Time to get used to the monochrome.

I see a beech leaf.

I was in a bad mood last night. Maybe the color scheme isn’t so bad. Maybe someone would like it who wanted to make something for a guy. Guys like ugly colors. Especially those not confident in their masculinity.

I would love to make this, but as I oohed and aahed over it, I was summarily told that it would require “more than four harnesses” and would not be a good choice for someone at my level.

Anyway, today someone from TechLab wrote me a belated farewell, and mentioned she was “envious” of my “lifestyle.” Maybe DC people are different from NY people, or the NY people just all know me or know of me; but the TechLab people seem to be slightly dumbfounded at my life. That I raise goats and take time away from work to go to weaving school and whatnot. It seems not to have occurred to them that one could do these things.

If I perhaps inspired one person for one moment to “step away from the computer” and saw some wood or something (manager said he had always wanted to try woodworking school)… then that was a 10-month-year well spent, I would say, even apart from the fact that it was a total blast.

Workers of the world, relax!

We went to Big Spruce last night, which I can’t praise highly enough; and a young woman came by and complimented Xopher on his snazzy shirt, saying it was “Epic!”

Taken today!

Picture was taken last week, when things were significantly warmer and more beautiful.

I am well into the swing of things lately. Not having Xopher at home anymore. My crazy new/old job. My dearly beloved ability to groove in my own routine. Remembering that I can’t get anything out of this life; I can only live inside it.

Holy Expletive, what a day I had at work, back at my “old” job, henceforth known as my “job”, as of yesterday. The big project they wanted me for hasn’t started yet, so I thought in the interim, things would be peaceful, dull, I’d sit around quietly waiting for someone to assign me something. OMG things are such a mess. I had been like, why the hell do they have to pull me back two months shy of the year I was supposed to be rotating? I guess I see now.

And look what arrived today, as if the cheesecake weren’t enough. CoffeeCoin was the “token” project back at TechLab, and my former manager wanted me to have this memento. Good times, those were.

Nobody puts their horrible fails on social media! Well I’m here to tell you, for every thing I do with my hands that manages to come out right, there are at least ten things that are utter fails. I had intended to put some beadwork around this hat. I need a lot of practice finishing beadwork. I’m just gonna ditch the whole thing at this point, take the beads apart, I wasn’t that crazy about it anyway.

I wrote to the great Oliver Burkeman and the great Oliver Burkeman wrote me back!!!

I wrote this.

“

I feel like there is a contradiction underlying Four Thousand Weeks.  One thread is basically this:

• Nobody cares what you do with your life
• You can’t get anything ‘out’ of life – nothing fits through the exit door
• Hope you don’t tune me out for quoting classic rock, but “All you touch & all you see, is all your life will ever be”

And OTOH, you are constantly repeating some variation of the following: all of this should feel liberating and exhilarating, because now you can finally be freed up to focus on what matters.

But isn’t the first thread trying to convince me that, actually, nothing “matters”?

I do find the first thread liberating and exhilarating.  But when you keep telling me, “Well! Now, time to get on with it!  You know, that thing that REALLY MATTERS?”  I’m like, what, what, what?  I’m supposed to have a mattering-thing?

“

He wrote,

“Thanks, Chris! Fascinating point.”

And he wrote more. But I don’t think it’s right to publicly publish his words without his permission. Except for that “Fascinating point” bit, no way I’m not mentioning that.

Basically he argues that the first thread is meant to clear away illusions so what matters for you can bubble up to the surface.

Generally one weekend right around this time of year you will be bound to find us gourding.

Today’s Burkemanian quote is from ‘modern-day spiritual teacher Jiddu Krishnamurti’, who partway during a lecture leaned forward and said ‘almost conspiratorially, “Do you want to know what my secret is?… You see, I don’t mind what happens.”‘