None of that changed the fact that I’m feeling bluesy and needy and very much alone tonight.  I think this is the first time it’s hit this hard since I moved here, which is a testament to how well I’ve been coping, overall, with the changes.  Driving home from the therapy session it started settling in.  I thought about looking for something to do that would involve going out and being with people, but decided it was better to sit with my feelings and try to release them rather than dodging them.  So here I’ve sat tonight, knitting and petting cats and watching Caprica.

PMS is probably a factor in my mood, as is February.  This month is the nadir of my affect more or less every year.  The darkness has really gotten to me by this point, and even though the daylight is getting longer and longer, there still isn’t a whole lot of it. I knew February would be hard back in June when I found out these changes were coming, and I’ve been building my life to be ready for it.  I’m feeling pretty good about how it’s going so far.  Sure, it’s only day 5, but I’m in a good place heading into the month.

Generally I’m approaching the bluesy mood by working first on the physical things that are easy to set to rights: eating better, exercising more, and sleeping reasonable and regular hours.  Being physically in a good place is the first, best defense against the down moods.

I’m also returning to my yoga practice.  The myofascial release work is directly related to this; I want to stretch more, and work on my alignment and balance, integrating the work I’ve done on the table with a more dynamic practice.  I discovered this week that my cubicile is private enough, and has enough open space, that I can practice most yoga poses without being seen or disturbed.  I’m getting up and running through Sun salutes between meetings, or another flow that I’ve been liking which is a runner’s stretch into Warrior I into triangle, then rotating to do the sequence in the other orientation.  Warrior I has always been energizing for me, and that is still true.

Seattle is being kinder than I expected to my mood, because it’s clearly already spring.  I’ve spent several of the afternoons this week starting to work on my garden, and this weekend there will be much gardening accomplished.  I am stripping the vegetation off the majority of the back yard, and laying out a vegetable garden.  I haven’t decided for sure the layout for it, but step one: “clear the area” will be the same no matter what. I figure I can look at it tomorrow while I’m digging, and hatch a plan.

Part of me wants simple rectangular beds.  Part of me wants a stepping stone garden, like what I had in Santa Cruz years ago.  Part of me wants a labyrinth. It will be interesting to see what comes together from those parts.  :-)  I’ll measure thoroughly as part of the work tomorrow, and then sketch tomorrow night.  Where by sketch I mean “pop open a graphical editor and move around stuff.”  The paper and pen stuff is sooo last millennia.

I’m expecting to establish herbs near the back door, but mostly plant annuals in the majority of the garden area: veggies, and a few flowers.  I’m going to leave the perennial beds around the edge this year, just trying to prune the decadent growth back into vigor, and see what is there.  I may do a major restructuring in the fall, but I want to watch it through a full turn of the seasons before deciding.

I’m setting off to the side the well rooted perennials that have seeded into the area.  Some of them I can identify, and some I think I recognize.  All of them will be set into a narrow bed along the south edge of the property, against the fence, where they can’t get up to much trouble.  Eventually that bed will be ferns, hostas, and Japanese forest grass, but for now it’s a nursery.

Creatively, I’ve made reasonable targets for myself, and am taking great pleasure in more or less meeting them.  The sock pattern is coming along nicely.  I hope to have the instructions for knitting the foot fleshed out a bit more, the sizing information worked through, and a clean draft created by the end of the weekend. That sounds like a lot, but should only be a couple hours work.

In life generally, I’ve taken a step back, sorted out my priorities, let go of the guilt I pile up on myself when I can’t do everything and be everything for everyone, and I’ve put things more or less in order.  I am making slow progress against my goals, and I’m comfortable with that.  Every day a little more.  Not a lot, but enough.  I am still rooting in, still healing.  This is not a time for big glorious growth yet, this is still a time for recovering and letting go.

Tomorrow there should be pictures.  I want to shoot the two WIP’s I have going, and also lay out a garden design draft.  For now, though, it’s time to sleep.

The thing I miss is that, looking back over the day, I can’t recall any moment in which I was struck by something beautiful. It’s been a day spent almost sleepwalking.

The closest thing I can recall was re-working the candle I bought yesterday. It burned down and went out this morning, leaving a lot of unconsumed wax around the edges of the votive holder. I braided a new wick out of cotton cord and rethreaded the little metal base, and then melted the wax in the votive holder in the microwave. Once it was all melted, I dropped the base with the new wick into the candle, and lit it.

I enjoyed watching the process of the wax transforming from a clear amber colored liquid back into a creamy beige solid. I was working, rattling away at the keyboard, and sitting next to me was this little light. Slowly the wax got white and translucent, starting with just a skim in the corners of the dish. Every time I glanced at it, the solid wax was closing in on the little flame, but while it was liquid in the middle the flame held out.

Unfortunately as soon as the wax fully cooled, the candle rapidly burned through the thin layer around it. The votive holder is way too big. I may melt it again, and pour it into a taller, narrower container. I’m enjoying the scent, and the little flame.

Not my most inspired writing, this. I’m sleepy, though, and think I’ll go back to bed for the rest of the night. Hopefully I will wake up recharged, and have more to share tomorrow.

The other acquisition was a sachet made from wildcrafted sages gathered near Big Sur.  Interesting how scent instantly transports me back.  I remember like yesterday, shortly after I moved into my duplex on Myrtle St in Santa Cruz (216B!), when the tenant of the other unit asked me to take her to gather sage for smudge sticks.  She didn’t have a car, but wanted to go to a particular spot that was a couple miles north of town.  I had nothing better planned.

I took her, and we walked around snipping branches off the odd plant and gathering them into shopping bags.  This was a time before the ubiquitous plastic tumbleweeds were around, when shopping bags were all made out of paper.  We walked and talked, and shared the sunset from a hillside looking across US 1 to the cliffs and the ocean.  The scent of the sage was billowing around us, awakened by the fog that came in off the Pacific like a wall.

We took it home, bundled it up, wrapped the bunches with thread in many colors, then hung them in our respective kitchens to dry.  I kept one of those bundles for many years; I don’t remember when I let it go.  Probably when I moved to Philadelphia.

I now have a little bag of memories sitting on the table next to me.  I can squeeze it and close my eyes, and two decades slide away in an instant.  I am new to Santa Cruz again, and inhaling it for the first time.  I think I’ll keep it in my car, where I can be surprised by the scent whenever I open the door.  Much nicer than stale car smell.  All this for less than the price of a latte.  ;-)

Clearly I’m having a bumpy start with this daily pages thing.  eh.  I want it.  It’s good for me.  I just have to fit it consistently into my routine.  To some extent, I have.  While I haven’t been writing here, I have been writing every night.  Last night was a work deadline, a couple other nights were long overdue emails, and there was a post that I started but didn’t feel right putting up. It started as a rambly thing, and then I stumbled over a metaphor I want to get just right.  It’s going to be beautiful, but it’s still cooking.

I’ve never done pages at night before.  they’ve always been a morning thing for me.  My life is very upside down now, though, with this odd schedule I’m keeping.  I know what building blocks I need to be happy, but I’m having to rearrange them from their customary positions to support working east coast hours from the west coast.  I’m slowly putting my life back together. It feels good.

I’m not tired all the time anymore– I’m getting the hang of napping, and of simply feeling tired at 9pm, so that I can bounce out of bed at 5am.  It’s a new rhythm, but it’s going to be a good one.  And it seems that I’m doing my daily writing at night, as a way to wind down to sleep.

I need to get back in the swing of exercising.  I was good for the first couple months here, but then work got really tough, and I stopped being able to take an hour during the day to workout in the office gym.  Fulay wants me to start walking with her, though, and that sounds good.  And I want to get in the habit of walking by the beach a couple times a week.  I chose to live near Alki for a reason.  At some point I need to get the bike rolling and work on that, too.

But for now, sleep is what I need most.

I’ve got some vague thoughts about things I want to write, but nothing has coalesced into a concrete enough form for me to write it out.  I have a post in mind about memories and reflections, but that’s going to wait until I can write it with more attention than I have right now.  It may even be a series of posts, with photos.  But not now.

I went sailing last weekend.  There wasn’t much wind, but it was still an important moment for me, to be out on the water and pushed by the wind again.  I spent so much of my childhood on and around boats and the ocean.  I am not someone who can really answer the question, “Where’s your home town?”  As an adult, I have claimed Rehoboth Beach Delaware.  I spent substantial parts of my childhood summers there, and it’s the one place I reliably returned to every year.  I loved walking the beach, and working on my uncle’s boat, and sailing.

For several summers I took the trip up from Ft Lauderdale to Rehoboth with my uncle.  The best of those trips, we traveled “outside,” which means we headed out into the open ocean rather than hugging the coast or motoring up the intercoastal waterway.  I always took the graveyard shift at watch, lying on the cockpit cushions looking up at the stars, with meteors and satellites passing by.

As I lie here, I can remember the feel of the boat, heeled over and bucking on the ocean swell.  It seemed like there was a rhythm to the waves, but not one you could ever anticipate.  Out on the ocean, the waves don’t line up the way they do when they reach the shore.  There are waves from the current, and waves from the wind.  There is the deep swell that carries across from east to west, and then there’s the shore reflection of that swell bouncing back.  Each set of waves has its own direction, period, and strength.  They interact like crossing ripples in a pond, not with long troughs and ridges, but with dips and rises that build suddenly and fall away unexpectedly.

I used to like letting the ocean breathe for me.  Lying still, on my back, with my diaphragm relaxed, letting the bucks and dips push the air out of my lungs and pull it back in.  Giving myself to the ocean, trusting that down would come up again, and up would go down again, and I would breathe out as much as I breathed in, and that breath would be enough to sustain me.  I can remember few moments when I’ve been as much at peace as I was in those times, lying under the stars.

I am actively courting that inner peace these days.  finding the things that carry me in that direction, and savoring them.  I’ve never sustained a sitting practice for very long; I prefer my meditation a bit more active.  Yoga gets me there, but I’ve not been feeling it lately.  I don’t think I’ve done more than a few poses since I moved to this house.  Spinning is getting me to that place.  Gardening does, sometimes.  I’ve been digging up nature sound recordings, and they are also helping me let go of the past and future, and rest with the present. There is a moment when I make a fresh cup of tea, and inhale deeply.  A quiet comfort that comes from petting a cat.

I have weathered so much change in the past year.  This, now, is a time for being still.  I need to root into my new life.  I am gently shaping myself, but mostly I’m just letting go.  I’ve found a good place.  I’m finding good people.  I don’t feel a sense of hurry, or a need to drive to any goal.  This is a time for resting, and recovering.  A time for being, not doing.

Ok.  Now it is really time for sleeping.  Good night.

I bought the original of a Cat and Girl comic about a year ago.  It struck me with the line, “When you create, you build something.  You take your ONE corner of the world, and say ‘Chaos can’t have this!‘”  One of the characters says this in response to the question, “How do you stay warm in the cold shadow of death?”  That’s how I would answer the question, too.  It’s hanging on the wall of my cube, to remind me.

I was given a spindle and roving over the holiday, by a friend who felt guilty it’s been molding in their stash for years.  Someone bought it for them after they took a spinning class together, but it’s been untouched ever since.  I was happy to give it a new home.

Spinning is a new pastime for me.  It’s hypnotic and rhythmic, and doesn’t require the foresight and attention that knitting does.  It’s very much a meditative action that requires you to be in the moment, listening to the whisper as the spinning yarn grips and tugs at the unspun fibers, pulling them into itself, forever twisting more and more length out.  I give the spindle a whirl and let it drop slowly towards the floor, lengthening and twisting.  Then it stops, and I wind the yarn up, and do it again.  And again.  And again.

There is hunter green and navy blue roving.  I spun my way through the blue, twisting it into a slim single, within days.  The green has taken a bit longer, but I finished it tonight.  And then I plied the two singles into a two colored yarn.  Seriously.  I took fluff and a spinning top and turned it into yarn; there’s some strange magic in that act.  It’s blue and green, thick and thin.  Very much a first effort, but also serviceable.  And I love it.

It’s far later than I should be up.  I must say, I find it amusing that after I so boldly made a declaration about writing daily, life threw me a curve.  The past couple days have been a bit of a death march for reasons that I’m not going to go into here because, well, I’m not going to go into them here.  I’m not writing about work or my personal life, and that’s all I’m going to say about that.

I am up, though.  I’m up because I made something.  I came home, having slain dragons and feeling pretty zorched by the effort.  I wanted to relax, and do something quiet for a while, and then go to bed early.  I picked up my spinning.  And now I have 135 yards or so of yarn, with which I will make something else.  I’m tired, but I’m going to sleep well, in spite of the agita of the past couple days.  I remember who I am.  I’m a person who makes things.

I especially love days like this one, when the rain comes in a heavy mist that beads up on every surface.  Each twig is covered with drops that can’t exactly sparkle in the soft light, but still manage to look like fairy jewels. The artists who wraps trees in strands of led’s for the holidays are going for this effect. Here in Seattle we get it for free on most days, if we take time to notice.

Seattleites are fearfully asking me how I’m tolerating the weather, and outsiders ask the same question with distaste and pity. I’m telling them all my truth– the weather suits me. I like cool and damp; I truly do. I’ve been joking I don’t eat fungus because it would be cannibalism. My hair is pleasantly wavy in it’s rough, tussled sort of way. I’m happy to be outdoors almost every day, feeling neither too cold nor too hot.

It’s a new year, and I’m in a new place. I begrudge the circumstances of my move, but I am determined to make a happy life here. Seattle is going out of her way to help me. Just as I’ve embraced the weather and find it suits me, I am finding more new activities to try than hours in the day. Of course I will garden and knit, but I also want to work with the plant salvage folks, and I’ve now found the Center for Wooden Boats. Oh! and let me not forget the steampunk folks, or the board gamers. Folks in all of these communities are warm and welcoming.

I was afraid, when I moved, that I would be alone in February when the drearies really settle in and take hold of me, and it would be hard for me to get through until spring got rolling. That fear dissipated some time in November, and hasn’t returned. I am finding it almost too easy to make connections, and I’m finding that the people I choose have already chosen each other.  The community I am building for myself from these groups is already interwoven. I am running into the same faces, and they are becoming friends who invite me to do things. I feel at home here.

Today Zack is back with his father after a week with me. I saw him briefly to drop off a forgotten item at the end of his school day, but had to walk away from him and let him leave with his stepmother. It makes me sad to be building a life that he’s only occasionally a part of, but it is what I must do now.

Instead of going home, I headed to Little Knits, where everyone knows me. I stopped in the back and chatted with Fulay briefly– she was on her way out. And then I had a predictable falling down. I bought a little skein of sock yarn that Z gravitated to the last time we were in the store. He would rather I knit him Pokemon plushies, (or other cartoon characters– his latest request was for Catbus) but I get pleasure from knitting him socks.  I like thinking about them warming his feet when he’s not with me, as is so often the case these days, but I also love the way his face lights up when I present him a new toy. I’m trying to balance the two, and also knit for myself and for other special friends.

I am not buying much since I got to Seattle that isn’t a necessity, but I’m not upset with myself about the yarn; not in the slightest. I know it will be used, and if my worst habit is a $15 skein of yarn once or twice a month, I’m doing pretty damned well. I really don’t have many discretionary expenses.  No designer beverages, minimal clothes, no going out to eat. I’m cooking for myself and Z when he’s here, and mostly making do with what I have. It’s as effortless to not spend money as my diet has become; it’s a new habit that feels comfortable and right. I am spending more on entertainment, especially movies with Zack. Again, that feels right.

In the spirit of the new year and cultivating new habits and a new life, I have decided to write public daily pages. I want to write, and to be read. Many of you know this is an act of bravery for me, and my writing will be necessarily constrained, but I can still write. It’s important to me to use my voice and be heard. I want that back. As I discovered on my birthday, I deserve it.   I’m going to make it happen for myself; just watch me.