Welcome to those of you who are new to The Ruins! You can start here to get an understanding of what this place is all about.

Before we get to the good stuff, here is a brand-new episode of The Ruins Podcast, which is also…the good stuff.

Link to the full episode with Helga Maribel Sanchez

And enjoy the short clip below to prep yourself for the full listen/watch. Maribel and I talk all things DARR Mosaics, from inception to design to installation. Enjoy.

How to Battle Anxiety, Without Using Ice Cream

I confess, as I begin writing today, that I don’t know the answer to this hope-starved how-to. For this one, I will need more than one shovel. I will need help to dig from both ends of a deep ditch of dread. Because my optimism has gone missing.

My jack rabbit has taken up residence. A guest who won’t take the hint to go home.

The winter of 2020 was his original arrival date. Not into my house, but into myself. He burrowed an uncomfortable warren inside my ribcage and has been there ever since. The unknown unknowns of that first wave when the world tilted coinciding with the death of my father, accompanied by a host of other, deeply unmooring events, invited him in to stay.

I call him a jackrabbit because of how his back legs kick against the inside of my chest and sometimes down into my belly. Anxiety. Panic attack. My grandmother called it the whim whams. I am sure there are other, less anthropomorphic descriptors.

Jack rabbit works for me.

But he doesn’t really work for me. He works against me.

The jackrabbit kills my hard-won momentum. He paralyzes both physically and mentally. He ruins days that sometimes stretch into weeks. His energy takes me over like an internal, slow-motion tsunami. He sends me to the basement to watch rom coms in the middle of the day.

I have chosen a life recipe of no pharmaceuticals and no booze. Like, exactly zero. I make up for that with too much ice cream. Turns out, the self-medication of carbs and sugar works, but it causes other problems, which then cause other, other problems. And the jackrabbit digs in deeper.

Certain events trigger his oversized back legs to start their thumping, and once he gets started, he has stamina, and it takes some doing to quiet him down again.

Find a problem to solve. And then repeat.

My jack rabbit was very quiet during the weeks that we installed The Darr Mosaic Memorial. I felt stress at the juggling of people and problems, but working stress is not the same thing as anxiety. My days were filled with conversation about how to solve adhesive issues, how to be sure each team member had the right tools and lots and lots of adrenaline. When I am in problem solving mode, my brain forgets I have the jack rabbit. A problem to solve, a bigger story, like 239 dead coal miners, helps make it not about me. Because anxiety, if it is anything, is egocentric.

I thought I had my jack rabbit sorted out.

But life is full of triggers. Both real and imagined. Figurative and literal. Last weekend reminded me that he may take naps, but he will always be there, waiting to kick into action.

As a human who has decided to look at my short stint here as a quest for learning, it is my job to tame the jack rabbit. I can’t kill him. Because, when it comes down to it, he is me. My brain created him. And now my brain permits him to stay.

Like so many of my problems, the solution to them is often discovered by watching Robert. He is my blue-collar captain, steering our little boat through storms and into still waters.

Lately, Robert has come down with a sickness. He calls it the fishing sickness. And he then follows that up with, the only cure to the fishing sickness…is more fishing. He talks about where he will be fishing over our morning coffee. Which lures. Which secret holes. Which stretch of river. When I drop him off in the morning with his kayak and three poles, he will explain that he may not be back for dinner. It all depends on the fish. He fishes on the bank. He fishes from the boat. He talks about the next fishing trip before he even departs for the trip in front of him. When we drive along the river, heading somewhere in a non-fishing way, he asks if I can picture the small mouth bass down there, waiting.

Robert has found a way to solve his problems. When he is fishing, he is living through a repetitive, obsessive moment that blocks anxiety. Watching fishing Robert gives me great pleasure. In some ways, he has found a solution for both of us. When one of us is at peace, both of us are closer to peace.

Repetition and complexity.

The trick is to get lost inside the solving of the problem. The getting lost helps me to forget about it being all about me. Robert gets lost with every cast. The beauty and thrill of every catch and release.

For me, mosaic is often the solution. But not always. I have been solving the mosaic problems for long enough that, if I am not careful, they can be too easy. They can lack the complexity of a problem that takes over all the parts of my brain that quiet the jack rabbit. Complicated group projects may be the theme of the future for this reason. The search for the perfect recipe that helps me to forget that it’s all about me; that will be my quest.

Helga Maribel Sanchez understands the technique of helping other people solve their complex problems. I have been watching her move through the mosaic world with a deep generosity that I believe is one of the keys to battling the jack rabbit. We sat down recently to talk about all the moving parts of The Darr mosaics. All 239 of them. Our brand-new podcast conversation is a case in point, a blueprint for one way an artist can battle the demon jack rabbits.

Find a complex problem and getting lost in the solving of it.

Thank you for being here with me as I keep digging for optimism.

Today, with two shovels.