I’m doing my best to take care of a lot of things right now. My family, my department, my classwork, my reading list, my dog, my typewriters, my car, my friends. The past weekend I did some house-sitting for friends and took care of their house and their four cats for a few days. Last on the list is always the taking care of myself, and it’s a struggle to give it a higher priority. What (or who) do I make less important because of what I think I need?
Some people — often but not exclusively women — get in that caretaker role and just seem to stay there. I’m not sure how they get out. Maybe after they teach everyone else to take care of themselves a little bit more, they slip their traces and go for a run. Or maybe they slip the traces first, and that’s why the others need to learn to manage themselves a little more. I’m not sure. I will care harder, said Boxer. More may be revealed in the fulness of time.
It helps me to do something tangible every so often. This afternoon I fitted a third typewriter-themed greeting card into a mat-and-frame I picked up last year at a thrift store. I took the hardware to the local framing shop with some items that I wanted to have professionally framed, and the artist and I had an interesting discussion. We agreed that the mat and frame weren’t really suitable for the pieces I brought in, and she said she’d keep thinking about the items I had brought in, and the best way to display them. But she challenged me to make art with the mat and frame.
It’s been about (at least?) a year since I was in the framing shop, and she hasn’t contacted me. Maybe she lost my email address or my cell phone number. Maybe she hasn’t figured out the puzzle quite yet. Or maybe she’s waiting for me to say, I made art! What did you do?
This is what I have so far. I can see at least two things that I’d like to change.
This happened to me in my first undergraduate run, as well — the urge to make things. I began by majoring in creative writing and I finished by double major in creative writing and English literature. Somewhere in the middle I started to feel that it was all words and no objects, and I wanted to do something more…tangible. I chose systems analysis, thinking that coding would be an effective counterpoint to writing. (Let’s all take a moment here to laugh as hard as we can. And remember that I was just 19 or 20 years old at the time, and this is what made sense to me then.)
https://giphy.com/gifs/colbertlateshow-the-late-show-with-stephen-colbert-3oEjI2MWrb3XRlftte
In a way, this idea was a successful one. I took a class in TrueBasic programming (think BASIC but without line numbers in the code) and started a class in Assembly Language, which I dropped before the big exam, when I realized that I had no idea what was going on. I had been doing well in the class and the professor was startled that I wanted to drop, but without an overall understanding of the language and how it worked, I knew that I just wouldn’t be able to keep up.
Why do I say this was successful, even though I dropped the course and dropped the minor? It was through taking these courses that I started to meet my people. I didn’t have close friends in the creative writing program; they felt more like competitors, sad to say. But the computer geeks hung out together and seemed to have a lot of common interests. When the Miami University Bulletin Board System was created (remember, these were the Days Before the Internet), I joined the MUBBS group and became a group moderator. Ironically, the world of the electronic bulletin board was how I actually began to communicate with people on more than a surface level.
My graduate course and the reading I’m doing for it are making me more thoughtful about my educational/academic career, so there may be more flashbacks like this one from time to time as I strive to understand a little bit more of what was actually going on.
I’m stalled on the Impossible Read at the moment because (I tell myself) I am doing so much more reading for class. In addition to the assigned readings I have sent myself on a research project to investigate a particular student development theory. This is actually for class, as I must choose a theory that’s not covered by the class and do a 20-minute presentation on it in the next month or so. So far I have read one book, have read all but two chapters of another book, and have a third book waiting on the shelf to tackle before I might think that I know enough to pick a theory around which I can write a presentation.
I suspect that the other students are choosing the theory first, then doing the research. But I can’t help myself. I want to be the best informed student with an airtight research set. Do I have two other well-researched papers to write for the class? Why yes, yes I do. Why do you ask?
Knitwise, I’m looking at catalogs that feature ridiculously expensive sweaters and thinking, I could knit my own darn sweater instead of paying $150 for something plain. And I probably already have the yarn! But — the time, the eyesight? Not sure about those. Maybe I should just park myself in good lighting, take a deep breath, and re-start the wrist warmers.
On the positive side, recently I have seen some nice yarn at the local Goodwills and I have resisted the urge to keep it out of other knitters’ hands. Go get it, folks! And show me what you’re making with it!
Chocolate Sheep 