Isolation, conversations, and touch

Ten months and more at home. I've seen a friend on average a couple of times a month but usually briefly, the neighbours in the hallway a handful of times, and gone for a walk with two coworkers on separate days. I've been to the post office three times and the supermarket once, and had one doctors visit. The rest of the time I've been alone. 

Being alone was good in many ways. I was ready for the downtime, annoyed at the social situations I found myself in (mostly bars, concerts, etc), feeling very tired. But I've had enough. 

I want a hug. To touch skin.

I want to talk to someone about something not work. 

I want to meet a stranger and have a conversation about something interesting. Hear a new voice. 

I want to have deep philosophical conversations, the ones where you bare your soul for a moment. Solve world problems. Realise how much you suck since you can't fix your own, banal, problems. Feel that deep love towards the person you're talking with, your fellow human, your friend. 

Snow

 We finally got some snow, and I've spent a week far more outdoors than I usually prefer. It's so nice, I just walk. I am still rehabbing myself and I shouldn't yet walk much more than 4km, and I'm not walking fast, but I'm just out, rambling, wonder where this road, this path goes. Looking for darkness, too - places without streetlights. With the dense cloud cover reflecting light from the nearby city back down, and the snow reflecting the light back up again, it's not dark even technically away from artificial lights. 

I haven't met much people at all in the past ten months, and I'm losing pretense at civilisation despite living in the suburbs of a larger scandilander city. This started affecting my clothes sometime in the fall when I started working in sweatpants for thr first time in my life (yes, even from home), but I think the new low was when I went to the post office and then for a walk dressed in my long underwear and a pyjama hoodie (and warm shoes and a knitted hat). With just a couple of degrees below freezing that was perfect. It's been colder before yesterday. It's easier to dress for proper cold weather. Today it rained, and the snow along any roads are already grey salty powder, now turning into slush. 

I've been painting inspired by my walks. I have been thinking a lot about my own sense of identity and whether I live up to that. I think that, with disability and absentmindedness and time passing faster and faster and many more things, I only have a partial match, and it's been like that for a long time. It means I cannot effectively explain who I am. 

I had initially planned to attack this by finding out who I am now. What things do I actually do, how do I actually live, what things do I still actively care about? 

But somewhere in that thought process I also realised that some of that identity, the lost parts, are things I identify with because they give me joy. I might not have done them much but they give me intense joy. So I decided to start reclaiming those identities instead. Being outside is part of that. I have always loved being outside in autumn and winter. I hate insects, this is perfect. So I'm outside walking. And just sitting, down by the lake, with a thermos of tea. 

I'm painting more and more, because that is also something I miss. It is a creative activity wholly unlike the slow methodical approach my textile crafts demand. I am still working with yarn too, it is soothing. But I am also trying things outside my comfort zone. In many many ways. And I have an ambition of continuing to challenge myself, find my pain and joy points more actively than I have done for some years. 

Sometimes I am my own worst enemy

 I have for some time wanted speakers in my bedroom so I can listen to music here too. I finally got around to setting up some ok speakers that were surplus in my livingroom, and I put on a record I haven't really listened to as a whole before. I usually listen to music as I fall asleep. 

I...  think I've sabotaged my sleep now?Having decent sound rather than my phone speakers... is distracting. LOVELY. But lying in the darkness listening to music I get caught up. I am not sure if I am a genious or my own worst enemy.

End of the holidays

Despite rumours to the contrary, I do decorate for the end of year holidays. Yule goats, space animals, and a decorated succulent to prove my point:

Tomorrow it is back to work. I'm looking forwards to talking to my coworkers again. Today I'm removing most traces of yule from my home - it is time to move on. 

2020 - Finished Knitting/Stitching

While I have plenty of started things I haven't finished, here's the majority of knitting and stitching I actually finished in 2020. I might squeeze in another finish - we'll see... 

 

Five years

I have decided to resuscitate this blog, for a whole host of reasons. Most of them can be found in why my posting died out. Maybe chief among them, I found an online "home" on the Ravelry boards. Since Ravelry has, in 2020, been revealed to be ableist assholes who exclude a whole lot of people from their site, I am no longer active there. I have retained a lot of my community from there in other places, ie fb, twitter, discord and more, but I miss a place to braindump, a soap box on a street corner of the internet to yell into the void. So this will be my soap box, where I can write longer, more or less cohesive texts not fitted to the format of the sites mentioned above. The title Random I expect to still be wholly applicable. 

What has happened in five years? 
In a more or less chronological order, I present some important things from the life of the Sil: 

• After a year of financial freedom and recuperation from a total burnout (I was so lucky these two things happened at the same time so I didn't have to fight for financial survival) I got a new job
• I discovered Seigmen had reunited and released a new record
• I bought my first fountain pen
• I met who I thought at the time was the love of my life, moved together, got pregnant, got dumped, had a miscarriage, thought it was the end of the world, but it turned out it wasn't, just lifelong freedom from someone who had lied a lot to me. Thus it ended the best way possible.
• I got another new job (back to management, and it was great and fun and all that, but it was also always just gonna be a year)
• I bought some more fountain pens
• I got yet another new job - back to IT, whodathunk?!
• I dyed my hair into a complete rainbow
• I threw off some anxieties from that year at art school and started painting and turns out, I'm ok at it after all

• A pandemic arrived and at the same time I got a new position at work (still IT), and because of said pandemic I have never met most of my team and never together. 
• Ravelry fucked up badly and gave me migraines and weird tics in my arm
• I got some words and explanations for why my body is such a mess. My disability has names. I feel seen. 
• I cut my hair into a mohawk, tho it is still so long on top that it isn't obvious. I plan to shorten it, eventually, and spray it up into a tall standing 'hawk. I just haven't felt cool enough yet. That is to say, I can't be arsed to care. 
• I now have more than three dozen fountain pens, and an ink collection to match
• I turned 40 and I am proudly sporting some shiny white hairs on my temples and in my eyebrows
• I bought a cd player and some 30 cds in one month
• I really like working from home
• I knit something like eight pair of socks during the pandemic, so far, socks are nice and soothing, especially plain socks just round and round and round
• I am getting to terms with the fact that I have too many hobbies and start too many projects and never become really great at anything. It's ok to play the fiddle like a novice, paint ugly flowers, sing falsely, abandon a thousand started art or craft project, forget I have that expensive console for half a year. As long as I do things that give me joy and distraction in the moment I don't have to be good at everything, and definitely don't need to turn things into hustles. I am, and will always be random. I love too many things, and too many colours, and too many creatures. And it is good. 

Selfie with a cat

Alasdair wanted to take a selfie so we posed. I am sleepy and wearing no makeup. He looks like he is having fun though.

Samhain celebrations

There was a party and hanging out with friends, there were also walks to churchyards.

I hope y'all had a peaceful holiday!

Inktober day 31

My first composite picture (taken from several photos). And it is obvious that I had started getting tired of drawing every day... I put less effort into it, it seems. Ah well.

Inktober day 30

My brother is visiting and we are doing stuff so I didn't have much time today. A knot will keep me covered. One day to go! Seems I'll make it to the finish line.

Inktober day 29

On request. This one was difficult. People making faces are hard. Look serious, guys! Resting bitch faces are great for drawing!

Inktober day 28

Elin asked if I could draw her. I could. 

Inktober Day 27

The topic of my drawings is starting to become "I'm in your facebook drawing your profile pictures", just taking whatever inspires me. I have a request I have said I will draw but later (a drawing of the band KAOS!, I want to give them more attention and better materials), I have another request that haven't provided me with photos to draw from, and there are four days to go. Just four! I have almost made the entire month. This is nothing short of amazing.

Here's Syntharjävel. Facebook won't let him use that name anymore. Facebook is stupid. :(

Inktober day 26

Selfie.

Inktober day 25 - without ink

I know I wrote this post, but apparently I deleted it at some point instead of posting it. Oops.

Here goes:

This is my cousin and good friend Erik, who readers might recognize from my Texas adventures. He's a great drinking buddy, and travel companion, and overall swell guy, who happens to look good in uniform too. This is drawn from an official looking photo, and I got scared I'd ruin it if I tried to ink it so I decided to leave it in pencil. It was fun to draw but the uniform details was a pain in the butt :)

Perfect Autumn Day

Today was the perfect autumn day. Or as Daniel H put it - the last day of summer. We spent it moving his boat a short stretch to winter harbour (it gets to go on shoreleave tomorrow), and put the mast ashore and into storage, but those are the boring sounding details. The really nice part was nice company and the lovely weather and the pretty colours. So, pictures instead of words for this one. As usual, click on a photo for a slideshow style view where they are all the same size.