Personal – Page 2 – Van Shea Sedita

Let Go or Be Dragged

I’m tense to the point of nausea. I’m skating on the ice of what may be my first ever migraine. This week, my vision has been blurry, I’ve forgotten a coworker’s name, and I even opened my email and stared blankly at the words and characters wondering exactly what it all meant.

Waiting for our pregnancy results that I find so important, is honestly insulting to any sense of spirituality I claim to have.
Right now, I don’t feel spiritual, I just want what I want.

I’m starting to believe the lie that I’m unique and that I’m alone. I have to write publically about it to get it out of my system. I don’t want to burden my wife with my own struggle, for fear that giving her more to stress about this would potentially ruin her chances of staying pregnant if she even is.

I’ve seen myself be the person who wants things so much, that I actually destroy any chance of getting it.

I need to want less. The best problem solving I can do is when I’m removed and relaxed ..when it’s fun. This isn’t fun it’s awkward, it’s uncomfortable.

Is this stress growth? Similar to the stress growth Rabbi Dr. Abraham Twerski suggests when discussing the lobster in the shell?

Can I use adversity properly to become stronger? Can I let go enough so that I don’t ruin what I am trying to protect?

“Yet each man kills the thing he loves
By each let this be heard
Some do it with a bitter look
Some with a flattering word
The coward does it with a kiss
The brave man with a sword”
― Oscar Wilde, The Ballad Of Reading Gaol

Creation When You Can’t

Photo of our embryo in its blastocyst stage

As a young boy, I use to lay awake imagining raising children. I use to run through Dad-like scenarios and advice I would give. I relished the idea of having that all-American nuclear family.

Then in February of 2015, after a year of trying naturally, my wife and I found out that I was unable to create a child without medical intervention.

Yesterday, after almost a 2-year journey, involving two IUI attempts and one canceled IVF cycle, our embryo, codenamed Bert was implanted.

As a designer, creating things is what I wake up for, it’s what I lose sleep over. This creation journey has been a lesson in humility and deep powerlessness. Even during the many many doctor visits, it was clear I was not critical past a certain point. I was mildly amused at that fact and managed to crack a joke or two over it.

Now we wait. We will know by Dec 6th if we are to be parents. My least favorite trait to call upon is Patience. If patience were a muscle in my body it would be that thin cartilage-like muscle in the pinky toe. Yeah, the one that’s twisted a deformed.

Wish us, and “Bert” luck.

My First Memories

My first memories as a toddler were of the trees. Specifically of the shape of the sky through the trees.

I actually remember being pushed in my stroller and having no idea what I was looking at. I understood the sky but I wasn’t sure if the black parts, the tree branches and leaves, had somehow hurt or cut into the sky.

I remember having that thought and being very concerned. So, day after day I studied those parts of the sky, my eyes focused on the shape of the leaves. I studies how the sunlight cut through the leaves but not the branches.

This, I think, is where and how I first began to fixate on line, shape and light.

At some point as a toddler I understood that the trees and sky were separate. But that from a distance and from certain angles it all seemed flattened together.

I remember being amazed at that and unable to even speak to really discuss this realization, I would ineffectually just point up at the sky urgently grunting.

Today articulation of beauty and design can still be a struggle. Not at all happy with grunting, I find it necessary to tie my design solutions to real world need. To focus longer on the problem than the design itself in attempts to understand every nuance incorporated into the effects, typography and color scheme I use.