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May. 8th, 2012 03:27 amThere is a large pile of fabric on top of a knock-down chest in our hallway. I'd put the fabric there as a goad so I'd see it every day - a reminder that I meant to convert it into loaner garb. A friend learned of my project and donated about two times the amount of fabric I already had, pushing the pile to oh, about three feet high. It was already about two feet wide. Maybe a little more. I doubt it wouldn't overflow one standard Rubbermaid bin.
It has been there for a year, now. I've made a few items but not as many as I had planned on - my medical stuff and a disinclination to be involved with my local group had me turning a blind eye to my fiber-ish eyesore. Now, when I have what I would call 'free time', I use it to try to catch up with the stuff that should be done for my heraldic job. I'm still trying to impress into a forgetful mind all the rules and applications that I need to know as a submissions clerk and to establish a good working schedule. The new rules, while making things easier in the long run, are yet another set of obstacles for me to climb right now while I'm still struggling with all the other stuff.
My sense of competency is not very high - I'm just not doing things as well or as quickly as I would have once done. It is frustrating. Yeah, I'm doing "okay" but definately not "well" or "great". Anything below the level of those last two is not satisfactory - our people deserve no less. In the normal course of events, I'd be (probably) a better-than-beginner book herald. But the needs of this office demand more. I have to get myself trained up faster than I have been achieving. I am really struggling with how difficult it is for me to pin the knowledge down. I've done research, and garnered a large body of trivia about all sorts of disparate subjects, for my whole adult life - with ease - but the memory effect that my medical treatment is having on me has just about destroyed that and things still seem insurmountable. Bossman snorts and tells me that on my least-confident days I'm still better than many of the alternatives. It's a kind comfort but a hollow one. Habits of discipline shouldn't reap confusion and ignorance and yet, for weeks on end, they do. I wonder if this is how Alzheimer patients feel? I take a lot of comfort from the knowledge that the fog is drug-induced and I could, if I requested it, suspend the treatment at this point and get my brain back. (The recommended length of therapy is a minimum of one year, and best for three. I have been taking Gleevec for one year already. In a way, given its effect on other systems within that short time, the idea of going with the minimum is tempting. While I would not lose my diabetes (or it is doubtful, anyway), the high blood pressure/chloresterol would likely disappear. And the brain-fog, the nausea, the gastric upset, the swelling of face and legs, the hair loss, the even more exaggerated exhaustion, insomnia, and muscle cramps... I could live without all that! But three-year patients have a 60% higher protection against tumor regrowth. The regrowth is a given so keeping it at bay for twelve years instead of merely two (for example) should be my goal.)
In the late night, when I can't sleep & can't think either, I've been watching a lot of stuff on streaming Netflix. One of the series that I've started to watch is "Hoarders". I admit that the subject gives me the heebie-jeebies. My mother lived like that. I spent my childhood surrounded by scenes like that. I have no idea why I watch it - there's a sick fascination about it. But the show does inspire me, if one could use "inspire", to look at my own house and the areas of clutter and to analyse the situation. For example, I've been thinking about my Lego collection... is it something that tilts me over the edge into 'compulsive hoarding' or is it less pyschotic? (Where IS the line between "I collect these things and that's fairly normal" and "Dude, you seriously need therapy"?) I've been rather systematically going through my possessions and winnowing out stuff. I'm not really worried that I'm a hoarder although I recognise the trait as one I could develope rather easily. I don't like clutter much. I also don't like bare wind-swept looking spaces indoors either. Those are too cold for me. I prefer a balance between the two. At least in my own house.
So in the last couple of weeks I've been really thinking about that pile of left-over fabric swatches targeted for 'children's garb'. And I think I may just give it all away. Most of it is cottons, some mixed fibres of unknown type. I've used up most of the linen bits long ago. And I am beginning to recognise that the impulse to create & donate will most likely not be recovered, not for the next while anyway. This group, while an active one, is not "my" group any longer - what turns them on and inspires them rarely are the same things that do for me. That's not bad, mind you! It just means that I feel more like an outsider and can't really tell the difference between what I can give which would be appreciated, and what I'd give and it'd be an unwanted burden of storage and disuse.
Anyway, I think I'm going to get rid of that big ole pile of fabric bits. If I haven't appreciably done something with it in over a year, I'm not likely to. Right?
It has been there for a year, now. I've made a few items but not as many as I had planned on - my medical stuff and a disinclination to be involved with my local group had me turning a blind eye to my fiber-ish eyesore. Now, when I have what I would call 'free time', I use it to try to catch up with the stuff that should be done for my heraldic job. I'm still trying to impress into a forgetful mind all the rules and applications that I need to know as a submissions clerk and to establish a good working schedule. The new rules, while making things easier in the long run, are yet another set of obstacles for me to climb right now while I'm still struggling with all the other stuff.
My sense of competency is not very high - I'm just not doing things as well or as quickly as I would have once done. It is frustrating. Yeah, I'm doing "okay" but definately not "well" or "great". Anything below the level of those last two is not satisfactory - our people deserve no less. In the normal course of events, I'd be (probably) a better-than-beginner book herald. But the needs of this office demand more. I have to get myself trained up faster than I have been achieving. I am really struggling with how difficult it is for me to pin the knowledge down. I've done research, and garnered a large body of trivia about all sorts of disparate subjects, for my whole adult life - with ease - but the memory effect that my medical treatment is having on me has just about destroyed that and things still seem insurmountable. Bossman snorts and tells me that on my least-confident days I'm still better than many of the alternatives. It's a kind comfort but a hollow one. Habits of discipline shouldn't reap confusion and ignorance and yet, for weeks on end, they do. I wonder if this is how Alzheimer patients feel? I take a lot of comfort from the knowledge that the fog is drug-induced and I could, if I requested it, suspend the treatment at this point and get my brain back. (The recommended length of therapy is a minimum of one year, and best for three. I have been taking Gleevec for one year already. In a way, given its effect on other systems within that short time, the idea of going with the minimum is tempting. While I would not lose my diabetes (or it is doubtful, anyway), the high blood pressure/chloresterol would likely disappear. And the brain-fog, the nausea, the gastric upset, the swelling of face and legs, the hair loss, the even more exaggerated exhaustion, insomnia, and muscle cramps... I could live without all that! But three-year patients have a 60% higher protection against tumor regrowth. The regrowth is a given so keeping it at bay for twelve years instead of merely two (for example) should be my goal.)
In the late night, when I can't sleep & can't think either, I've been watching a lot of stuff on streaming Netflix. One of the series that I've started to watch is "Hoarders". I admit that the subject gives me the heebie-jeebies. My mother lived like that. I spent my childhood surrounded by scenes like that. I have no idea why I watch it - there's a sick fascination about it. But the show does inspire me, if one could use "inspire", to look at my own house and the areas of clutter and to analyse the situation. For example, I've been thinking about my Lego collection... is it something that tilts me over the edge into 'compulsive hoarding' or is it less pyschotic? (Where IS the line between "I collect these things and that's fairly normal" and "Dude, you seriously need therapy"?) I've been rather systematically going through my possessions and winnowing out stuff. I'm not really worried that I'm a hoarder although I recognise the trait as one I could develope rather easily. I don't like clutter much. I also don't like bare wind-swept looking spaces indoors either. Those are too cold for me. I prefer a balance between the two. At least in my own house.
So in the last couple of weeks I've been really thinking about that pile of left-over fabric swatches targeted for 'children's garb'. And I think I may just give it all away. Most of it is cottons, some mixed fibres of unknown type. I've used up most of the linen bits long ago. And I am beginning to recognise that the impulse to create & donate will most likely not be recovered, not for the next while anyway. This group, while an active one, is not "my" group any longer - what turns them on and inspires them rarely are the same things that do for me. That's not bad, mind you! It just means that I feel more like an outsider and can't really tell the difference between what I can give which would be appreciated, and what I'd give and it'd be an unwanted burden of storage and disuse.
Anyway, I think I'm going to get rid of that big ole pile of fabric bits. If I haven't appreciably done something with it in over a year, I'm not likely to. Right?
