Pivotal Crippie Moments

Ohai!

LAST CHANCE TO ENTER MUH CONTEST PEOPLE

Alrighty, recently I was asked "Besides when you were diagnosed with MHE (and the surgeries that resulted from having MHE), what would be one of your biggest pivotal moments in life (or life-changing so-to-speak)?" 


While I've posted about things that changed my life a while ago, I saw this as a challenge to think of a pivotal moment in my life not related to having a disability. CHALLENGE ACCEPTED *Starts limping/pacing back and forth*. 


Hmm... it seems that most of my pivotal moments involve having a disability in someway or another. *Continues pacing/limping*


20 MINUTES LATER (I'm not kidding) EUREKA! The biggest non-cripple related life changing moment (or moments) was when I was around 2 years old. My mom needed a way to keep my occupied during laundry time so she put paper on the walls and let me color away. First off, no I didn't color on walls without paper, I was a good noodle. Secondly, it taught me that art is freakin' awesome! Early love of art continued to grow and eventually led to my chosen profession! w00t! CHALLENGE COMPLETED!!!


Crippie's Tippie- Enter my contest, this shirt really is freakin' awesome.

NHBPM- PRETTY COLORS

Yo!

I'm 2/3rds of the way finished with NHBPM... YAY ME. Today's prompt seems pretty nifty... Ekphrasis post. Ekphrasis (writing about another art form) – Find a Flickr Image in Creative Commons that inspires you in some way (positively or negatively) and free write about it. Give yourself exactly 15 minutes to write without stopping. Don’t think! Brave bonus: Publish to your blog without editing! (You can include a disclaimer)


Alrighty, I'm not terribly good at writing without stopping. So I'm gonna post some pictures by one of my favorite artists of all time, Matt Lyon. Prepare to behold the awesome!

Told ya they were awesome. Whenever I need design inspiration or just a little boost of "teh happiez" Matt Lyon's work is there. It's bold, colorful, organic, full of texture and pattern gotta love the pattern, and just beautiful overall. I'm relatively sure that I've mentioned in prior posts that I like to look at pretty things in order to distract myself from whatever ugly things are going on in my life. I literally feel happier when I look at his artwork and typography prints. What can I say, I'm a sucker for pretty colors and typography... and I'm in heaven when he works an inspirational quote into typography pieces.

So yeah, I'm pretty easy to please when it comes to art... as long as the colors are pretty I'm good.

Crippie's Tippie - Check out www.society6.com it's filled with other up and coming artists. They also have an iPod app for backgrounds. True story, I have well over 800 pictures saved from this app.


This post was written as part of NHBPM – 30 health posts in 30 days: http://bit.ly/vU0g9J 

How To Deal With Crap

Bonjour!

After two silly posts I figured I should do a serious one. I was asked a very difficult question yesterday by someone who's child has special needs. "How do you deal with being physically unable to do what you want to do?" I am fairly good at staying optimistic regardless of what is going on, but this has to be the hardest situation for me. My general outlook of "misfortune is temporary and everything will be alright in the end" really doesn't apply to something that is not temporary and will remain craptacular forever.

One of the hardest things about being a cripple is facing the reality that sometimes being a cripple holds you back. My disabilities have prevented me from going to various places, experiencing many "normal" moments, and have made aspects of my life very challenging. I'll admit there have been times when seeing pictures of people I know doing a variety of "normal" activities have made me cry. I try my best not to do that, simply because sitting and crying over someone's facebook picture accomplishes nothing. So here's what I do to deal with the crap.

1) Face the fact that life is not fair- The sooner you get over the "why me's" the better. There is no good reason for aspects of your life to suck, it just does. In some how, some way life sucks for everyone.

2) Accept the fact that the feeling of being held back will happen- Accepting it makes the feeling less harsh.

3) Make jokes about your situation- As one of my professors said "If ya don't laugh about it, you'll cry".

4) Find a proper outlet for your frustrations- I draw and paint to help me cope with the frustrations, soooo much better for you than crying over facebook photos.

A painting I made when I was 17, sums up some of my negative feelings.

5) Find people in similarly craptacular situations- You get the feeling you're not alone, support, and the ability to bitch about the situation to someone who knows what you are talking about.

I know it's hard, but we cannot let the occasional disappointment get the better of us. Don't let the negative aspects of your life outweigh the positives. I know we can do it.

Crippie's Tippie- Be thankful for anything and everything you can do, chances are there is someone out there who wishes they could do what you do.

Pelswick Eggert: Best Cripple EVER

Greetings,

I was reminiscing about childhood cartoons a few days ago and I remembered my ALL TIME favorite cartoon ever, "Pelswick". "Pelswick" was a show on Nickelodeon created by John Callahan centering around a boy named Pelswick Eggert. Pelswick was a smart mouthed boy with a P.C single father, insane grandmother, and a fairy god-father. Pelswick was also a paraplegic or as he called it "permanently seated". I absolutely adored the show while it was running 10 years ago and I still love it now. Why? Because the show centered around a boy who's disability was secondary to the rest of his personality and story. He stood up to bullies (normally I don't like TV shows where the characters are wise-asses, but I make an exception here). The show dealt with political correctness and how to treat disabled people. The best part, it was a children's cartoon. It taught kids that children with disabilities are normal, that you don't have to act weird around the cripple (and they actually said the word "cripple" in the show YAY CENSORSHIP). The entire series of Pelswick can be obtained on amazon.com.

Crippie's Tippie- Expose children early on to various differences, they will be more accepting overall.