Should I close the doors?

Well, here we are, after years of intermittent posting and sporadic updates. I still want to keep this blog, but I think I'm moving my scribal updates to my SCA website, Matildis.art, and possibly keeping this one for other things.

What other things? I've stopped doing henna, I'm no longer a freelance editor... so much has happened in the past couple of years, which I haven't posted about. And I have Facebook and Instagram for most of my updates on my personal life. And yet I'm busier than I've ever been, with art, writing (amateur level, nothing published yet), work, parenting, music... my life and my heart are full.

Should I retire "littlefiddlybits"? I don't want to delete it, I have way too much stuff here going back too far to want to erase. Should I dual-update both here and on Matildis.art? I can't decide.

I'd poll my audience but I think only about three people follow this blog, anyway. It's more of an archive for myself than for anyone else.

Decisions, decisions. In the meantime, here is a picture of me with blue hair for my 50th birthday.

I remember when I had something worth saying

You ever have one of those days that is just utterly discouraging?

I got in an argument with the husband a few days ago, one of those unresolved things that never goes away and no one ever apologizes for, and it hurt, and I've been sort of emotionally off balance ever since.

Related to the argument is an overhanging need of mine, to find steady employment. I mean, freelance is great for the ability to pick and choose my clients... but I need to have clients to choose from. I've decided that what I really need is a publisher to be, you know, my employer. And they can send me things, and I can edit them, and they can give me money, and maybe a benefits package, and life will be good. We could do that, right?

Not today. Today I am feeling useless and unemployable. And overwhelmed and helpless. And... *sigh*. You know. The usual.

I wanted this blog to be a marketing tool except that I hate marketing. I wanted it to be a creativity blog except I haven't done much that was creative in a while, apart from writing lots and lots and lots of fanfic. And of course today, I feel so far from creative it's not even funny.

I just feel sad.

One upside of clinical depression: you get used to functioning while sad, where you can. So I'm doing laundry and catching up on correspondence. And trying to beef up my virtually invisible LinkedIn profile, and maybe poke at my wants-to-be-a-resume...

God, I hate the job search.

Anyway. Like the title says. I remember the days when I had something to say, but today is not one of those days and it feels like I haven't had one of those days for a long time.

My Current Hope-To List

Longtime readers will recognize that I've made some cosmetic changes to the blog in the past few days (let me know what you think of those, btw); well, I was doing some stuff behind the scenes and had cause to look at a bunch of posts from about 2008 or so.

It was kinda cool, but also kinda depressing.

Cool to see some of the projects and ideas I'd had floating around – but depressing to see how many of those are still in stasis, and more so to see that the things that were bugging me about life in 2008 are still bugging me today, in 2011.  I still need a job.  I still am having relationship issues.  I still question my abilities as a mother, and my value to society.

Like I said: depressing.  It's as if I'm the project that is currently in some kind of indefinite holding pattern.

However, that's not what I want this post to be about.  I want it to be about all the nifty ideas that I've had floating around, waiting to be acted on, and on all the sweet projects that actually have come to fruition in the past few years.

So, here is my current "hope-to" list.  It's not a to-do list because those are depressing and frustrating; it's a list of stuff I hope to get to because it would be nifty if I could.

• Hang-gliding; and once upon a time, you could actually take that for PE credit at Indiana University in Bloomington.
• Marionettes, which have interested me ever since I read Pinocchio when I was about six, and the book had this terrific appendix about them, their history, and how to craft papier-mache heads and the proper way to rig the controls.
• Mosaics.  I have #3 to repair and then 9 more to build to finish that monster of a project
• Oil lamps and
• Silk banners – both of these are for our group campsite at Pennsic, but I've taken a class on oil lamps and they're really really cool.  Cost-effective, safer than tiki and lighter-fluid type things, pretty, and crazy easy to make. The banners would involve learning silk-painting, which I could totally see becoming my Next Crazy Project for a few years, you know?
• Hand-crafted books.  I already know how to do a specific type of limp-binding, and I've even built one full of calligraphy already as part of a group project to make a "scroll" (see previous posts about the accuracy of that name) back in 2003.  I keep thinking of crafting a pair of books with favorite poems in them, to gift to a couple friends of ours.  Making the book itself only takes about 90 minutes, if you have all the right supplies.  Prepping the pages, doing the text and illustrations and such, takes considerably longer.
• Decent, regular work in henna bookings.  I could pay my bills with this if I had more consistent business, but that's a big if.  I really enjoy puttin' the pretty on people, though.  Also, that's not really a "project" like the other things on this list.

See, that's my problem with lists:  I start out with "want-to" and start putting in "should" and "need to".  For instance, right now I need to get a job and should start looking.  The house needs de-cluttering, organizing and cleaning.  I should be downstairs getting a load of dishes going.  Blah, blah, bleah, blah.

Anyway.  Watch this space; I hope to get more calligraphy stuff up this evening – but I do have a gig tomorrow that I still need to finish preparing for.

If any of you have ideas for how I could turn this stuff into a regular job, I'm all ears!

Facebook

For those who are curious, I've been on Facebook a lot lately.  I used to avoid it in favor of Twitter, but then this gaming thing came up and the character-creation thing and so on and so on.  I've been posting short tidbits about the calligraphy project over there, if anyone is interested.

It's Facebook.com/heather.bungardjanney if anyone who comes here is curious to know about what is over there.  Frankly, the blog just doesn't get that many visitors as far as I've been able to tell; that and I put a constraint on myself to leave my personal life out of this arena and try to keep it dedicated to creative pursuits.  I don't know that ranting about politics would get me any more henna customers, after all. So I haven't had a whole lot that I wanted to post about, in recent months.

Lately, though, I've had things I wanted to say that have nothing to do with marketing henna.  I've had rants, and musings, and whatnots (I hereby declare "whatnot" to be a category of ideas), and I've been keeping myself from posting them here.  I have this odd dilemma going on, in that I've wanted an audience to hear what I have to say, but - if this makes sense - I didn't want my friends and family to know they were mine.

It isn't that I'm ashamed of my ideas.  I'm just a: not in the mood to argue my opinions, b: not in the mood to be judged by family or disagreed with by friends, and c: maaayybe, interested in just presenting the ideas on their own without "me" attached to them.  That last is less crucial than the other two reasons, but it still holds some weight in my head - a thought coming from a random schmuck is received differently than if it came from the President, or your best friend, or someone you're fighting with, or someone you adore.  I dunno - maybe that does mean I'm ashamed of my ideas a little bit, or at least, unwilling to be seen in the same room as them.  Mostly I want to rant about Stupid Freaking Daylight Saving Time and not have to argue with people who think it's just awesome.

You ever have that happen?  You want an audience, but you don't want them to know your name? What would you talk about if you could be completely anonymous?

***

In other news, calligraphy, and oh by the way one of my uncles is dying of cancer and will probably be gone by the end of the week.  And Barbara Sher Who Is Awesome (if that isn't her full name, it ought to be), popped over and commented on my last post and told me I'm "nourishing," so now I feel like maybe I should say something more often.  Even when I don't know that I have anything to say.

Hm. Maybe I should write more for the Internet and less for "is my mom going to see this?"... but again, marketing.  Trying to get henna bookings.  Doesn't go well with my latest philosophy on porn.  Or politics.  Or whining about relationships.  Or, well, whining about much of anything, really.

Gah.  It's 11:21 and I'm rambling, because I feel like I should. Bedtime would be wiser.

Just a quickie

For now, I'll just tell you that the weather is lookin' fine and I will be at the Farmer's Market later today. Last week was a record-breaker for me in terms of customers, and I'm hoping that this week will continue the trend.


There's a lot of other stuff I could write about, but it's going to take awhile to rant about losing my (apparently seasonal) job after only a month, publish an anti-resume, and so forth.

Sigh.

***

Speaking of getting lots of customers to draw on, this month's Mosey Down Main Street will be this Saturday, and weather permitting I will be there and waiting for you.  Yes, you.

Little of this, little of that…

The following is likely to be a little disjointed, because I'm very tired and have a lot of random… stuff… going on in my head.  You've been warned.

***

First and foremost, though, I need to let folks know that I will not be at the Farmer's Market this Wednesday.  The Daughter has been taking a kiddie-level gymnastics and ballet class, and they're giving a "performance" for all the parents.  Husband offered to take video for me, but this is not something I intend to watch second-hand if I can help it.

I'm not that great a fan of gymnastics; I am, however, a huge fan of my kid.

Be seeing you next week, weather willing.

***

I realize most of the Internet-surfing world likes to download their music, anymore, but since I'm now actually old enough to be able to talk about The Younger Generation, I've decided I have the right to be crotchety and old-fashioned at will (although I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around the idea that owning a compact disc is old-fashioned, seeing as I was around when they were invented).  I like owning CDs.  I like having a cabinet full of them.  It's anybody's guess which of us brought the larger music collection into the marriage, me or The Husband – it's hard to tell since we both brought a number of cassette tapes with us – but I daresay my personal stash is bigger now, after working for five years for an arts presenter and getting lots of free autographed CDs as thank-you gifts from well-fed musicians.

I mention this because I'm listening to Pandora Radio as I write (see, I can be hip and with-it too) and making a mental list of CDs I need to own soon.  And I don't care that I'm probably way, way outside Lady Gaga's target demographic.  I was around when Madonna was invented, after all.

Also, Hans Zimmer is a living god.  If you've never heard of him, that's okay, because you've probably heard of the movies Gladiator and Sherlock Holmes, and he composed (and performed on) the soundtracks for those among many others.

Have I mentioned my birthday is coming up in less than a week?

***

I know I've said before that being around pretty colors, if those colors are for sale in any shape or form, usually means I need a chaperone and someone else to hang onto my wallet.

Have I mentioned that I work at a greenhouse?  And at the moment, practically everything is in bloom?

I've had to make myself promise not to buy anything more until I've finished planting what I've already got… but at least I get a wicked employee discount.

***

I've got an odd schedule this week, with three days off in a row.  I've been hoping to get a little space like this where I could get some things done around the house, so guess what I did today?

Pretty much not a damn thing.

This never feels good, and I do it anyway, and I hate it when I do it, and that won't stop me from doing it again.  I mean, I hit the hardware store and bought some stuff I needed, but that's pretty much it. No laundry folded (my kid deserves a room she can actually play in and not to have to hunt for clean clothes), no dishes put away, none washed, no recycling run to the center, nothing planted… oh, although Daughter and I did water them this morning and she and I both enjoyed that.

***

Pause to try and cuddle Daughter as part of her bedtime routine – enter argument about whether or not she gets to have any kind of snack after she's brushed her teeth.  I. Freaking. Hate. This.  I'm tired, I slept for crap, haven't had much appetite today, am unhappy that I got nothing done, and now I've got a whiny argumentative overtired monkey trying to rearrange reality: "No those aren't the rules, Mommy, the rules are pretzels, I waaaaaaannnt pretzelllllllllllls…"

I'm a better mommy when I've had rest and am not irritated with myself.

***

I'm a lot less depressing to read when I've gotten some food into me, I promise.  But once I've finished eating I intend to crash, and hopefully get some real sleep tonight.  Last night, heat and the need for a midnight snack had the kiddo awake, and therefore had me awake, three separate times, none of which were the usual wake-up time around this house.  At least it was light out for the last one, but I wanted to still be in bed, not dragging on a pair of shorts and trying to work my head around deep concepts such as Feeding The Child Is Important, or No Going To Preschool Naked.

Ka-BOInnnnnngggg!

That's the sound my mind is making lately.  I got really angry a few days ago, and actually did something adult and mature with it.  I've been stepping back, taking stock of everything in my life that is ticking me off and from which I deserve better.

Important: this isn't some kind of whiny, entitled, "gimme gimme" anger, although certainly I've fallen prey to that before.  No.  This is me looking around and deciding that I'm going to make things into the kind of "better" that I've decided I deserve.

Betcha didn't know that anger and depression are related, did you?  In some cases, depression is nothing less than (and nothing more than) the exhaustion you get from holding anger back, or turning it inward on yourself (which is really draining, trust me on this). I've found that staying angry can be tiring, too, but not nearly as much as trying not to be angry when you by golly ought to be.

Depression can come from a sense of powerlessness, of time spent beating your head against a wall and somehow hoping that this time things will be different.  Of time spent trying desperately to affect things that are utterly and totally beyond your control (like, say, how other people behave, or whether they choose to respect you, or even like you).  Let me tell you, anger is really, really good at demolishing that feeling.  When you get pissed off enough, you can't help but say to yourself, and maybe your inner demons and baggage, and maybe even people around you, "Oh yeah?  Yeah??  Well, watch this, you big jerk."

[Pause.  I'm listening to Peter Gabriel on my iPod just now, and discovering once again that the iPod's speakers are way better than the ones in the minivan or on my computer. I shall be basking in the richness of sound and enjoying nuances heretofore unheard for about the next... 4 minutes and 10 seconds.]

*happysigh*

Something people probably don't know about me.  I've had, for pretty much my entire adult life, a real problem with determination, and motivation.  Determination to me has always felt way too much like anger, and I grew up thinking that anger was bad, categorically and pretty much universally.  I've struggled to find motives rooted in something else, anything else, other than anger.  Delight has worked.  Shiny new exploration has worked, until the thing stopped being shiny and new. Spiritual joy has worked, when I've been able to find it.  And, you know, looking around for other sources of inspiration has been a good thing, I think, in that I've gotten pretty good at seeking out the bliss in a given situation, and I've gotten really good at walking away from soul-draining suckitude and mediocrity.

But.

Anytime I started to feel like it was time to dig my heels in, be stubborn, say, "I'm gonna make this work, dammit, just you watch" - you know, show some determination - I'd scare myself right off of whatever I was doing.

Except now (cue the trumpets), da-da-da-DAH, I have a shrink!  Okay, yes, I'm being flip; but it's helping a lot to learn that A), yes, I'm not wrong, anger and determination are related, but B), that isn't bad.  Anger isn't evil.  Anger isn't anything different from happiness - it's an emotion.  You feel it, and you use it to accomplish things.  How you use it can be pretty unhealthy, but so can all the ways people have of running after happiness.

I don't know many people whose homework assignment from their shrink is to actually be angry for a change, but it seems to be working.  And it's why the title of this post is "ka-boing" and not "grrr".  Ideas are everywhere right now, to the extent that I'm actually at risk of losing the anger for lack of a single target to aim it at.  I've got an idea for a class to teach, the winter market proposal to complete, and a house to tear apart and reconfigure - which means everything from sorting and tossing useless crap, to doing laundry, to rearranging furniture, to painting, to tearing out and replacing light fixtures, cabinet doors, carpet, the whole thing.

Oh, and a marriage to work on - it's apparently way easier to have a marriage when both people are acting like grown-ups, can you believe it?  And a kid to parent - ditto the acting like a grown-up.

I just hope talking about it all here won't jinx it, dilute my focus, and keep me from doing anything (again).

So tell me.  Have you hugged your anger today?

Because you're all just dying to know…

…and because I feel like it's a good thing to stay relatively current on the blog even when not much is happening.

Octoberfest was a bust on many, many levels.  Rotten weather, rotten turnout, rotten income – all connected, naturally.  Compound that with the organizers being extremely short-handed (and a much smaller planning team compared to the year prior), and the knowledge that I could have been at any one of four or five other events that I would have really enjoyed, and you end up with a Bad Day.

The capper was when the tent threatened to blow away, and my beloved husband was forced to come dashing out of the restaurant where he and darling daughter were having dinner, so he could help me drop the tent legs and keep the thing on the ground.  I ended up bent over inside getting things put away, and whacking my head on the exact center of the roof frame…  that would be the part where all the nuts and bolts come together, and stick out, and HURT when you walk into them scalp-first.

Yeah, after having been near tears from stress for much of the previous hour, hitting my head ended up being the final straw.  In other words, I wasn't near tears anymore, I was in tears.

Oy.

I had an extremely strongly worded (read: blistering) lecture/rant/email all planned out in my head, until I found out about the organizers' own problems, and then I just couldn't bring myself to send it.  Those guys had enough on their plate.  Plus, let's face it, I wouldn't have actually unleashed fire and brimstone on a real live human being no matter how tempting it might have been.  I have this pesky ability to put myself in other people's shoes, along with a very strong internal censor, which means I'll think a fiery blue streak if I get upset enough, but I won't actually say any of it.  Very few people (in my world, at least) actually deserve to be ripped into, so I don't; it's that simple.

I still kinda wish I could at least share the rant I would have ranted, but in the interests of professionalism and karma, I'm thinkin' it's time to just let it go.

Um, if you see me anywhere in the next month or so, make sure I'm letting it go, okay?

***

This post was almost three times as long as it is right now, until I chopped the gardening stuff out and put it in an article of its own; so instead I'll just say that the embroidery is making progress and I'm getting all excited, again.

For some reason, it worked out that each area of the design has its own family of colors, and for the most part, the colors don't overlap.  So starting the ground meant breaking out the yellow/orange/warm browns; the only reds anywhere in the picture are in the lady's sleeves (rust shades) and the girl's gown (pinks); the only blue will be the background; and so on.

Right now, the only colors I have left in the bag are about six different greens, and the blues to go into the background.  And last night I finally started on the greens.

The green tones are actually the only ones that show up in more than one area; the leaves on the trees, the lady's gown, and possibly some detail on the ground where the figures are standing, are all green.  I've tried to keep the olive greens in the tree and the cooler shades in the gown; and the leaves will only have two shades, while the lady's gown has five covering all the highlights and shadows.  Regardless, green to me says "home stretch" even if only about half the total area is actually filled in right now.

What can I say, I'm easily amused.  Throw pretty colors at me and I get all excited and distracted and stuff.

Cheers!

Post-Octoberfest recovery

Well, the festival was an utter disappointment in many, many ways.  The weather and resulting low turnout were a part of that, but the rest will have to wait until I've gotten the opportunity to speak with the festival organizers.  I'm wondering if I'd have been more forgiving if the weather had been nicer, or if maybe I've just been spoiled by the way previous events have gone for me.

Regardless, I have a big new batch of henna waiting for people to let me use it on them, and a discount that will continue till the end of the month for anyone who brings me one of my old business cards.  That thought cheers me, and the Indigo Girls in my ears right now are helping more then they will ever know... although I could send them an email... I guess...

***

It's a very old line from a very old Steve Martin routine - back when he still did stand-up comedy, which ought to give you some idea how old - but I still hold it to my heart as a Law of the Universe:  It is impossible to be depressed around banjo music.

***

Daughter and I have made a habit of getting her a little snack right before bedtime, so she doesn't wake up hungry at 1am.  At her request, a new part of this routine is that I sit at the couch and work on the embroidery while she plays with her yogurt and eventually gets it all into her tummy.  So progress is in the "very slow, but steady" category.  Right now I'm working on the ground the figures are standing on.  That's right - I'm stitching dirt.

Urgent - please call

I hate to use my blog for this, but ... Silai, my hostess from this past weekend, I need you to contact me as soon as possible.  I have been trying to call you, but your cell does not pick up, and does not have voice mail.

We now return you to whatever it was you were doing before this blog post came up.

Happy and Sad

Happy: I got a call yesterday for a henna appointment with a young lady which, after answering all her questions, became an appointment for her and her mom. I'm cooking up a fresh batch of henna downstairs right now.

Sad: The Husband asked me what I really want to do with the henna, in terms of commitment and goals and all that, and I get the impression that there is a right and a wrong answer to that question.

Most of my messed-up-edness comes from focusing more on what I think I'm "supposed to" want or need, and less on figuring out what I actually do want or need. What matters to me, vs. what I believe other people think should matter to me instead.

(Sorry if that sentence didn't make any sense.)

I need to get downstairs, finish the henna batch, and sit down with my big new planning book (a sketch book with big enough pages for me to have lots of room for commentary) and figure out what the hell I'm doing.

Life offline, day 2

Somehow I made it through yesterday, and today I find myself more comfortable with the idea of staying off the machine, in the interests of getting stuff done and, oh by the way, saving my marriage.

Yes, you read correctly.  I'm not joking when I say I have an internet problem.  Just like other "problems", this one is affecting my relationships and overall happiness.  Like other addictions, my mainlining the Internet is a way to escape from something that I would be better served by simply facing and moving through.  It's a shame that I kind of suck at that.

A commenter suggested I not try to torture myself by going "cold turkey", but that just won't work for me, and that makes sense.   People with drinking problems don't get anywhere by deciding to only get hammered five days a week instead of seven.  With one exception*, people in drug rehab don't get the luxury of tapering off their habit – they go straight to detox, consisting of a private little room with a bed and a toilet, which will shortly become that person's best friend.

*The exception being if, and only if, the reactions from going completely off their drug would kill them.  Quitting the Internet during the day will not even cause me physical harm.

So I guess you could say I'm in detox.  Yesterday was pretty reaction-heavy, and today doesn't feel all that great either, but I can't, must not, let bad news push me to go a-surfing for the entire damn day.

The hard part will be managing not to find something else to escape into; the weather and my mood are perfect for a good long mope.

***

In other news, I did get more research and design done on my embroidery project, and I like how it is looking now.  This is going to be a relatively long and narrow strip of fabric that is meant to hang off a belt.  The idea is that in days of chivalry, lords would wear such tokens – often a glove or  handkerchief – when they entered jousts and tournaments, indicating that they had a particular lady's favor, or fought to defend her honor and virtue.  For my husband, the "belt favor" I'm making will depict me and our daughter, done up to look medieval, and embroidered to the limit of my capacity to obsess.

***

I thought talking about that might help me feel better, but it isn't working.  Merry effin' Christmas, y'all.

Life offline, Day 1

I. am in. Hell.

It's 11am and I've been off the computer all morning, and I have no idea what to do with myself.  My office space is COLD, because I haven't had the computer and monitor on to bestow their huge carbon-footprint friendly warmth upon me.

The urge to go surf YouTube is incredible.  The Internet is Borg, and I am Jean-Luc Picard.  Resistance certainly feels futile, at any rate, and I am starting to hear voices in my head…

Also – add etymonline.com to my list of places I miss.  I'm a geek – you do remember this, right? – and one of my geeky pleasures is to look up words, not to learn their meaning, but to learn their origin.  That would be "etymology" (as opposed to "entomology" which is the study of bugs).   I do incidentally also end up learning a lot more about the meaning of the words, too, but at the same time… geeking out about the likely Proto-Indo-European roots of words we use all the time is just, well, cool.

I am Edward Cullen, people, and the Internet is my Bella Swan.

My god, I'll have to go be productive soon just to keep from going insane.  Now I know how the pioneers got so much done – their connection speed was so horrible, they actually had more fun cutting down trees and draining swamps for farmland.

***

More to follow as I reach the breaking point, and just have to sit down and type something as a pacifier.

***

Also – I started sketching out ideas for the embroidery project I want to start after the holidays.  I've mentioned this before but not really remembered to include any info as to what it would actually look like, so here are a few links for you to explore.

***

Oh, this is just pathetic.  Trying to insert those links, my computer took me online instead of just listing the URLs for me – I heroically managed to resist surfing anywhere else, but I swear to you I felt a pang of anguish when I shut the browser down.

On the other hand, I'm kinda liking this Windows Live Writer thing; a lot of the commands are familiar to me already, so I'm actually able to do a little bit more with this than I could posting direct from Blogger.  Maybe I'll change my banner here before too long to something a little more personalized, rather than continuing to go with something that screams "template".