Category: Thoughts
My week in images
Making this post has made me realize two things: A. my life is very dull and onesided B. My mind is even narrower because of all the things I don’t think to take pictures of. I also realized B is perhaps just an excuse to not admit completely to A. I obviously can’t count either.
I don’t mean dull as in being bored or not doing many things, which I obviously do if you’ve been following along, but they do tend to revolve around the same. I seem to mostly be looking a plants and the sky and nothing much besides! Of course, that’s what we’ve got to look at out here. I need to drive to the “city” (18 km) for some bits and bobs but most importantly more hydrosulphite to make blue, but I never thought of taking pix there. We usually just go to the mall, quickly scoop up what we need and head back home. Not really worth looking at.
How often do you do extraordinary things?
Random rants (with yarn)
Still feeling a bit slow and tired here, I know it keeps cycling round like this, I just never cease to be baffled over it anyway. 😉 But I’ve managed to dye a little random hank of yarn now and again, all of which I’ll tell you about later, but for now I’ll just show them.
I’ve never actually tested whether uninterrupted quiet, a stressfree environment etc. would break the cycle if it went on long enough, life keeps interfering. I’m working hard on avoiding the guilt trips that others try to send me on, but there are still “duties” as well as “things that just need to get done”.
And of course taking every 3-4 weeks out of the calendar for migraine, nausea, severe pains and my thinking patterns completely distorted. Oh, dear perimenopause how we do not love you. And then the catching up of everything afterwards. One of the reasons I managed to get a lot done this summer is the one time I had a whopping 6 week break, yay! I’m still waiting for the progesterone cream and agnus castus drops to really really kick in noticably enough for me to continue. I’m thinking of looking into some kind of detox of “heavy metals” (no, I don’t mean Def Leppard) and such, but I know that won’t necessarily make me feel better in the short run…
So during the meanwhile, my brain feels as chirpy as ever, throwing a multitude of project suggestions my way daily, happily rattling on about yarn and paints and studio designing and on and on and on. It’s been a while since I updated my idea book, I better get up to speed and organize it, perhaps try the bullet journal system? (I already do/did something similar, but not that organized – and now of course I’ve already made up some additions/improvements for it…) I’m very happy that this IS HAPPENING to me, that my appetite for creating doesn’t go away almost ever, no matter how bad I feel. All I have to do is decide on a project waiting, pick it up and go. What’s missing in this equation of course is the physical drive to match the internal.
I’m also determined to learn to do one thing at a time, even if it means finishing some of the tedious practical tasks that go before or after the creating. I feel it’s essential to not getting sucked into the stress vortex again. Every time I feel well I can sense myself picking up speed automatically, it’s like a fast horse, if you just let it go, you may pass the point of control where no brakes apply, so you need to keep contact on the bit, rein in just a little bit regularly to remind it that someone is on top or you’ll crash. I’ve tried it – both metaphorically and with an actual horse, so I’m not making this up. 😉
It’s funny though how the monkey mind works. When I was in the shower earlier, I thought this post was going to be sligtly different, but dressing, letting the horses out to grass, walking the dog (ah, another sunny warm day after 3 rainystormy ones!) and back here something else comes out of my keyboard. G says I ought to have a taperecorder taped to my arm 24/7. But then, when do I actually listen to it to cull out the useful bits? No, I guess important stuff will float by again sometime. Or not. Perhaps it will flow to someone more prepared in the moment, LOL.
I’ve been pondering the subject of thought patterns as habits and how much that influences us. I may go more into detail at a later date, but it’s been an interesting journey. Not just reprogramming and weeding out of thought forms but also reliving briefly things long forgotten, react to them perhaps for the first time ever and then letting go. I don’t get to choose them, they just emerge and I try to go with the flow rather than fight them, which is also relatively new to me. “Ok, so today I’m bawling my eyes out over something that happened when I was 7, and it feels like I’m going to feel this forever but I know that I’ll probably not.”
Changing thought habits is a really tough job, and I’m not working on it all the time. It’s one of those things that run in a spiral, you go on and on and nothing much appears to happen, until suddenly you find that you’ve circled around and actually ended up at the same spot, but a step higher. And looking down on the previous contact point you see an amazing difference. Pretty cool is what I think. It’s when we believe we should be able to make instant transitions once we make a logical decision, that everything seems to lock up. It’s also one of the best ways to become exhausted!
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ow0lr63y4Mw]
And now my headache says to give it a break. I guess I’m either cycling round again or my new meditation cd is doing some weird sh*t. Only time will tell. I guess I’ll go sweep the floor and sort the dog nest rumpled sofa covers. Naps don’t help with this thing unfortunately. I may have one anyway, I tend to forget when I’m busy.
Whaddaya know, I wrote all this on Tuesday and then got interrupted by, tada! a gallstone attack, before I could take proper pix. I’ve been having a bit of pain all summer (or longer? I don’t recall) like a belt under my ribs but I didn’t think it was anything serious. Going in for a scan this morning, that means no coffee, no breakfast! 
When and whether anybody is going to do something about it remains to be seen…
Fake it till you make it
Now that nature is ever so slowly making a transition towards autumn – I can’t believe I’m saying slowly, the summer has gone by like a Formula 1 – I find myself getting ready to change my activities too. I’ve been doing a lot more with the garden this year and some clearing away of stuff from the barn and yard; this has basically set back all of my creative pursuits, in fact I didn’t even get started on the ponies yet either (They’ve been on a very long break while I was on sick leave for over a year).
Of course I’ve been plant dyeing all summer, but I see that as a different kind of creative, more like a science project. While I think I would have done quite well in research of some other type (except it didn’t occur to me* until recently, so that’s another botched career 😉 ), I do get fed up with the chemistry bit. I still have stuff I want to do, some is urgent before my woad, weld and indigo get too cold, but it’s not my main focus anymore. No, I am of course talking about all the artsy fartsy craft stuff.
The problem for me is always getting back after a break. I get all restless and frustrated, so angry I could spit, even, that I don’t have time and people are bothering me and if only I lived on a deserted island I could finally get down to creating masterpieces 12 hours a day. What happens if I do get a week on my own? I get headaches or cramps. I zone out and click the interwebs. I get really tired and take naps. I daydream, I read books. Go pull a few thistles. Have coffee to wake up and start up Photoshop and Writer and pull out my inspiration folder and then go click blogs and Ravelry until I’m ready for another nap. I’ve been talking about procrastination several times and after a break it always hits me bad.
It’s not that I haven’t got any ideas I could work on, I just seem to think that – I don’t know what I’m thinking actually, everything just feels sluggish and outside of my grasp somehow. I mentioned 2 months ago about doing chores first and then being too tired for the fun bits, well, that still applies. Except now I seem to be slowing down on both counts. I must be needing a break and I suppose I ought to listen….
So, during the meanwhile, I’d like to figure out what to do to get on another roll. I don’t care if it happens to be spinning, weaving, painting (which I’m leaning towards) or writing, I just want to get cracking. I’ve done all the things I’ve previously suggested, so I need a new trick.
Some people say you should simply pretend to be making art until you are. Or pretend to be some person you admire and then go do what you imagine that person would do. I’m not much of an actress, I can’t even lie properly, but I suppose as long as I’m only imposting in my own head it’ll be alright. Right? (I can’t stand fake happy and chirpy; I’m not grumpy, just not very exalted most of the time) But you know, whenever I do get out my paints and just do something without being “there”, nothing interesting ever happens. I don’t suddenly fall into the flow, from pretending to create to actually doing it, I really do feel like I’m just faking, doing uninspired and completely useless exercises, and by the way the laundry needs to be put out to dry.
Apparently I can’t even fake something properly! And then we all know the next step, don’t we. “It’s no use, it’s not like I’ll ever develop any talent in my lifetime anyway”. “Needing space and quiet before I can create is just an excuse to hide that I can’t do it at all”. “It probably isn’t what I’m meant to be doing”. “Wasting my time, wasting my life”. – “Hey, wait a minute, that’s not the story I wanted to fake!”
Does faking really work for the larger multitude, ie do I just suck at it, or is it simply that pep-talks don’t work for more than 5 minutes on average? Faking is supposed to work without believing I think, which is good, because I suck at faith too. Otoh I have no trouble believing all the dark secrets about myself, the uselessness, unworthiness, ugliness etc. I know I’m not the only one, I just think it’s amazingly impractical that we should be hardwired to support all the negative stuff like that.
My intuition is telling me NOTHING of where I should be going right now. But staying put also doesn’t feel very fantastic. So I keep pushing even though I can tell I’m not doing it the right way. Maybe life’s simply not meant to be fantastic… But I’m not sure I can put up with that for very long. That would in fact, be faking it bigtime, and we already established that I suck at that.
Ok, I’m not even sure where I’m going with this piece. I’ll just press the button and move on now. Have a great weekend all! I’ll either be hauling straw bales or visiting a sheep market.
* strangely enough, since I’ve always been the one to bury myself in piles of books in a quiet corner, taking notes and attempting to suck up any and all data of my chosen subject. Some of my friends even complain that they can’t ask me a simple question on horsefeed for example, because I give them a whole lecture where they just wanted a name. Yes, I would have made an excellent geek, I even have the dress sense to match!
The path of not
It seems that lately – or maybe always, it’s not that clear to me – I’ve been saying things like “I don’t want to go there” and at some point that’s exactly where I’m headed.
So I started knitting again a few years ago after a 20 year break. But just using cheap supermarket yarns and definitely not wool because it’s scratchy. (it still is) And no way I’d want to hoard it and build a huge stash just sitting there because I don’t knit very fast. Until I discovered all the wonderful yarns and purposes that have emerged since the last time I looked at the craft.
Spinning yarn myself didn’t even occur to me. Until I saw someone online doing it with just a stick? So out of curiosity, I asked her how the hey that was even possible. And of course needed to construct my own stick just to test the physics of it all you know. After I found out it was doable I had to make actual yarn too. And then I was hooked and went on to spin for a lace shawl for my mum, but spindles were cool enough, it’s not like I’d ever want a wheel. 3 months later, I had one. (After finishing that lace which took ages on a homemade spindle of course. But it was a really lovely shawl in silk and merino)
Firmly stuck in the fiber world, next thing I wanted was to sample all sorts of wool. But really, I reassured everybody, it’s not like I want to muck about with filthy smelly fleeces, it just takes forever to work with something like that and it stinks and no way, look at all the pretty stuff you can just get online. Next spring I asked our hay provider if they ever did anything with the fleeces of their pet sheep because it would be cool to just try it. (incidentally I now also have sacks of really nice Gotland and Wensleydale fleece added to the collection)
So knitting, spinning, dyeing (which I never did say no to btw) – but that was it. NOT going to get into felting or weaving, no way, no how! I had planned some freeform knit/crochet picturemaking that never happened, so I really should have read the signs on that one…
There’s the mixed media art journaling craze that wasn’t for me (well, I’m not sure it is actually, as my collages tends to be the kind where I rebuild images rather than make cute intuitive decorative pieces with cool calligraphy. Mine are like “Tiny fat man with giant chicken in a forest of broccoli”). I may just keep it at looking at other people’s art journals, we’ll see. I’m not a journal journal person either, and that’s not a real no, that’s experience. But for some reason, some days I still want to try it even though really I don’t. 😉
I guess I have a built-in desire to investigate things for no other particular reason than doing so. The world is filled with so much interesting stuff! I guess at least it’s a good thing that only some of the things I try out stay for good, or periodically, while others pass by. Such as learning about herbs, both in cooking and as medicine. But when it comes to gardening, I’ve at least come to accept that I do have limitations after all. In another life. Or if for some reason I can’t pursue my other hobbies. Later. Maybe. For now, I grow a few dye plants, salad greens and leftover potatoes. And an abundance of grass and thistles among the perennials. So that’s a different kind of no, an afterthought rather than foresight. I’m not showing you any photos of my 1000 m2 failed vegetable garden. (I mean it)
I’ve dabbled in websites, flash animation and I just remembered that as a kid (9-10-ish) I did classes in flower arrangement and pottery decoration! Where the hey did that come from and where did it go?
I wondered this morning whether I should devote some effort to learning how I distinguish real no’s from the fake ones. And a second later decided that I can’t be bothered, really. Things will change when they do and sometimes they don’t and it doesn’t really matter if I know in advance. But it’s a curious thing.
When I say the word “no” however, I still expect people to interpret that as “no”. If by chance I didn’t mean it I’ll take the responsibility/blame of missing out on something, thank you. How do you go about saying no? Am I really saying no, because part of me actually wants to say yes to everything? And we all know that’s just impossible.
Ikke-vejen
NÃ¥, jeg mÃ¥ jo hellere prøve pÃ¥ dansk ogsÃ¥, ellers bliver Miri ked af det. 😉 Men jeg vil gerne sige, at jeg altsÃ¥ synes det er kedeligt at oversætte sÃ¥dan en lang smøre! (ogsÃ¥ selvom jeg sjældent skriver helt det samme – gassen gÃ¥r bare af ballonen nÃ¥r jeg har skrevet første version!)
Jeg har opdaget en tendens hos mig selv som er lidt spøjs. Jeg siger noget om at “det og det har jeg ikke lyst til” og kort tid efter er jeg lige nøjagtig i gang med dette. Det gælder naturligvis ikke alting, men det er alligevel pÃ¥faldende.
“Jeg kan i hvert fald godt nøjes med billigt akrylgarn fra Netto”. Lige indtil jeg ser alle de fantastiske garner man kan købe nutildags.
“Jeg gider ikke bruge uld, det kradser!” Ok, det gør det stadig, men farverne! er sÃ¥ meget mere fantastiske end syntet.
Spinde faldt mig overhovedet ikke ind, med alle de spændende garner i butikkerne. Indtil jeg sÃ¥ en som spandt garn pÃ¥ en pind – sÃ¥ mÃ¥tte jeg jo lige spørge ind til mekanikken i det, lave min egen pind og forsøge og ja, sÃ¥ var jeg fanget og skulle pludselig spinde et lace sjal til min mors fødselsdag. “Men en rok skal jeg i hvert fald ikke have, spindepinde er cool!” Tre mÃ¥neder senere havde jeg en brugt rok.
“Men jeg skal i hvert fald ikke have fÃ¥r og stÃ¥ og vaske stinkende uld, der er sÃ¥ meget flot og klargjort i butikkerne!” Ja, suk. Dog har jeg ikke nogen fÃ¥r, jeg KAN godt lade fornuften rÃ¥de af og til, man mÃ¥ trods alt kende (nogen af) sine begrænsninger. Men stinkende uld har jeg og ønsker mig nu en kartemaskine. Det gjorde jeg heller ikke til en start, “for hÃ¥ndkarter er helt ærligt nok!”
“Der er sÃ¥ meget at strikke, sÃ¥ det med at filte og væve, det gider jeg virkelig ikke.” Som billedinteresseret gennem hele livet burde jeg virkelig have fanget dén pÃ¥stand noget før…
Og sÃ¥ er der collager og “art journaling” som slet ikke er mig, men som alligevel drager nÃ¥r jeg ser andres. Der var den gang jeg i hvert fald kun gad ride skovture og aldrig ville interessere mig for dressur. Osv. osv.
Der er ogsÃ¥ ting jeg egentlig gerne vil, men siger nej af tidsnød. FÃ¥rene. Urtelære. Den kæmpe, pasningskrævende have (been there – fik ikke nogen t-shirt).
Og sÃ¥ er der ting jeg en gang gjorde, som jeg er holdt op med. Websider, flash animationer, 3D grafik. Og sÃ¥ kom jeg lige pludselig i tanke om for nylig, at som lille pige (ca 10) gik jeg til bÃ¥de porcelænsmaling og blomsterbinding. Aner ikke hvor det kom fra eller hvor det forsvandt hen…
Jeg er på en eller anden måde drevet og draget til at studere ting, undersøge, lære, fordybe mig. Jeg kan ikke lade være, også selvom jeg ikke aner hvad jeg skal bruge det til bagefter. Nogen gange ville jeg ønske, at jeg i stedet kunne fokusere så inderligt på noget nyttigt og vedvarende i stedet for at flyve rundt som en tosset lille sommerfugl og smage på det hele. Eller at jeg bare havde meget mere energi, så jeg kunne nå det hele.
Jeg tænkte på i morges om jeg skulle bruge krudt på at lære forskellen mellem nej og måske. Og i samme sekund at nej, jeg gider ikke. Ting sker og ændrer sig når de gør det og jeg behøver ikke vide det på forhånd. Men det er sært at jeg næsten altid skal den der omvej hen til tingene.
Til gengæld forventer jeg altid at mine nej bliver hørt som sådanne. Hvis jeg skulle sige det uden at mene det, så skal JEG nok tage skraldet og skuffelsen osv. over at gå glip af noget, tak. Nej er stadig nej.
Hvordan siger du nej? Og hvorfor mon jeg har det der behov for at berolige mig selv og omgivelserne om at jeg slet ikke har gang i en hel masse på én gang, for det er jo det jeg prøver på eller hvad? Det er jo i virkeligheden ikke, når jeg sådan ser hvad jeg har skrevet, noget med at sige nej, men ligeså meget om at sige ja?
Jeg ville gerne have sat flere illustrationer ind undervejs, men frk. Photoshop er ked af det i dag. Og nu skal jeg lige rydde et eller andet op inden jeg kollapser i hængekøjen før den bliver optaget!n Nåja, og tid til kamerahavetur er det vist også.