Day 2. October 14, 2009

Look at me. Blogging for the second day in a row. I’m proud of myself for this.

Lately I have regained some focus at my job. For the longest time, I have been struggling to make it through the day. I assume it is true boredom. It has been over 9 years since I have started at the company I work for. At least 6 years doing most of the tasks I do. Of course I am bored. Ravelry at work doesn’t help either because I just look at project after project and desperately wish I was at home knitting. I have finally learned not to stay logged into Ravelry all day and be tempted.

The regaining of focus I think stems from finally committing to the not getting involved and staying above all of the hate and bitter. It is difficult being involved in that for so long. Co workers want to chat about it all the time. I try to change the subject but it always comes back around. I am worried that my commitment to this may change since we have a staff meeting tomorrow and the consensus is that it will not be a happy,  pleasant or tolerable one. 

I am now attempting to come up with ideas on how to maintain my newfound attitude. Knitting will not be allowed during this meeting at all, although it would benefit not just me.  I think I just need to walk in with my attitude firm and let snideness roll right off, remembering that this job is not my life and does not define me. My hobbies, my family, my friends, my loves and passions define who I am, not being a pretend accountant amongst a bunch of bitter angry people.  I think the best way is to have a sense of humor about the insanity of what goes on in the office. When I relate some stories, it always seems worse at the time but is actually really funny how people act and are extremely predictable.

If anyone has any ideas on how to maintain a positive attitude, how to let remarks roll off of you etc please let me know. It would be wonderful to get some perspective on this.

After work tomorrow, I plan on checking out my house and maybe getting some pictures. I decided recently that I need to get more pictures to remind me of life and times and places and living in the moment. Maybe I will join a 365 project or just start tomorrow instead of making plans to start something and just do it. 

This has been another blah blah blah entry. Must be more interesting.

Current Listening: silence and the ringing of my ears

For reals this time… October 13, 2009

So it’s been a while…like two months. I am finally going to start keeping up and keeping this blog as a real life journal like it’s supposed to be.

I turned 29 the other day and feel mostly fine about it. In my 28th year, I quit drinking alcohol and caffeine. There are several times a week/month where I feel the need to splurge on one or both but I am too crazy to give in because that means I lose. So, alcohol free for almost a year and caffeine free for almost 8 months. Also, it has been 4 months since my last mental breakdown. Meds seem to be working and I am mostly putting one foot in front of the other. Some days are better than others. I seem to be becoming more well adjusted in public and have made a couple of day road trips. Hopefully this time next year, most of my anxiety will be banished and I will have a hard time calling myself the girl that never goes out.

The most exciting/stressful thing lately is that I have bought a house. It’s being built and will be ready in January. I am completely bent out of shape and stressed and feel this intense pressure all the time about it until I walk through the partially framed house alone and I feel at peace and very happy. I have a feeling once it is completely framed that I will be spending quality time there alone on Sundays during the building process (kinda like on Scrubs when JD hangs out on his empty lot on the porch). Some light packing has occurred around my apartment which is nice too. There is still a long way to go and so much I want to do. My sister is going to help me pick out colors for the rooms and such.

One of the major things I am jazzed about is knowing that 30 years ago it wouldn’t have been possible for me to buy a home as a single woman and just be me on the title. It is extremely satisfying. Although there were/are times during the process (at least 6 weeks of looking at houses) where I wish I did have a partner to lean on when it got to be too much. I have an amazing realtor so the process hasn’t been too bad.

My goal is still to hopefully get a new job by the time I am 30. I am not happy with my job but I am lucky to have a seemingly stable job and with a mortgage payment coming soon I need it. The plan may have to be put off. But finally after 9 years, I have finally learned to be above all the hate and bitter and anger that seems to flood all around. My department is all women so it seems worse. I hate when women tear other women or keep them down to make themselves look better to male superiors. I don’t get it and refuse to participate.

Do I have any goals for the last year of my 20s? I think it is a safe bet not to set any and see what happens. Hopefully my mental health will progress and things will fall favorably. Although I am hoping most of my posts will not be so introspective and blah blah blah. I hope to document funny and interesting stuff too. I am also going to start blogging more on the three other blogs I have going with my friend Daniella Marie. The links should be on the side, Mouthy Maries, Socks Debunked and Indie As. I have a post going up tomorrow on Indie As about what song I cannot stop in my head.

Current Listening: NPR Live Concert-Jason Lytle

I’m Alone. That’s Okay. July 20, 2009

I am now 4 down on the big 1001 albums before I die project, 997 to go. I scribbled notes about everything under the moon while listening to those 4 records. I will hopefully get them in a coherent order and blog about it. After all the scribbling of the notes, I was mentally spent. It was like I opened my head and shook out all of my thoughts, which was fairly good.

What I figured out early on was that there are so many things I have always wanted to learn and know and research about music in general and the role it plays in our lives, I am especially interested in the gender politics in music, of fans and artists. I hope it will make an interesting read for the two people that read my blog and maybe make some sort of step towards school and maybe researching this topic in depth.

Meanwhile, my yarn stash has gotten a bit more out of control since the last time I attempted the stashbust. So I have gotten way more serious about it and am trying to crank out easy, quick projects. My favorite so far is my Malabrigo Morrissey button hat (thanks Dani for the pic! I take horrible pictures).

I made another one like it and will attach my peppermint White Stripes button. When I get pics of the other stuff I have made in the last week, I will post and probably create a separate page for all of it since I am journaling what I am knitting while listening to the 1001 albums of doom.

Current Listening: Elliott Smith (It’s gloomy outside and I am gloomy on the inside. Thanks last night’s dream. That was cool of you.)

A Plan July 19, 2009

I have a plan. I have loved music so much since I was a young child and me and my dad would watch MTV. Last year I got the insane idea that I would go album by album through the book 1001 Records You Must Hear Before You Die. I listened to a couple I already had (see repost below) and kind of got too intimidated by it. I AM GOING TO COMMIT TO DOING THIS IN THE SHORTEST AMOUNT OF TIME POSSIBLE. I have been in a rut lately music wise. I listen but haven’t really felt much and it’s upsetting. The one record this year that I absolutely adore above any other is the Dead Weather’s “Horehound.” It kicked the cobwebs out of the part of my brain that hearts the music and shook it alive. I want to figure out why I love the music I love and discover some music I may have missed out on.

The way I am going to slowly walk into the water (instead of jumping off the high diving board) is by going backwards, starting with the 2000s. I have plenty of the albums listed but am missing quite a few too. It will give me a chance to revisit some of those albums and find the reasons why I love them/hate them/nothing them.

I am going to let the experiment begin and detail it between here and probably Indie As. Plus it will give me something to really focus on while I am knitting mindless projects with stash yarn. More on that later since I actually am starting to make progress.

First album up on the EXPERIMENT: The White Stripes “Get Behind Me Satan”

A Little Bit of Knowledge… July 9, 2009

It’s no secret that I am a total nerd for This American Life. Ira Glass is the bee’s knees and so on. I haven’t been able to get enough of the show so I have been downloading episodes from itunes to listen to at work (I would stream them from the site but I don’t have speakers on my computer). Yesterday I heard the episode titled “A Little Bit of Knowledge,” one of the acts talks about beliefs that are completely not true or normal that are held into adulthood. Since it was just the 4th of July, it reminds me of the thing I thought everyone else did until I was 19.

As a child, I really thought my family was the most normal family, not that my family is a band of gypsies or anything but I really thought everyone’s family was just like mine. I thought everyone’s dad worked on motorcycles, rode motorcycles, had a garage so orderly like a workshop with posters and such, listened to hard rock, had tattoos on their forearms. I figured out mid elementary school that it was not the case. I went to school before year round school became more prevalent so I never talked to kids in school about the 4th of July.

I never realized until having a conversation at work with my friend Tara, that people do not normally light sprinklers and fireworks with a blowtorch. I really thought everyone did that and that was completely normal. So I was talking nonchalantly about dad getting out the blowtorch and how my sister, Diana, wouldn’t go near sparklers since she was burned a little bit when she was like 6 (totally thinking the being afraid of sparklers was odd.) I will never forget the look on my friend’s face.

She said “blowtorch?”
I was like “yeah don’t you use a blowtorch? what?”
and she was like “NO.”
I was like “really? Not even to light sparklers?”
“NO Christina.”
“oh.”

When I got off of work, I drove straight home and told my parents that OTHER PEOPLE DO NOT USE A BLOWTORCH ON THE 4TH OF JULY NOT EVEN FOR SPARKLERS. IT IS DANGEROUS. Dad thought it was pretty funny. To be fair to my dad, us kids didn’t use the blowtorch, he just did. When the kids lit off the fireworks, we would use the lighter that people use to light candles. But still. Insane. It made me think about whatever else odd thing that my parents thought it was an okay thing to do.

My dad also told us that the “punks” (I’m not sure if they are even called that-who knows how much lying was done), the sticks that looked like sparklers but didn’t sparkle they just kept the light to light fireworks, was made of “camel shit.” Looking back on that now too, I suppose they are not. I could do research but I think I will make an educated guess that I am correct in my new assessment.

Current Listening-The Dead Weather “Horehound”

Spinning Machine, I will be. July 6, 2009

With the change in my medication, I have been having a hard time focusing on anything for longer than 15 minutes. Needless to say, I am pretty frustrated. I tried to gauge swatch for a couple of things, tried watching Daily Show online, tried watch a movie, tried reading (and actually did finish a book and half way through two other books but mostly though I spent a bulk of my 3 day weekend just bouncing from room to room in my apartment frustrated.

Saturday was the beginning of the Tour de France meaning it was the start of the awesome Tour de Fleece. Spinners (and non spinners like me trying to be a spinner) spin everyday during the Tour to eat up stash, set personal goals and such. It’s pretty fun. My dear friend Daniella Marie bought me a spindle a month back and taught me how to spin. I have been slowly learning but still focusing on my knitting. During my vacation, I completed two pairs of socks and afterwords, picked back up my massive Girasole blanket (pattern by Jared Flood). I was trucking along, having tinked back 640 painful stitches while watching the Michael Jackson coverage, and finished a couple of the charts, only two have my two cables (separately) break on me.

I finally got back to the spinning on Saturday while at Dani’s house. We listened to a couple of records and recorded a podcast for Indie As, our music blog, about the two records we listened to and it slowly descended into our regular argument about Karen O and being “bigger than the sound.” I spun a little bit but not much since I was frustrated with my spinning not progressing fast enough. Dani spun a ton of stuff and will be adding to her shop what she spins and drum cards. Anyway, all the babbling leads to this…IT CLICKED this morning. I did a ton better today, not perfect but way better. I feel pretty good about it and cannot wait for the almost pound of roving I ordered last week to get here. Spinning machine, I will be!

Current Listening: MSNBC

Summing it up. June 28, 2009

My efforts to gracefully stumble towards 30 started over a year ago. I have been dealing with chronic depression and anxiety since I was 13 and before last April, I had been on and off medication for a few years. I had convinced myself that being on medication would change who I was and even though I may not be the happiest with myself, there are things I do like. I love my uncool hobbies that I love more than most things and people in life with an intensity reserved only for that. I like that I have a strong personality (when I am not in the midst of a major downturn).

All that changed though last April with a major depression I had never felt before. It felt that my insides were shaking and I couldn’t think or feel anything but that. It was scary and horrible and didn’t stop for weeks. I had no idea what was going to happen to me but I immediately went to the doctor and started back on medication. The sucky thing about anti depressants is that it takes 4-6 weeks to build up in your system. I disappeared from life other than work and my parents’ house. Friends didn’t hear or see me for weeks. Eventually, the shaking stopped but the medication at the time wasn’t right for me. Since then, I have tried out 4 other medications and have various meltdowns. I am hoping this new one works and I just came home after being at my mom’s house for a month to deal with it. When I am in a downturn, it’s hard to live alone and I am extremely lucky to have a supportive family and a few understanding close friends, who just wants me to get better and live my life.

My goals to help keep the downturns away are:
-to attempt daily blogging either here or the two other blogs I share with my dearest friend Daniella Marie
-read more (Right now I am reading shorter and less intense books to get me back on the path but have some feminist reading and music criticism and bios to read)
-join a local activist group and get out in the community
-go back to school. I am stuck in a rut with my job (more on the joys of my workplace later)
-attempt an organized life (I feel it will organize my head if I am more organized)

Anyway, no more soul baring. Time to look at getting a new record player with way better sound.

Current Listening: Sonic Youth- Live at Battery Park LP 7/4/08

New Page/Leaf/Start Over June 25, 2009

Okay. I haven’t been posting and have had a hard time coming up with things to say. Now that I have two joint blogs with Daniella Marie Indie As F*** (music blog) and Mouthy Maries (feminist rant blog) I can just focus on my knitting projects and overall “gracefully stumbling towards 30″ here.

I saw Wilco last Friday night at the new Joint here in Las Vegas and it was amazing. It really made me quite happy and inspired to try to live life again. It is really cool what a good rock show can do for me. All I can say is that if Jeff Tweedy says clap, you best clap.

That’s all for now. More tomorrow for sure.

Current Listening: Wilco “I am Trying to Break Your Heart”

Knitting for good, Not evil. February 24, 2009

Post title says it all. The Mouthy Maries (me and Daniella Marie) have decided that we need to take some time and work from our stash and knit for charity. Since Friday, I have so far made 6 baby hats and the beginnings of a baby blanket (I had a solid 16 hours at the yarn store on Friday and Saturday hanging out with Dani) that we are going to donate to our local foster care center and women’s shelters.  I plan to make a redonk amount of hats (not just baby), scarves and blankets.

The project will do the following things for me: a) keep me off the street and spending money I do not have, b)bust my stash, c) keep me entertained with quickie projects and other long term projects, d) gives me a real excuse to knit constantly instead of doing housework, laundry and other boring stuff and the biggest plus is that it helps out a few organizations that are close to my heart and don’t get nearly enough donations and funding.

Baby Hats Pattern I found via Ravelry: Preemie Hats for Charity

Baby Blanket Pattern (knit in the round=awesome) I found via Ravelry: Round or Pinwheel Baby Blanket

Destashed so far for this project:
2 skeins of Bernat Soy Natural Blends (5 baby hats)
.40 skein of Vanna’s Choice Baby (1 baby hat)
and much much more yarn to go!

If I was an internets wizard, I would get some sort of progress bar for my blog. (hmmm something to look into)

Current Listening: The Long Blondes-Someone to Drive You Home

Are we ready to rant and rave? February 17, 2009

Morrissey day is upon us again. The new record “Years of Refusal” is out and I will be picking it up on my lunch break. For some reason, I haven’t been too excited about it. Maybe because there is no tour coming to Vegas in the immediate future? I am getting older and have bigger priorities than my Morrissey fandom? Maybe it’s such a one sided relationship that I just have finally put distance? Did the last batch of fans I encountered kill it for me?

I will be thinking about that while I listen to the record today and probably blog all about it tonight.

Anyway, Happy Morrissey Day. Listen to some good music (not necessarily Morrissey or the Smiths) but something that puts a smile on your face and your heart burst with happiness. I believe that’s what music is about: to make you feel something.