true colors

It took me a long time to realize that there’s nothing wrong with being a married woman in her thirties who has neither a career nor children. Sometimes the insecurities will still creep in and I shove them aside by putting my iPod on to the “Driving Fast” playlist I created and then I fold six months worth of laundry. It happened yesterday - my first official Monday-without-a-job in six months. But by the end of the day my brain was beginning to show signs that it remembered how to do this housekeeping gig which was a great relief. And it helped to have the chance to talk to two of my long-distance friends, catching up on what’s been going on in their lives.

What I’ve realized is that the phrase, “I don’t want to work,” is a misnomer. I want to work and I’d love to earn a buck or two. I’m not lazy; I clean the house, do the laundry, make dinner most nights, take care of our errands, knit to completion, etc. etc.. It’s just that I’ve found I really suck at working for other people. I’ve been successful at it only once and it was because the woman I worked for gave me so much freedom that I felt like I was running my own business. It was refreshing to be trusted that much by an employer. It also helped that she was not a bi-polar, wackadoo, crazy bitch.

No, what I want to do for work (aside from continuing to run my house) is write. I feel like a broken record because I’ve been saying this for years and years. In the meantime I have been working at jobs that have rarely utilized my best skills or allowed me to be very creative. And I’ve been doing that because those jobs sent me a paycheck every two weeks, whereas writing in my journal, jotting stories in my notebook, writing letters to the editor, or sharing my life on my blog has not. Not that I expected it to.

I need to change the way I view writing as a profession. I need to strip away the limitations I’ve put on my writing. I need to start writing and submitting. Over and over and over and over again. Surely something will get picked up eventually. And I’m at a perfect place in life to be able to do this. It’s time to get focused and to start taking myself seriously.

The first thing I need to do is to find other people who whore out their words for money. The first thing I need to do is stop censoring myself. I need to be okay with writing the sentence that I just crossed out. I need to be okay with the fact that some people will get my weird, mildly warped, usually irreverent sense of humor and some people will not. I cannot be good at what I do if I try to please everybody. But I can’t lie, I’m afraid that people will read what really goes through my head and be appalled. (Like my family truth be told).  Does it help to know that hell, I am appalled most days?

For this reason I will sometimes turn off comments. I’m not sure yet in what cases and it won’t be every time, but I think it would be good practice to write honestly without coming back to my computer every three minutes to check to see if I offended someone.

Baby steps…

Yay!! Nick rocks!

I finally had a chance to contact WP Support today about my blog being funky. Nick helped me out and it is fixed!!

Going to take pictures now.

time. knitting. drooling.

Yesterday was my last work day. I’m looking at the state of my house, realizing that I’m going to be plenty busy this week. Plus, there was an accident with the boat and the truck and I’ll be spending a day or two getting some estimates to have the truck’s back end repaired. I am looking forward to the sunshine we’re supposed to be getting within the next week. We are due some serious summer. Last night my friend’s husband nailed it when he said we’ve had five month of Pacific Northwest November weather.

I’m excited because I have plans to see a friend whom I haven’t visited with in over six months and I have plans to knit with other people. To knit. With people. I know I’ve been promising pictures, and I’m still promising. They’ll come. But I’ve got to get my other crap together first.

I have a question for you: what are your top three favorite knit blogs? I need to update my blogroll. I feel kind of out of the loop regarding what’s new, hip, and cool in the knitblogging world. Anything new out there? What are the oldies but goodies?

stupid freaking wordpress

So nothing is posting correctly still and it’s very annoying to me. Anyone have any ideas? I’m stumped. Next week I’ll be able to contact support but this is frustrating because there’s nothing I’ve done to CSS or html. I’m not smart enough to mess with those things.

I have one more day at work. And then I will be posting pictures and updating my life and this blog will (hopefully) be a big part of my life again. Pictures to come. Promise.

one monkey complete

First of all…four more days. Four.

Second of all…it’s sunny. Right now. I think Spring has finally sprung. This has been such a long winter. I’m looking forward to this summer.

This weekend was a productive one. We don’t have anyone cleaning the house anymore, so Husband and I have to do it. Okay, usually Husband does it. But soon that will change - four days from now. I actually cannot wait to reclaim my house. There’s a lot of chores and deep cleaning I want need to do. The list is long.

This weekend I cleaned and ran errands because Husband had to work both days. In addition to the laundry and grocery shopping and scouring I did, I also, wait for it…wait for it…KNITTED. I picked up these two shiny silver sticks and created stitches. It was amazing. Did you know that if you make stitches over and over again, connecting them at the ends, a sock might appear?

I started my first ever Cookie A. Monkey sock eight or nine months ago. I am knitting these socks with Pigeon Roof Studios fingering weight merino wool sock yarn in Punk. It’s black and pink and red and cream and purple. This yarn would have made better socks in stockinette or rib. The lace gets lost in the craziness of the colors. But that’s okay. These have been fun to do. I finished the first sock Sunday night and I’ve started the second one, having now reclaimed my love of knitting socks.