06 January 2007

Spleen &c.

I feel low and starved of personal space and empty. As far as the circumstances go I cannot find a viable reason to feel so unhappy. To the contrary. And it is doing my head in. Everything I see around me says: "Lucky you! What a wonderful life you have!" A piece of jigsaw puzzle is missing and the picture doesn't make sense.

I read Stephanie's post today and what she said about personal space as a tool for unleashing energy resonated with me. I saw this picture of myself with 3 rocks hanging of my neck as I read it. The rocks were L,C & O. I realise that it sounds horrid but I do think that unless I am totally honest with myself I will not be able to deal with this in a satisfactory kind of way. (BTW, N & O are in France this weekend hence I cannot talk this through with the former AND my blog is my confidante of choice tonight).

It saddens me that I am not experiencing much joy in looking after my children at present and instead everything to do with caring for them seems relentless and exhausting. I suspect that I haven't looked after myself properly and I didn't get my priorities right. Is there a way to wipe out this unnerving sense of being overloaded and not able to think clearly? I think I might be outgrowing the current set up and there is change ahead of us. It feels uncomfortable and is so tempting to indulge in misery.

Than again, it strikes me that happiness is a matter of mastering one's mind, as opposed to circumstances fitting the ideal. Sounds simple, and I am tempted to say "not easy". I won't though.

As far as the remedy goes I will try noticing and letting go - a trick I learnt at KP courses.

And to think that lack of a digital camera (which currently is in France also) can prompt such trains of thoughts! If it was here I would take a photo of C's hat and entertain myself by telling you a story behind it.

Actually, I'd rather be looking "the beast" straight in the eye, than avoiding it.

And when it comes to think about stories, there is something sort of funny I can tell you about.

One of the things Harlot has been going on about forever are audio books, and how wonderful they are if you have a propensity to knit too much. Well, I had a dilemma over this Xmas holiday: whether to read or to knit. I enjoy reading a lot and I (perhaps a touch unwisely) started reading "Sense and Sensibility". Before I knew it I got drawn into the book and thus unashamedly "wasted" precious knitting time. I read over cooking pots whilst stirring their contents, in the torch light late into the night, in the bath (I don't do anything by halves, even if it's feeling wretched). All the while feeling terribly uneasy about all my knitting projects grinding to a halt. I decided to get an audio book, and promptly purchased Emma - 13 CDs! Unabridged. Hours and hours of reading... I mean listening. And I'll be able to spend them all knitting! I am so pleased and disbelieving that it took me so long to get around to it. Then (thinking that it could turn out to be quite an expensive addiction and one that would unavoidably affect my yarn spending), I found Simply Audiobooks - a rental site, where you can download audio books for a small monthly charge and I thought it a good idea to subscribe to it (brilliant sustainable way of acquiring goods - virtually no transport, packaging &c.). Little did I know how incompatible they are with Macs! Yesterday evening I was very unsuccessfully trying to download a book. I could have been just as well banging my head against the wall (to think of it - maybe it would shake out the frustrating thoughts mentioned above?). I was getting nowhere. I spent about 2hrs at it, had to revert to PC, which was obviously playing up and I'm not even half way there, because as soon as I've downloaded the file I'll have to work out how to make it compatible with my iPod. No CD player in this house, I'm afraid - L & C fed it copper coins and it was never the same again, so it had to go (do you see what I mean about living with little kids?). I have waisted about 4hrs so far trying to remove obstacles on the way to happy listening and knitting.

Self-diagnosis 2: I seem to be prone to distraction from knitting at present, whether it be emotional turmoil or technical difficulties.

I want to finish this on some kind of neutral note.


Marc Jacobs' oversized sweater, as found here.

In an attempt to cheer myself up I browsed S/S 2007 knitting trends today.

3 comments:

Sarah said...

I'm so sad that you are feeling down. I wish I could think of something helpful to say. I don't have children (yet). However I can imagine how stressful it must be at times. I hope that 2007 is a really good year for you.

On the audio book front have you tried
http://librivox.org/

Sarah said...

I wish you lots of luck in facing the beast head on and I hope that some of the feelings of no space are just because of too little space over the holidays and that you will find your equilibrium soon.

Ang said...

hope you're feeling better now x