it's trying time again

Today, I shall try to adjust my short-term expectations. I've wanted to do too much, dizzyingly so. I've wanted to start and complete too many knitting projects, read too many books at once, and write too many words.

I have, actually, knitted 2 1/2 chemo hats, played with some lace patterns, and unearthed the sock I abandoned a few weeks ago. I've read Anne of Green Gables and a few chapters of The Madwoman in the Attic, as well as some short stories. I've written some letters. I've also gotten myself to work, (almost) every day.

I'm exhausted.

Anxiety and racing thoughts don't make anything better. Perhaps my hypersensitivity is hardwired, but so is my intelligence - so maybe I can (at least) be mindful of this moment, this reality, and this dollop of energy.

Wish me luck.

Rainforest Jasper

I just purchased a pair of earrings. Not only are they pretty and inexpensive, but they feature a stone that is said to possess wondrous properties.

Rainforest Jasper (rhyolite) helps the reclusive by allowing others into her life, to listen without distorting the speaker's message, to balance emotions, and to free creativity.

If only! I do not, in fact, believe that stones possess anything but geologic history and beauty. They can take on meaning as personal touchstones, reminders of what you need, want, celebrate, and love, but they are, alas, quite inert.

Depression (like my own, bifurcated variety) is not inert. Depression plays many tricks, both overt and sly. Would that a bit of Rainforest Jasper had the power of pharmaceuticals, that I could wear more or less of it instead of submitting to chemical anodynes for my biochemical illness. I need so much that the stone could offer. I could be present to my family, friends, life without feeling toxic or inauthentic. I could accomplish --

Well. I know this begins to sound like "if I only had a brain." I do, in fact, have a brain, and I also have enough years of therapy packed into my life to have some semi-useful strategies - Rational-emotive techniques, for example, which a former therapist swore by (even as he drop-kicked me to the nearest M.D. shrink): redefine your beliefs, and control your emotional responses. (See below. I remain a skeptic because Ellis is a fanatic.)

All right, then. I believe in knitting. Last night, I continued to swatch lace patterns with my "Starry Night" yarn for a scarf. I tried at least 10 of Barbara Walker's designs - tilting blocks, various diamond patterns, spider lace - but they didn't do what I wanted, and they were way too fiddly. Finally, I decided on vine lace - simple to knit (and to tink), with enough movement to remind me of Van Gogh's roiling sky. I'll cast on tonight, and I will be soothed as the fabric grows. One Dali sock is almost finished, one hat for Caps for a Cure is almost finished, two Red Scarves are finished. These are small projects, good for me when my attention is shaky.

I have two new projects to begin, both challenges in their own way. I'll start the Clapotis when the yarn arrives, and I'll take comfort in the company and assistance of knitters at the knitalong site and Ravelry.

The other new project: mittens for the Anne of Green Gables knit/readalong. I've never made mittens, although I love them. Anna has signed on as my knitting guru. Although I aspire to making squirrel and acorn mittens like hers, and although my part-Latvian self longs to make these, I shall start with plain woolen mittens.

Rainforest Jasper also aids in regeneration. We'll see!

• David Demchuck's article in Knitty is amazing.
• I bought the earrings from Walnut Ridge Studio.
• Albert Ellis: "When people keep challenging and questioning their self-disturbing core philosophies, after a while they tend to automatically, and even in advance, bring new, rational, self-helping attitudes to their life problems and thereby make themselves significantly less upsettable."