I’m almost done with the last sleeve of my aunt’s sweater. It’s finally getting there. Next weekend I bet I can do a lot of the finishing stages. I haven’t knitted anything for myself in about a year. Nor have I knitted any socks, and I’m feeling the loss. Still, I have three or four projects I have to do for other people in the near future yet. I’m a little frustrated with it, to be honest. I didn’t realize how little I would be knitting this year, and I forgot how much knitting socks calms my mind. I really should start another sock project soon, to curb a bit of my anxiety lately.

I’ve been out of town a lot the past three weeks. After my last post, I visited my family to celebrate my younger brother’s coming of age. I can’t believe he’s growing up. We had a great ceremony, rich with family history. Then I was home for six days and went to a conference afterward. I can’t wait to type up my thoughts about the conference. It was good in many ways and bad in some ways. In any case, it was a good experience.

Lots of health issues lately, too. I keep pretending to everyone that I’m a well, normal person, but it’s just not true. I am not well and healthy and I take too much on and I forget that I need to rest. I figure if I can’t get a job, at least I can try and change the world, and then I get too involved and forget that I matter, too. Hopefully I can learn from that.

So, that’s me lately. How’re you doing?

And I’m so close, too! Just off by a sleeve and all the finishing I’ll have to do.

In the meantime, I’m on vacation! Woo!

To the future and college age, I did not make friends easily. I was too used to taking care of myself. I rarely asked for help from professors and counselors. I thought I was on my own for everything, and I assumed everything would be up to me. Saving the world. Stopping genocide. Maintaining a 4.0. I had to be on top of all of that and I had to do it all myself, and no one reached out to me to say, “Hey. It’s really okay. We’re in this together.”

I hit a pretty low period at the beginning of my junior year of school and near the end of that year I fell apart. Since then I’ve been putting together the pieces that are truly me, and trying to discard what isn’t. It’s been difficult, so difficult. I’m at the point where I’m happy with my friends and generally content most of the time (which I couldn’t have said much in my life before 2010), and I feel like I’m always discovering something that needs to be tweaked to work better in my life. Right now it’s community.

I grew up in the digital world; my community ties are almost all online. The people who have known me the longest are friends in far-off places that I’ve only communicated with via text. They supported me, but they were also lonely and far away. They were all young people without a sense of community in their geographic location.

Becky and I were talking the other day, as we do very often, and mentioned how we wish we had had a mentor growing up. And still wish we had a mentor. Growing up is difficult and lonely, and I never feel like I’m doing the right thing. I feel like I have all this responsibility and none of the words of wisdom. I don’t (and won’t) belong to a major religion, so those community ties are not available for me. So what is? Where do I get someone older and wiser to tell me things are okay? How do I work with people in all stages of life to be an example to me? And I an example to them?

Questions that I’ve been pondering.

Reading 10 Ways Meditation is Green, Frugal, Healthy and Sustainable a few days ago was frustrating. I have heard before that meditation is a really good practice. I’ve heard tons of good things about it. So reading a blog post that had to justify why someone was meditating was jarring, to say the least. And has me noticing even more the fact that our culture does not value time off to be yourself. Job hunting has me feeling like I’m a square peg trying to fit myself into a round hole; either the jargon of a job posting throws me off, or the bizarrely long listing of responsibilities and qualifications. I feel like I’m supposed to fit like a cog in a machine, and I don’t know how to.

So while I’m struggling between trying to fit into the machine and trying to figure out how to be human, it’s a lot easier to throw away being human because the work world and job hunting tells me the only thing is important is doing the things in the job description and making money for that. There is no “wellness” or “mental health” in the work world. It’s just work. You produce value. You have no worth without that. You are not a living, breathing human.

Which I am having a very hard time accepting.

Hi, Sunbeam Soapbox. I’ve been super busy.

• How to converse with the unemployed as equals is an affirming article about being unemployed. I especially like the statement, Rejection is hard, particularly the feeling that what you have to offer the world isn’t perceived to be of value.
• The Contraception “Debate” articulates why this is really a war on women.
• And a post about the choices the Republican party is making.
• For the month of March, we’ll have magical skies. I love walking around at night and gazing at the stars, so this is good to know.

Let’s be realistic, I just used this as an excuse to bake pie. (I made brownies on Monday too, so I’m kind of overflowing with sweets right now.)