State of the Union

So, I looked back at myself and the blog today at lunch (which I am still on - yay one hour lunch!) and realized that I haven't been doing as much with the blog as I would have liked to - especially since the wedding, and since discovering Ravelry. I do wonder if the knitblog community has had a bit of a slowdown since Ravelry came out, and while I'm honestly not sure (I also discovered the magic of RSS feeds, so now I always seem flooded in entries, but have no way of knowing if that's more or less than I would have been reading before), I don't think it'd necessarily a bad thing. I mean, Ravelry? Is clearly awesome. Awesome as few things can be. It has completely revolutionized how I search for patterns, designers, errata, and of course it has forums aplenty for my chattier impulses.

So, no, I'm not dead. I've just been doing a good amount of my talking elsewhere.

I also realize that a lot of my entries for the past year have been either 'ZOMG WEDDING' or 'ZOMG MOVING', which is not terribly interesting to people who are not me.

So where are we now? Well, there's me. I still knit. I still design. I still buy patterns like it's going out of style. I know that I'm happier than I was when I started this blog, which is a big thing for me. I've had a lot of therapy, which I mentioned but not much or often. I have fewer depressive episodes, now that the wedding is over - I'm glad now that I'm not on medication, but I am perfectly aware it might have helped and not against it in general. I'm eternally grateful to the person who helped me work on my issues - you know who you are, though I don't think you read this - so that now I'm much more attuned to my own rhythms, when I need to be awake, when asleep, when around people, when alone, when I need to do what I don't want to do, because what I want to do will make me feel worse instead of better. I no longer use sleep as a way of avoiding my problems, or making time pass quickly so I can get to the other end of a depressive moment. I'm much more confident, both at work and in my personal life, and I take more pride in my abilities and accomplishments without constantly seeking external validation for them. All in all, I think I have improved as a person, as a knitter, and maybe started on the road to becoming An Adult. And all of that is good.

It's odd, though, that even with all that growth and change that I know I've done, I still just feel like me. Still a little flaky (though I like to think, less so), still a little goofy, still curious and stubborn as hell. I think the main difference between myself-now and myself-ten-years-ago is largely one of surety. I know who I am, I know what I will and will not put up with, and in general I'm a lot less confused. Feels good.

So all that said, I think I'm going to breathe some new life into this blog o' mine. I might gussy up the formatting a bit, I definitely plan to add more free pattern links (evidently this is one of the main reasons people come here, according to Hastur, and that's pretty cool - Yes it's external validation, but it's nice to be told people like your taste in clothes), and other cool things as I find them. There'll probably be a place on the sidebar for things to look/listen at during work. No videos, since those require entirely too much attention (in my experience) to be a good idea, but things like free audiobook reviews (and oh, I have many), more Things that Piss Me Off, and whatever else floats my boat.




Something else occurs to me now. It's been eight months since I started my own private protest against all forms of media that depict sexualized violence. No movies, no books, no TV shows (that's right, no more SVU!), nothing. I've been pairing it with a concentrated effort to find more women-created media, books and music mostly since I go to so few movies these days (two this year - Iron Man because it's awesome, Harold and Kumar because that's what Sweetie wanted to see for his birthday, and I plan of course to see Indiana Jones sometime soon as well), and it's been a lot of fun. I listen almost exclusively to women artists, not because of any grr mens bad sentiments, but because I've found so much now that I like. I have more positive role models for myself and any tiny knitters Mr Sweetie and I may ever have (though no time soon, I'm looking at an IUD), and I think it's really improved my quality of life. Yay me!