Today was the first day that I didn’t have to grade anything since January 8th or so. It has made me really think about whether or not I want to teach. The extra money is very useful, but I can’t really say we need it. Who the fuck am I to say I need a shed office? That is the most ridiculous luxury! I really want one and feel that it would be good for my mental health, but I do not need it to live. And while teaching is my favorite job to do on the side, and while it gives me a small sense of purpose that my day job does not, it was really nice to have a day off without the guilt of papers-I-should-be-grading. I have been telling myself that I’d get my time management down so that I could get everything done during a reasonable “work day,” but that has yet to happen. I can organize things very well, but I cannot organize my own time well in the absence rigid constraints.
So today, with nothing to do, and being unable to leave the house (because we waited all day for a young man from the neighborhood that we were paying to clean out the crawlspace; he said he’d be over by noon, and he arrived at 5:30, close enough says Estacada-time), I worked on a sweater. And for several long stretches I was able to reach a state of present mindfulness. Lots of knitting is mindless, requiring only moments of attention at regular intervals, but today, I was finishing a sweater, which involved a lot of seaming, a fair bit of weaving in of ends, and some work figuring out the button band. It is the actions that require full attention, but with which I am confident and comfortable in the execution, that I think allow me the most opportunity to practice mindfulness. Seaming a raglan. Picking up stitches for a button band (pick up and knit three, skip one, repeat). And knitting, like essaying, is something I am loathe to stop once I start. I can work for hours if a logical end is near (“I’ll just finish this row, this sleeve, this seaming, this collar and button band). The difference between knitting and essaying for me, though is confidence. I am no longer confident in my skills as a writer. I was once blustery and though I understood that my product was not always great, I had some confidence and comfort in the process of starting and then revising. With knitting, I pick up someone else’s idea in the form of a pattern, and then with yarn and color choices, and tweaks as needed, I make my own product.
Prompts are useful in this regard, but I forget that. Or, like everything else I need to do, I don’t get around to it because of more pressing things, like button bands or house payments.
I meant to talk about mindfulness. I am so easily distracted in so many other situations, but with the needle and yarn, sometimes, it is just this stitch and then that stitch. In breath, out breath.
It’s cold in the house tonight. Now that the crawlspace is clean, I’m hoping to schedule the insulators in the next week or two.