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.