Tag: postaday

You know when you find those things that you just love to do, but you can’t figure out why you love to do them?

Last night, trying to shower, get ready for bed quickly, and get to sleep asap, after I got home at 11:30, I couldn’t let myself go to sleep.  Why?  Because I just had to work on this daisy chain.

I spent a chunk of the day yesterday looking up how to make one’s own super-mega-chunky yarn (because I want to make an arm-knitted blanket, thanks to my friend Devon), and had stocked up on some beautiful green yarn after school, in order to make said super-mega-chunky yarn*.  I had already begun making the daisy chain I needed with this green yarn, before going to an art opening – which was totally fabulous, by the way -, and yet it was as though I had to work on it more.  Not out of a painful need, but a joyful one; I was just so ecstatic about making the yarn.

Feeling like a 4-year-old on the eve of his birthday party, I just couldn’t go to sleep.  I finally just had to be my own mommy for the night, and tell myself (aloud, actually) to put away the yarn, I can work on it tomorrow, when I can enjoy it even more, because I am feeling rested, because I actually went to sleep tonight… Hmm.

What is it about this kind of thing?  It happens to me almost every time I knit, or start making bracelets**.  I just don’t want to put it down.  No, it’s not that.  The experience is that I am totally engrossed in making whatever it is, and I want to stay in that space of pure, free, delight.  Even when I know it’s a good idea to get ready for bed, I can’t seem to get myself away from working.  I have to set myself a sort of cutoff or curfew each time (e.g. Five more minutes, and then put it down.  Twelve more rows, and then walk away.), or else I’ll never stop.  (I once worked on a puzzle all through the night, because I just couldn’t stop.)  I keep thinking about what I can produce by doing the work, and it is as though the end product pulls me toward it (in time and space, I guess), having me work and work and work, and never want to stop until it’s finished.

Is there a way I can have a career that feels like this for me?  That is the dream, and I want to make that dream real.  For sure.

 

 

*Apparently you can just crochet however many strands of yarn you want together, using a simple slip stitch (aka daisy chain in laymen’s terms), and then use the chain as the crazy thick yarn.  So that’s what I was working on last night (and tonight).

**I make simple stretch bracelets out of spherical natural stone beads, because I could’t find ones like I wanted way back when, and so I just made my own… and then loved making them, so kept buying more stone beads and making more bracelets.

 

 

 

Day 16 of 40

I just love To-Do Lists.  Especially when I get to put them on a little sticky note, and stick it somewhere, looking all cute and colorful and organized.  I just feel like I have my life together when I have a good To-Do List written out for the day.

I especially love my To-Do List for today:

To-Do List

Buy & Burn Waterproof Paper
Mail in Ballot
Go to Art Show Opening
Make Eggnog
Try an i-cord
Get old t-Shirts

 

I feel like today’s list just makes my life sound so fun and exciting.  It’s like I am simultaneously a housewife, an art snob, an artist, a responsible adult, and a high schooler.  And I like it.  Especially because there isn’t one thing on that list that isn’t me (despite the grammatically incorrect  usage of the word).

I think I like To-Do Lists so much, because they allow me to glimpse myself – who am I being today?  (And what do I need to add, in order to be who I want to be today?)  And seeing it written down on paper, somehow makes it loads easier to stay on track with who I want to be (even if I still don’t know what I want to do with my life).  Yeah… something like that  🙂

 

 

Day 15 of 40

You know that feeling when you go ahead and share what you’re thinking, and explain out the way you see something, and everything works out perfectly?  The other person completely understands and accepts your view, even if it is contrary to hiss/her own, and life just seems to flow with color, full and beautiful.  I like those days.

 

Day 14 of 40

Whatever happened to our games?  Growing up, we seemed to have endless games to play. On the short bus rides home or the long ones for a field trip, waiting in line at the bathrooms in school, and on family road trips, we always had something to talk about, to entertain ourselves, and it required no music, no digital media.  When did all of that change?

I ask this in hopes that, by finding when it changed, I might also discover why it changed, and thereby discover a way to recover the creative delights we once shared all throughout the waiting times of our lives, as well as the regular, quality time spent with family and friends.  I think that might be very good for us nowadays.  🙂

 

 

Day 13 of 40

As I am readying myself for bed at a friend’s apartment tonight, a few things have been on my mind: When will they all come back?  Will they wake me?  Will someone step on me, trying to get to his/her bag, once they’re back?  Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera…  But the biggest question for my OCD mind is: Do I shower tonight or in the morning?

Lately, I have taken to showering at night, because I keep myself cool overnight (thus avoiding sweating for the most part), it keeps my bed cleaner, and it means I get to sleep later in the mornings before work.

However, having the OCD brainwaves means that I have a sort of inner freak-out if I am just recently cleaned (and have no extra change of clothes), and then come in contact with something dirty.

So, I was sitting on the floor, having a mental dilemma over whether it were better to shower now and feel clean for bed and all the other reasons I do it daily, or to shower in the morning, and not have to worry about how clean these futons and  blankets and floors are, or if someone comes and sleeps, unshowered, next to me.  While doing my best to convince myself that a morning shower was the best idea*, I couldn’t help but feel uncomfortable at still being in my ‘dirty’ clothes.

However, when I took off my tights, I had felt significantly better.  I then noticed, as I still sat here contemplating, that taking off my socks had a similar effect.  And, when I took off my bra, but had to take off my whole dress first in order to do it, I noticed how amazing it felt taking off the last of my clothes… and that’s when it occurred to me: What if the most comforting part of getting ready for bed isn’t actually the showering and getting clean, but the removal of clothing involved in that process?

Now, I’ve put my dress back on me – it’s a very pajama-y dress due to the stretchy cotton composition -, and I am ready for bed.  And so is my brain.  And it’s amazing.  

Is that really all it takes to be ready for bed?  Strip on down, and you’re good to go?  It just may be that easy…  I might have found a way to be okay again with not showering before I go to sleep.  And for an area of life where OCD plays a very loud role in my head, the chance of having found a way to quiet it is huge. Really.  And it’s also a fun idea, isn’t it, that taking off your clothes is all it takes to relax and be comfortable enough for bed? 🙂

*I actually started crying when I showered at night the last time, and people tried to hug me when they got home from their bar fun…

Day 12 of 40

I miss my cat so much, it actually makes me start to feel sick when I think about it… so I mostly just don’t think about it.  It’s as though I glance at the idea, the thought, of our being apart for at least another nine or ten months, notice that the experience will not be good to accept the thought, and so keep on walking past.

Day 11 of 40

 

For some reason, I’m quite good at estimating time.  Every time I wake up nowadays, I find myself automatically attempting to figure out the time.  Not because I necessarily care about what time it is – I would just look directly at a clock or my phone in that case -, but because some sort of inner scientist and physicist wants to see if I can come up with an appropriate calculation for the current time.  AKA something inside me attempts to use the amount of light in the room, as well as the sounds outside and my sense of tiredness, to determine the current time.

Surprisingly enough, I’m actually quite good at it.  Every so often I’m off by a lot, but I typically estimate things to within the half hour.  And, as I check the clock and discover my accuracy, I feel a small sense of dreary (because it’s usually still the middle of the night, and I just had to use the bathroom) delight and inner warmth – I figured out something I wanted to solve, and all on my own.  🙂  And it was something science, too, which makes it even better.

How on Earth do I do that, I wonder…

Day 10 of 40

 

William Forrester, a character played by Sean Connery in the film “Finding Forrester“, puts an aspiring writer, Jamal, in front of a typewriter, and tells him to write.  Jamal asks, ‘Write about what?’  To which William, as he is typing speedily away at his own typewriter, replies that the topic is unimportant, and thinking doesn’t matter – the key is just to write.  Moments later, William produces his own finished product, to the amazement of young Jamal.

As I declared recently that I wanted to write as a way of monetary survival, I began this weblog.  I wanted to be able to write so easily and all the time – but I wanted it always to be perfect, to be something worth reading, and so often ended up writing nothing… Now that I think about it, that sounds ridiculous.  Not because I want people to enjoy reading what I make available to them, but because considering my writing to be not worth reading would be discounting what I have to say.  It would be saying to myself that my words aren’t worth existing – and yet there is plenty I would love to share with the people in my life whenever we speak, that I somehow constantly find to be unworthy of being written here… what ridiculous thinking we sometimes have as humans.  Mine ceases to amazing me.  😀  In a good way, of course… eventually, anyway.

So, I dare say, my words are worth hearing.  I would tell them to my friend when we speak to one another, thus making them also worth reading.  Now, this in no way means that I do not want to have my written words reach a great audience in order to make a powerful, positive, and profound impact in the world.  I do want my writing to do that; in which case I find it important to better my writing constantly and consistently (coincidentally thereby bettering myself, I imagine).  However, I now no longer have the excuse 1) to degrade what I have to share, whatever it may be, or 2) not to write.  And I’m okay with that.  😀

Peace to the World, y’all  ;D

Day 9 of 40

Playing with words,
it’s the name of the game.

If you stutter or copy,
you’ll lose or be lame.

Be funny or witty,
and you shall have fame.

Essentially, Bananagrams
and life are the same.

 

Because isn’t life all about playing with your words and your ideas, and presenting them in a specifically timed manner and place, so as to be loved (what we synonymize with fame)?

 

Bananagrams, the game

 

Day 8 of 40

A traditionally evasive species, dreams tend to leave one always questioning, always wondering – what actually happened last night?  Who was in my dreams?

However, every so often, and maybe only once a year or two, dreams stand clearly and positively in one’s memory.  The next morning no longer feels like waking up from a dream, but simply as though transitioning from one activity to the next.  No matter what today holds, I am unbelievably content, because my dreams were beautifully and perfectly satisfying.  And, even though I know that none of it actually happened, it doesn’t matter – for those dreamy hours, it really was real for me and my brain and all of its chemicals… and that’s somehow enough for the happy balance to remain into the day.

 

Yeah, last night was not only an amazing and clear dream, but it lasted the entire night, even though I had to get up several times to use the bathroom (because I was dehydrated and kept gulping after water all night).  It was as though what I wished would happen, happened in a dream.  And I think that is because my brain knows that it won’t actually happen, and so it gave me the satisfaction of experiencing it, so that I could enjoy it and go ahead and move past it.  Whatever the case, I am grateful for that beautiful night of dreaming.  🙂

 

Day 7 of 40