Taking a Breather

Sometimes, I like to tell myself that I am naturally a very curious person.

This satisfies my need to ask myself why I tend to dump one thing and move on to another, before I've even somewhat mastered it. It helps me to understand why, that time I went to my professor and very ardently told her I wanted to get a PhD in neuropsychology, I buckled and turned from her office in shame when she met me with a frown instead of the celebration I'd envisioned. "Well all right, but what do you want to study, then?"

holding back protects your vital energies

I didn't know.

It takes a lot less courage to move on to something else than it does to keep on, especially when you meet very practical obstacles.


While it might seem like I'm digressing here, this whole nebulous thing (which is, running from a challenge) often comes head to head with my propensity to go all in, in so many directions. I like that there is a world, and that there is so much to learn. There are so many honey pots, and so little time!

What winds up happening is that I fall into a busy trap of my very own making. And suddenly I'm up to my neck. The rush of momentum settles down into a heavy weight, and my wheels are creaking as though they will never start again once I let them pause.

So instead of stopping altogether, I give them a soft place to land.

Crafting as self care wasn't something I discovered until I finally got to college. It took experiencing the frenetic feeling that accompanies so much brain work with so little activity to understand that I need to be hands-on. I started to crochet, and the result was hypnotic. Here was this soothing, meditative and repetitive thing that lulled me into power saver mode, but that also, inexplicably, yielded something tangible that I could touch. It wasn't until more than a year later that I learned about the phenomenon of flow activities. Who knew that the thing I had been doing was a thing that a lot of us were doing, and feeling, and needing? 

We humans are far more relatable creatures than we give ourselves credit for. 

So when my motivation tank came up empty this week, I knew it was time to get my hands on something else. Past me already knew what future me would be needing, and had already purchased the materials for an experimental embroidering session months before.   

It feels worthy of documenting when that nebulous feeling of self collides with your tenacity for doing. To be clear, these are moods. And that they might align seems as rare as the calendar event of a solar eclipse, and not one whit less mysterious.  

Not all of Jenny Holzer's truisms read like platitudes, as this one does, but like any of them it does have teeth. In this case, I chose the more appeasing interpretation. In stitching this sentence down as I rehearsed the words to myself over and over, it was as though in committing to positive intentions I made the physical embodiment of those words a reality. 

Indy haz teeth, too

And just in case any of you actually thought that my dog enjoys posing next to my craftwerks, here is the real reason she agreed to sit next to me for that shot. 

There are a lot of ways to really, bone deep, let-it-go kind of relax, and this is just one of them. But it's a really good one for me. 

Tell me about your secret self care rituals, and how they help you get back to yourself. 

xo