tattoo, I thought for about a year and a half about it. I tossed ideas about it on Pinterest and consulted with friends on designs. I carefully considered placement and ability to hide it.

In 2010, though, I just walked in having no clue what I would walk out with. I knew I wanted things on my wrists, but I wasn’t particular otherwise.

In hindsight, I’ve learned to live with them. Even though it took me months if not years to recover from that psychosis, I think even then I knew I needed the reminders that I need to have faith and that I need hope and serenity in my life. Most people wouldn’t put those reminders on their body permanently, I guess, but I think now there are worse things I could have chosen.

bloom

2020: Bloom

By Leave a Comment

New planner: check. New journal: check. New Moleskine booklet for random notes on the go: check. No new holiday debt: check.

I am as prepared as I intend to get for the New Year.

My folks agreed to watch the boys for NYE, but Jared and I have no idea what we will do with our night of freedom. We might decide to go to the Possum Drop. The 9 PM Possum Drop though, not the midnight one. Because, old and sleepy.

We might decide to just stay home.

I am not really one for resolutions. I try to constantly improve anyway (and fail at that most of the time), so there’s nothing different about the New Year that changes that fact.

However, I do have goals.

My word for the year 2020 is bloom. I don’t do a word of the year every year. My word for 2019 was kind. I was kind of aimless in picking that word, but bloom is a little more intentional.

I want to bloom in 2020.

I want to grow the photo business this year. I want to be unconcerned as to whether the photo biz grows so much that I work myself off Social Security. If it happens, it happens. And I am a long, long way from it happening right now. In truth, working my way off SSDI is not likely to happen at all, as much as I might dream about it.

I want to get Porter started in piano lessons. I want to be a better soccer mom. I want to make our house feel more like our home.

I want to be more physically active. I want to cultivate a healthy daily routine. Simple things: It does not kill me to run the Swiffer across the first floor daily, but I currently only do it when we are expecting people. It takes two minutes to swish the toilet with the cleaner. Laundry day is not so painful when it is done weekly.

I want to be better to J. We are not always best at connecting because we get so absorbed in the kids or other things going on. I can put down my phone a little more than I do. We need to get back to nightly sitting at the table as a family for dinner instead of rushing through so we get back to whatever we’re doing individually.

I want to be more self-driven with my motivation. Motivation was at an all-time low for the first half of this school year. I slept a lot of it away. There’s no doubt that I spent much of this semester depressed. My psych nurse wants me in therapy. It’s a no-go though, even if I have worked through my phobia of therapists. The kinds of therapists I really need are the kind that are like $150-200 an hour and don’t file insurance. So, it’s just not a happening thing. I will rely on my meds and do as best I can.

I want to write more. I want to censor myself less.

That’s all for now.

2019 In review

A Year In Review: In 2019, I’m Grateful

By Leave a Comment

It’s that time of year for a year in review post. My word for 2019 was “kind” but in the end, in retrospect the word “grateful” sums up 2019.

Photography: A Year in Review

Resume business and: five weddings, a senior session, a Fresh 48, three family sessions, and a prom session.

I didn’t even start until March and didn’t start advertising really until April.

I’ve loved every minute of it.

My business site, http://caroline.photography, got neglected for much of the year, but I have started adding a little bit to the blog and I will be adding some of the weddings from the year in the next few weeks.

Family This Year

Porter is taller than me and Liam is reading voraciously.

Oliver is learning to read.

We are a soccer and band family. The boys take interest in extracurriculars like Esports and Lego Robotics. Liam wants to do ROV next semester.

Jared and I are in a good place right now.

Mental Health: A Year in Review

Eh, what can I say? My mental health is what it is. I feel like my meds work well enough without nasty side effects and I take my meds religiously.

Depression has been a continual issue, but it’s not all-consuming every single day. This year, it hasn’t made me forget that I love photography. No major spikes in severity. That fact is a huge win for me.

My anxiety has been an issue this year but there have been several extenuating circumstances but I just have to remember not to involve myself overly in other people’s drama. I do my best to keep drama at bay these days and remember that other people’s problems are not my problems and my actual problems are few and far between.

In fact with my year in review, I have come to realize how much my mental well-being is attached to my ability to connect with my art. The 365 Project was more discipline than I was able to achieve with regard to a personal project. I was hard on myself at first when it ended, but I really think it bridged the gap between the business drought. The mechanics of making myself take a picture and process it every day was an exercise that connected my brain and the art of creating to a kind of contentment that I cannot achieve any other way.

In retrospect, I can work on mindfulness and being in the present moment to continue progressing in a positive way. I wrote about mindfulness in January but I put the present moment aside for much of the year and really, it’s a root cause for my discontent. My mind naturally wanders to the past, to the negative, to the drama. When I focus on the present, it is easier to be grateful and my gratefulness puts me in a good mood. It’s one cycle that is good to perpetuate.

Community

I am so, so grateful for my church. This year has reminded me of why Carrollton Presbyterian Church was my anchor even when I was 900+ miles away in Iowa. There is a strength of faith in my church community that is hard to put into words.

My closest girlfriends are the best and I am grateful that I get to see them at least weekly at church, and sometimes twice weekly. These women have proven that they love me, quirks and all. And I love them so very much in return.

The school community is awesome, as well. All three of my boys are thriving at school.

We need, as a family, to get involved more in the larger Carrollton community. In general though, our time is pretty thin so maybe we are doing what we can right now, between school and church.

Physical Health

My thyroid and thyroid hormone resistance seems to have chilled. It’s been a solid five months of no thyroid drama. I secretly suspect that I may be hyperthyroid right now and that may be a source of my anxiety of late, but I have no proof of that until the end of January. And there’s been other people’s drama lately, so maybe I’m just naturally anxious….goodness knows that would be unsurprising.

I need to exercise more and in November, I was on that path. Time has been scarce and depression took over for the beginning of December, so the elliptical was the sacrifice. However, I am committed to getting back to it in 2020. I haven’t forgotten the endorphin high.

It’s been a good year. I am blessed.

Jared: remind me to look at this post when I am paralyzed next year.

Lego Robotics

By Leave a Comment

I have to brag on Liam. In 4th and 5th grades, he desperately wanted to be involved in Lego Robotics. And he faithfully went to each practice, twice a week, and he went to the competition. One year, they made it to regionals, and he went to that.

Both of those years, he was an alternate on the team.

This year, 6th grade, he is on the team, not an alternate. And he is so humble about it. But, this mama is SOOOO proud of the dedication he has shown to something he cared about.

So here we are, at West Georgia Tech’s Waco campus. This is the first weekend in it seems like two months that I haven’t had a photo commitment, and Liam had Lego, so I was determined that we are going to spend this time together. So, we loaded up Porter and Oliver and the Switches and phones and all our gear to keep us entertained until 3 or 4 or whenever this thing wraps up, and here we are, to support Liam.

So proud of our boy.

I Don’t Know What To Call It

By Leave a Comment

This morning, I felt broken. I slept in until nearly noon. It was not a good morning.

Yesterday was a high day. I got some things done, got out of the house. I bought a passel full of envelopes for USB deliveries and got my first roll of film run through the Yashica Mat 124G off for developing. I visited with my parents. This is what I hate about my illness. Often, following a high day, I can expect a much lower day to follow.

It’s not that simple though– I felt better today a few hours after I had two cups of coffee and my medicines, but really– it equally could have been a bipolar swing that tipped my mood toward a functional level. My illness is such that minute by minute, swings can be different.

I missed a psychiatrist appt last week– not on purpose, I was sick and it just slipped my mind and at the time I wasn’t in the habit of looking at my calendar. I was in avoidance mode. When I called this afternoon to reschedule that appt., the receptionist asked how stable I am. The truth? I rarely have any idea. What I think of as stable is usually a little more on the manicky side of things.

I have really been more depressed than anything all Fall. But I don’t really want to up my Effexor dose because I just filled a 3-month prescription. *sigh*

It is what it is. For now, I see light ahead.