First Steps and the Long View
I’ve been chained to my computer for the last couple of days, blasting out a PowerPoint for one project, updating my website with holiday special coaching packages for another, setting up events and file-sharing and maintenance for yet another. The irons are heating up quite nicely in the fire. I don’t quite know what cleared the decks for this spate of productivity. Perhaps the moon and stars are aligned just so. Perhaps it’s fear and panic. Perhaps it’s just that it was darned well time. I told myself, as I have before, that as long as I can focus on my screen, I can block out the visual noise that is the clutter on my desk and behind my back. This is hard for me. I seem to have a brain that receives input all the time, from everything. How I envy people who can shut out extraneous audible and visual clutter and hone in on one thing! I have very few good built-in filtering systems. I could never work in the closed-off graduate student section of the library because … Continue reading
Always playing catchup
Somehow it seems as though I’m always playing catchup. Whether there aren’t enough hours in a day or I’ve just done too many things in those hours, it still seems as though I don’t get the things on my list done. The list grows and grows and the parts that get done seem insignificant in the face of The List, which, as you can see, manages to acquire the ever-menacing status of Capital Letters. Sometimes, life gets in the way of The List. Dealing with recurrent back pain last week meant that some of the hours that could have been devoted to The List were spent on my recliner or in bed, knocked out by Tylenol with Codeine. Less pain to be sure. But also less gain. Saturday, Day 10 of this month of gratitude, was a day with no appointments, nowhere I had to be. I had to put together the worship service, music, and sermon for Sunday. It took longer than usual because of the mental and physical distraction of the back/leg pain. Frequent breaks for stretching out, … Continue reading
Daily Gratitude and Knitting
Once again it’s Fiber Arts Friday. Now, every Friday is Fiber Arts Friday, but I don’t seem to be able to get it together to write something about my knitting every Friday. I’m also working on scarves for the same project I’ve been pushing since my first Fiber Arts Friday post. I’m just about done with my fifth one. It should be done by next Friday, so I’ll post a picture then. I finally found some of the yarn they started out recommending as the preferred yarn for the project, Red Heart Super Saver in the Primary colorway. After knitting four scarves using the Mexicana colorway, which is like rainbow colors on steroids, it’s kind of nice to get to the more muted colors. I’m still not a fan of Red Heart, though. I’ll be ready to get back to some of my beautiful soft merino Malabrigo soon, I think. I’ll need mittens for dog-walking this winter. I’m taking a marvelous business-building class for solo entrepreneurs from a company called Inspired on Demand. I love the idea of being able … Continue reading
30 Days of Thanks
I’ve been pretty obsessed with the elections lately, so I’ve missed a couple of other cultural memes lately (and a lot of blogging days, as well). I’m hopping on one meme late, so I’m going to catch up and keep on going. It’s such an important one that it deserves attention. It’s gratitude. Or thankfulness. Or appreciation. Or whatever you want to call it when you realize that pretty much everything around you is an incredible gift and that, at the very least, good manners suggests that you say “Thank you”. The folks at 30 Days of Thanks have started a list of bloggers, Twitterers, and others who have agreed to put gratitude front and center every day through the month of November. There are about 20 Facebook pages for “30 Days of Gratitude” and another 20 or so for “30 Days of Thankfulness”. Do a web search and you’ll find even more. It’s a good time to remember that there is always reason to give thanks. Here’s my catch-up list. November 1: I was grateful for a tremendous mutual support … Continue reading
Fiber Arts Friday – Stewing and Knitting
It’s a little embarrassing to see that the last post on this blog was in late May. If I could claim that life has been a non-stop whirlwind of activity, I’d have an excuse for not writing. While there have been busy moments, it has not been non-stop. There is a writing project stewing in my brain that I need to start tackling, but right now I’m still wondering if I have all the ingredients to make the stew happen. What else does it need? A pinch of this? A dash of that? Another idea or theme or motif from somewhere to ratchet up the interest level? Ok, rather than get to writing, I’ll just read this one more thing. And this one. And then this one. I’ve always liked the research phase better than the writing phase of anything. I used to say it was because I was a procrastinator, and, while that’s true, it’s also because I couldn’t stop trying to find new things that might just push my idea from okay to amazing. This shouldn’t surprise me. … Continue reading
Playing on Purpose
I saw the Sue Orfield Band for the first time last August at Tuesday Night Blues at the Owen Park Bandshell in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. I was blown away by this amazing blues-jazz-rock band (depending on who’s describing it), fronted by a female sax player. How many of those can there be? I knew I needed to find out more about this woman who was so clearly playing on purpose. One day in fifth grade as Sue Orfield rode the bus to school in Menomonie, Wisconsin, she heard something making beautiful music on the radio. She had no idea what the instrument was, but she knew she wanted to play it. When she asked her brother if he knew what it was, he told her it was a saxophone and a big one, at that. She’d been playing piano since she asked her parents for piano lessons in first grade. Some parents would have thought she was too young or wouldn’t practice. Not hers. She had the kind of parents who really wanted to support whatever their kids wanted … Continue reading
Loving on Purpose
“You’re here to love.” The words came in a whisper to Margaret Trost as she sat in a pew at St. Clare’s Church in the Ti Plas Kazo neighborhood of Port-au-Prince, Haiti. She stared at the back-wall’s painting of Jesus that her brother had created on a previous visit, disheartened because all her efforts seemed insufficient to fill the ever-present needs of the people she was with and asking “Why am I here?” That day she’d seen a man dead and abandoned in the street, watched helplessly as the food program she had founded ran out of food with hungry children still in line, and become overwhelmed with the needs of these people in the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere. The words bubbled up inside her with certainty and conviction: “You’re here to love.” When asked what she believes her life purpose is, Margaret now simply says, “I’m here to love.” She lives that out every day in her work on behalf of the people of Haiti. On a warm September evening in 1998, when she was 34 years old, … Continue reading
Fiber Arts Friday – Gone to the Dogs
Three weeks ago, I brought a new presence into my life and house. I’d been thinking of adopting another dog for awhile. It’s been over ten years since my dog, Boz, died. I’d fallen in love with Scrubs, my friend Tom Skinner’s PTSD service dog, and began to think that, now that I wasn’t on the road as much as I was in my previous job, it would be good to have doggy energy and companionship in my world again. I began haunting the Eau Claire County Humane Association’s website, looking at dog pictures and reading their stories. I went out one day to see a beautiful year-old black lab. He about took my arm off when we walked and I realized he was too much dog for me at this point in my life. They let me go back into the kennel and get to know the other dogs. Two had come in that weren’t on the website yet, an adorable pug and the little girl on the right. They say she’s Cairn Terrier mixed with who-knows-what. The vet thinks … Continue reading
Fiber Arts Friday – Unfinished Business
My friend Anna at Not Knapping tagged me on Facebook this morning and suggested I jump into the water as part of Fiber Arts Friday, in which a group of people who create with fiber – knitters, crocheters, spinners, dyers, weavers, and so on – blog about their creating. Projects might be in the contemplation stage. They might be just begun, part-way through, or finished. It’s a celebration of creativity, the moment, and shared interest. I’m in. Right now, I have some confusion in my knitting life. Tucked in various corners of my house are a couple of abandoned knitting projects, one in repair, one that feels stuck, one ready to start, and a stash of patterns and yarn waiting to be matched up. I have a gallery of finished projects, most of which I’ve said goodbye to and sent on their way to the people for whom I made them. It’s a metaphor for my life, I think. I’m always running in a few directions at once. There are always so many possibilities, so many interesting and creative things to … Continue reading
I fought the snow and the snow won. Or did it?
Today I looked defeat square in the eye and said, “You win.” Defeat lived at the other end of the snow scoop I had borrowed from my next-door neighbor. Last night’s snow was only about 6″ deep, but it was heavy. Really heavy. Back-breakingly heavy. Heart-attack heavy. I started with a path down the middle of the driveway, then got as far as the photo shows. This is the first year since 1992 that I’ve shoveled snow at all. I compressed a couple of vertebrae in a car accident that winter. From that time on, I either found a neighbor kid who would shovel for me or lived in a parsonage where the church took care of it. The same was true with lawn care. A couple of years ago, I began a diet and exercise program, lost a lot of weight, gained a lot of strength and drastically improved my fitness level. Mowing my own lawn and shoveling my own snow are victories for me. I don’t always like doing them, but I rejoice in the fact that I … Continue reading
