FunkyTimes

So I feel as though I’ve been dragging myself from one thing to another. Drag myself out of bed in the morning, drag myself away from the TV after sipping coffee for about an hour, drag myself back upstairs to get dressed, drag myself into the sewing room to stand and look at my USP's (unfinished sewing projects), heave numerous sighs and re-establish myself on the sofa to waste yet more time watching TV. It’s interesting that I cannot seem to drag myself out for a walk or even as far as the garden to pull a weed or share a drop of water. I am not sure if this depression is “sixty” related, or seasonal, or sheer boredom. I’m hoping to explore this with this post.

I haven’t been totally inactive since my last post. I did finish the ‘spare’ room and it is ready for my son to move into, I did decide to have a TV jack installed in my sewing room which opened a 2 day job. It is a VERY small room and everything is against the walls, so I had to move stuff (lots of stuff) in order for the installer to work. That got my brain working and I decided to graph the room and my essential pieces and see what I could come up with. (The cable installation ended up a nightmare and took 3 days to get a 15 minute job done…good news, they did it for free). So from the graphing I did I was sure that if I moved my sewing table to the back wall, moved the cutting table to the wall opposite from where it was and put the ironing board where the cutting table was I could get more room….how is that possible??? Up I went and started moving stuff around and as it seemed to be working I had a flash of brilliance--if I brought up the old 2-drawer file cabinet I was going to ditch I could use it to set the tv on, put a false top on it to marry up with the false top on the sewing table and could actually double my counter space. So I moved those pieces in and sure enough they worked AND I still had space so I was able to bring back in the two multi-drawer towers I thought I was going to lose, so I have even more storage. Funny how things work…since I’ve been in the room for about 3 or 4 years and thought I had tried every configuration. Apparently not. The bonus is that for the $25 I invested I got a stool the right height, a magnet strip with very cool magnets, and a 4 x 4 felt board mounted on the wall for laying out my quilt blocks. Not bad at all.

I was encouraged enough by the moving success to haul out, start and complete one of my sewing projects. I had decided to make 2 purses to donate to a silent auction. I finished one and am struggling with the second one (I don’t know why it won’t go together right) so I have left it limp and ragged on the ironing board for another day.

That little failure or semi-failure got me feeling sorry for myself yet again. I feel almost desperate to find something useful to do with my time. I have even seriously considered going back to work part-time but with a 4 month winter holiday planned and my pension just starting it doesn’t make much sense. I’m thinking of looking into volunteer work…maybe I can get something officey to do where they wouldn’t mind if I took 4 months off. I also went down to our local senior’s center to see what classes are starting up (tis the season after all). There are several quilting class and about 4 different types of painting. Nice thoughts but I’m already up to my eyeballs in quilt projects and my previous attempts at watercolor and acrylic have indicated that I need some drawing lessons for sure. I did sign up for a one-day basket weaving class so am looking forward to that.

It all makes me ‘wish’ that I had a skill I could offer to teach others. I noticed that a lady I used to work with is now doing a couple of ‘demo-classes’ that include cookie baking with kids at one of our local grocery stores. I am envious that she has this to plan, organize and look forward to. My ideal would be to have enough money to buy a building where I could live upstairs and have a quilt-shop-drop-in-coffee place below. I wouldn’t want to have to earn my rent from the shop so I’d need to be financially independent. Know where I can buy a winning lottery ticket?

I think that part of my problem is from not setting goals. I used to sit down every December and draw up a new budget sheet, write out a “List of Accomplishments for XXXX (year)” and make a list of “Goals for XXXX (year)”. It used to be things like “visit my folks 4 times this year”, “pay cash for summer holiday” “save $xxx by December 31st”. I used to have about 10-20 things on my Goals list and usually way more than that on my Accomplishment list. Accomplishment is very important to me and I think it is the ruler against which I measure the rest of my life. Whether that accomplishment is getting the dusting done or helping my daughter out or phoning a friend…I really need to accomplish something everyday for that day to be worthwhile. Because I haven’t set any goals for this year (or last year for that matter) I feel very adrift, kind of meandering from day to day with no purpose and no destination. (I believe I have had an AH HA moment here, and will commit to writing myself some goals).

With that said I feel as if I have accomplished the purpose of this particular post. I have discovered an answer of sorts and am willing to cling to it as if it were a life raft. Thanks for listening.