I asked the Emperor to model the hat for me, and when he put it on ... it looked almost like a Norman helmet. I don't know if it's the color, or what, but that funny little knot on the top? We both thought it looked like, erp, a turd. Well, you can't say it doesn't cover your ears and keep them warm. I'll tuck it in the car and keep it at the ready for emergencies.Well, back to the drawing board.
At the moment, I seem to have adult-onset ADD. What this means is that I range around the house and performing whatever task passes within my line of sight, forgetting what it was that brought to me a particular room. It also means that I'll be bopping along and spy a ball of yarn, and the next thing I know I'm casting on for a new project. Last week, I came across that long-neglected ball of Fiesta Ballet, a nice alpaca-tencel yarn dyed in pretty pastel colors. I also found my Ballet Scarf pattern, and sat down to see if I could get any farther with it than the last five or six times I've tried to knit it. I'm on the sixth repeat of the design, and have eight more to go before I'm finished! So I guess you could say that despite being unemployed (or at least underemployed) for a year and a half, I've finally relaxed enough from my previous job to be able to knit lace successfully.
Something I haven't written about is my struggle to resume a research and writing agenda for myself. I'm a historian, and one of the things I'm supposed to do if I plan to even pretend to be a professional is to ask questions, perform research on them, write up the results and get them published. With all of this free time I've had, you would have thought I'd have gotten something substantive done, but the emotional backwash from losing my job overwhelmed me and I couldn't bear to pick up a book... for over a year. Well, about two weeks ago, I started to remember some of the topics that I had been thinking about, some of them for almost twenty years. Instead of letting my thoughts pass through my head like so much water through a sieve (that's what's been happening lately) I put a cork in it and started writing my ideas down in my little notebook. Lo and behold, a few days ago, one of my topics re-grabbed my imagination and lickety-split, bob's-yer-uncle, I was in the library looking for articles on J-STOR. I hope that this all is signalling my return to relative normalcy, and that employment can't be far behind.
You would think that writing is easy, but for that, I offer the following quote:
There's nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein.
~Walter Wellesley "Red" Smith
Wish me luck.
No comments:
Post a Comment