Photo! The 6 week milestone!

Six weeks ago today I was out cold in ICU having gone through surgery to reconstruct and repair the radiation damage to my neck, a long term effect of surviving Hodgkin's disease over 45 years ago. Today I'm six weeks on from surgery and looking pretty good I have to say! I am so happy with the work of art that was created by those incredible surgeons. It is truly inspiring. What an incredible journey. And I'm still traveling. All aboard the transition express!! Toot toot!

A quick update on the three sites: Flappy is looking great, just a tiny spot of ooze that is clear fluid that I'm covering up, a bit of silver nitrate is being used to seal it up. This small area of ooze was caused by a suture/stitch getting infected. So the focus now is on getting flappy fit and moving. I'm out and about more this week so I'm driving and naturally moving my head and neck so that's feeling good. I have to remember to do my stretches regularly too although I'm not keen on risking undoing the healing process for the oozey area though. Tummy-tuck has turned a corner this week and is feeling totally normal again which is funny cos they always said it would take 6 weeks not a day before! Tummy is fine with the driving too. The scar is softening up and is a lovely big purple 'J' stretching from my ribs to my bikini line. That's my love tattoo! The donor site on my thigh is good just needs to lighten up a little as it looks a bit blotchy and scalded. Perfectly healed though.

The fourth site, my head, has its moments. It gets frustrated that the body hanging below it is still so slow and sleepy. Head is all ready to part-ee on a Saturday night but body is like, no feckin way Jose! Give me some quiet time and get me away from all this noise! Head is day dreaming of a glass of cool Pinot Gris while body is saying "I'm waking up dehydrated from this heat and you want me to add alcohol to the mix?" Body just wants to curl up in bed at 9pm and read a book but head is trying to pull body out of bed to check FB. Head gives in only when body agrees to reading another couple of chapters. But body pays the price when head rules the day and falls flat on heads face in the middle of the afternoon for nap time!

I feel I'm at a transition stage now. I've done the surgery, that's behind me, I'm still in recovery phase but I'm ready to move along to the next chapter in my life. That chapter was always going to be about developing my creative side. Unleashing the lion. Letting it roar and seeing what comes of its freedom. My plan was always to take on the Certificate in Art and Creativity at the Learning Connexion but I may not start that until later in the year as first intake was in February which I've missed. I've been going through the video presentations from the TLC site which hosted a Creativity Challenge last year and I was inspired by this talk called Twenty minutes. It's by a researcher from Kings college in London who asks what would you do if you were given 20 minutes a day free to be creative. It's part of a bigger national creative challenge that started last year in the UK called 64 million artists. The thing that struck me from the talk was we can spend too long just thinking about being creative, talking about it, fantasizing about it, good lord Pinterest has a lot to answer for in terms of time wasting on virtual creativity. Well that's something I'm guilty of, thinking too much and not having the time to allow myself to be creative. The 3 word mantra for this UK creative challenge is firstly 'Do' something creative, secondly 'Think' about what you've created and how you feel about it and thirdly 'Share' it by social media. But what if you don't know how to 'do' it or where to start or what classes as being creative. Quite simply being creative is doing something or seeing something that's new to you. thats my take but check out the talk cos the guy with the PhD says it better and has heaps of examples. Anyhow, I've signed up for this challenge on the 64 million artists website and the plan is that I'll receive an email each day with a suggestion for spending my 20 minutes creatively. Now I'm a bit late with this challenge, apparently it was set up for January so let's hope there's more than 31 days in their January! If I don't get an email I'll have to invent my own ways of being creative which will be interesting! 

I guess I am transitioning in many different ways this year. I didn't expect the extreme makeover to happen at the beginning of this year so my scheduling is a bit out. But I am lucky to have this time now and with the surgery behind me I am in the best possible place to make the most of all this free space in my head, my heart and my life. I think with any form of art you need to set time aside and you need to practice, practice, practice. Malcolm Gladwell said it takes roughly 10000 hours of practice to achieve mastery in a field. That's a lot of felt elephants!