Still feeling emotionally fragile, like it would be very very easy for me to start weeping in response to any setback, any unkind word, any news of human depravity in the world (and I set the bar for what I consider "depravity" pretty low these days).

Maybe what I need to do to soothe myself is follow Anne's lead and start a new project.

New projects always make me happy. There's the new and different yarn to work with, the new color or new pattern. There's the fantasizing about what the project will look like when it's done, how it will go so perfectly with X that I already have in my wardrobe. There's the getting up and running to my closet with the yarn to hold it up against various dresses and tops to see how well it matches. There's the new stitch pattern to find the rhythm of.

I have the wool wound off for the Song of Hiawatha shawl and have been contemplating starting it for a while. I also have the Grandpa's Cardigan with some wine-colored Aurucania Nature Wool for it - and I have part of that wound off. There's also the sportweight alpaca I bought last year for the Cul-de-Sac vest. I do also have yarn in-stash for yet another SitCom Chic, but I think what I want is something brand new - a pattern I've never worked before, ideally a yarn I've not used yet, something that's a new challenge to occupy my mind and break me out of the bad circle of thought I've let myself get into.

What I really need is to retreat - to withdraw for a couple of days and not interact with people, or at least not interact with people in "meatspace" (as some internet-philes so charmingly call Real Life).

I think I've said before that I'm an INFJ personality type. Which means that dealing with people too much drains me, and yet I have this delusion of wanting to save the whole world. The cognitive dissonance of being an INFJ is hard to handle at times. I also tend to teeter (I suppose it's the combat between the N, the F, and the J) between saying "people suck; the human race is such a monumental mistake, evolution should just start over again with the spiders or the voles or something being the intelligent beings on earth, they'd mess things up less than we have" and "people are so wonderful, the kindnesses they do in light of all the bad in the world touches me so."

It's strange, you know. On a meta-level I recognize how jangled my nerves are and how bad I am feeling, and yet that doesn't stop tears from springing spontaneously to my eyes. I know why I feel bad but it's hard for me to stop it.

I think the Song of Hiawatha shawl is what I want. Something in nice white wool, with complex lace patterns that Take Thought, something beautiful, something related to the idealized sort of literary world that I wish I could live in, where people tend to be more noble than otherwise.