Hello! I'm back! Kids & computers & homework sometimes... take over my preferred access point. As is the way of these things...
Phix's Curiosity: what sparks my interest
Watch this space to see what's sparked my interest this week. A random grab bag of delights!
So, in the midst of a bit of sanctioned overtime, something that I've been thinking about in my lol "spare time" lol, has been the conflation of 'making a living' and 'working for a living.' When you decouple the need to make money in order to make decisions about how you choose to live, the choices become very different. Medieval peasants got *waaaay* more time off than most workers (Congress aside - no really, I'm not kidding!). The industrial & information revolutions have been brutal on the work/life balance.
I'm not sure how I feel about the fact that my brain's counterpoint to ridiculous hours is "Yeah... but I'm SO glad to have indoor plumbing!" Dear brain... one of these things is not like the other...
I think somewhere I feel like I get stuck is with the 'not good enough's'. Not that I'm not *good* at what I do, but for everything I do, there's always someone *better.* And my logical brain knows... there will always be people better at, more interested in, more eloquent about anything I might find a joy or curiosity in and that's fine, and it doesn't mean that I'm not also still good enough, but some times it feels overwhelming.
My lovely therapist said the other week, 'it's hard to be inclined to medicate people who are really high performing but... sometimes also you think about what they are accomplishing despite the things holding them back (anxiety/depression) and... what could they be capable of if that was treated?' It's really less a question of what if you could be more productive, and more the question of... what could you do if you weren't afraid/worried/anxious All The Time. What could you do if you could turn off that internal self critic that's so involved in keeping you down? It has not lead to one outcome or another, but... things to continue to consider. Happy belated mental health month.
Anyway. Redistribute the wealth, take care of the poor, from each as they can provide and to each as they need, universal healthcare (not "insurance"), and... yep. I'm apparently *that* lady, these days.
Medusa's Garden
When you need every one and everything around you to just stop.
The girls have decided they want to learn guitar this summer. I guess I'm going to pick up my guitars as well. And probably M2's violin, and maybe M1's cellos. Maybe. We'll see. Good intentions are sometimes outweighed by the time/space continuum addressed above. But there's something satisfying about creating space to make beautiful sounds. Or beautiful shapes (yoga/gyrokinesis), or art. Or spinning & associated follow up projects...
Create and protect your space, my lovelies! You not only *deserve* it, but it is your inherent right.
Ariadne's Yarn: playing with threads
What I'm up to with fiber and possibly how mythology and stories all tie together.
I FINISHED MY SCARF! It's really more a scarf than a wrap... but mostly, it's *DONE.*
So pleased about this. And so, now... I'm (spinning stuff, of course, AND) also knitting up the silk & baby camel into a scarf. Just a trad rectangular scarf-y scarf. It's SO soft. SO SO soft. It's hard not to just sit and pet it. So soft.
Mythic Librarian: the art of arranging a life
Thoughts on ontology and ways to organize a life.
Part of the joy of my work is getting to discuss, in gory detail, the granularity of aboutness. There is a reason ontology is a whole branch of philosophy. So this week it has been about:
using the correct term to describe the thing, and not one broader that *might* encompass potential future things but doesn't generally describe the actual thing itself very well; and
in actually identifying when you are trying to understand a collective grouping of individuals with shared experience, *what specifically* are you trying to understand (the answer is segmentation, but we'll see if that gets legs...).
Part of what organizing a life entails is, sometimes, understanding the frameworks upon which they operate. Further, understanding that those frameworks are (often) optional and how you can make adjustments to the optional/chosen frameworks. You can't change gravity - that's going to just be a thing, but you can make changes to other things (hello-goodbye, self-limiting beliefs).
I love climbing around on the jungle gyms of frameworks and identifying things really specifically. Sometimes it can be frustrating when I can't get to a shared point of view with someone, but by and large, getting a chance to look at and poke around in the under-pinings of our shared, mostly overlooked assumptions is something that I love almost irrationally.
I feel like this "should have" something I end it on, and I don't know what that is, so for now I'm going to leave it dangling in the wind as a thought that I've been to before, and will no doubt return, gifted as I am with Ariadne's ball of yarn in this labyrinth of life... <3
With love, and structure, and organization, and curiosity - may Ariadne's ball of yarn guide you through the labyrinth safely until next time!