I’m on the mend, but it’s slower going than I hoped. I’ll photo it up in the meantime. Stay tuned.
Spoke too soon.
No sooner had I resolved to write more often than i broke my right wrist.
So until I get better at left-handed typing, looks like it is photos and short entry for me.
Days go by and still I think of you.
Dear friends and readers,
It’s been almost two months since I last wrote anything; any words that meant anything.
I’m well into my 37th year, and I already don’t think clearly anymore; can hardly keep track of the thoughts that go through my head. But I can’t blame age, exactly. I haven’t been more myself and not myself since the new job, which I also can’t talk about since the internet has grown by leaps and bounds from the time I started writing ashbloemstraat in 2005 and now, which means my real life person and Ashbloem are pretty easy to connect.
I don’t mean that in an entirely bad way, however, I’m quick to add – I have learned more about my personal and professional self in the past 2.5 years than I had in three times as many years doing other things, so I feel that I have once again grown after a great period of post-9/11 plateau. I can almost still taste the sand in my mouth from the desert of that time in my life, despite all the good things that happened.
I’m not being dramatic to say post-9/11, or I certainly don’t mean to be: I do think there must be a reason that date made such a difference, but it isn’t what you think. It just indicates a time in my life where I lost my way a bit, and for those of you who have read this long understand that… but I am without words to explain explicitly.
But I’m back, for the most part; this much I know.
One of the things I’ve learned, I guess, is for as much of a academic hippie with wanderlust as I am – and that I am, ar ar ar – I also have a distinct need for schedule and habit. I wrote more, and more often, when I created the time for it. Wrote it in the calendar. Put it in my diary. Closed all other web windows so I wasn’t reading and writing at the same time.
So I am resolving to myself to be more deliberate with a lot of things from now on. I’ve grown and changed a lot, in many positive ways. Now I just have to remember those lessons, every day, somehow.
The weather here is hot; so hot. You step outside only to swallow heated air and dust.
Once, in college, I went on a road trip with two friends, and we drove in an unairconditioned car through the deserts of southern California on our way to LA. In August. We took turns driving, and the friend in back soaked hankerchiefs in icy water and put them on the necks of the two girls in front. I never really thought about how thoughtful and kind that was until just now. We never said that’s what we would do… we just started doing it.
I wish I could go back to those moments, stop us, hold our hands, and tell us we were good, nice people. And to not take the rejection of each other later personally.
It can be such a long lesson. Too long.
love,
A
Now that that’s over…
Well, that meme was pretty fun. Started out more fun than it ended, but I always lose patience with memes anyway, so nothing surprising about that. I finished it though, and it was good to think about music for a while. I don’t do that enough these days, and I should. Keeps my brain active in ways that aren’t work-ways.
In the past couple months, while I filled time blogging a music meme, I’ve been mostly just working. It’s not a good year for my industry, and it is one that’s a constant PR struggle anyway, so all in all I’ve been under quite a bit of stress. It’s also making the move plan a hard one to make – it’s easy to have support when everything is going well, as it was at the beginning of the year, but when things start turning everything gets placed on hold. So Seattle – we just don’t know at the moment. Obviously we WANT to go, but it’s a bit more important for me to have a good job, and despite the fact it’s a tough time, I DO actually like mine, so we just have to take it one step at a time. We’re still purging and organizing as though we are moving, it’s just that it’s a little more up in the air as to when and where that might be in the end.
I’ve gotten into this website Listgeeks that I found while surfing around for list/organization websites. I felt it had several of my friends written all over it. It wasn’t really what I was looking for but I’ve been having a good time with it. Go join it and be my friend.
I’ve been playing with some new ladies. That’s been nice. First of all, I signed up for a knitting “boot camp” at my favorite local yarn store - that’s what they call it – that reviews all sorts of techniques, plays with different cast ons, cast offs, etc. At first it seemed a bit too basic for me, but we’re finally moving into some things I’ve been wanting to learn but have been too lazy. Realized I did short rows wrong. So, yeah, it’s good; plus it’s really great to just have a group of people to get together with once a month who love yarn, you know. I especially love love love the owner of the shop, and then there are four others. So six of us in total.
And then a cute little whip of an acquaintance of mine named Crystal started up a little group she’s calling The Adventurous Woman’s Adventure Club, and we’re also getting together once a month or so for drinks and… tutorials, I guess – maybe more like group learning exercises – in various domestic crafts. I guess I’ll lead a knitting group one of these days, there was a homemade cleaners one… canning coming up. You know, these sorts of things we all like to do.
After the Seattle trip I had a brief pop up to Kansas City for work, and since I was already in Missouri I went ahead and spent a couple nights with the girls (that be Annie & Dab) in St. Louis. I miss being around them. Wish there was a super connector train between STL and DFW that took like, 30 minutes to travel. WHERE ARE THE JETPACKS WE WERE ALL PROMISED? Well, at least we have FaceTime.
Finally loaded a bunch of stuff on Flickr, so I’m all updated there too. If’n you care.
Huge storms here tonight. Looks like Dallas will miss the worst of it, but points north sure are getting a walloping.
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Flickr.
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