Eleven years on

Tomorrow (the 26th) will be the eleventh anniversary of my starting this little thing. (Interestingly: it was also a Saturday.)

Eleven years. I guess that's a long time, though I know people who have been blogging longer than that.

I also remember a lot of blogs that started up - it seems that 2002/2003 was a big time for knitblogs - but then were either closed down or abandoned, either because the person got too busy or lost interest or their life changed too much. Or something. I don't quite know why *I've* kept up with it, other than maybe sheer stubbornness and needing an outlet for my logorrhea.

I guess my life, at least in terms of what I do, hasn't changed all that much in 11 years: I still work at the same job. I still have the same "family status" (unmarried, no children). I still do pretty much the same things I did then, with the one big addition of the piano.

A lot of things have changed AROUND me: some good, some bad.

The good - acquiring a niece, several new colleagues coming on, my town getting a quilt shop (that now sells yarn too), the development of Ravelry and its sheer explosion of knitting/crocheting/spinning/weaving related information, my gaining tenure and promotion and then the second promotion, my having published some articles (but not as many as what I would have liked), learning to play the piano with more success than I thought I would have given my prior experiments in learning music.

The not-so-good - the church split, the fact that we've been through three ministers (not counting the interims, even) since then, concerns about the finances of the university where I teach, concerns about the future of education in general (I really, really do not want to wind up as an online "content provider" for some version of University of Phoenix, but lots of people seem to think that's the future of higher education, except for the very elite schools - and I know I am not cut out to teach and research at a very elite school). Health concerns of my own and within my family.

I don't really have anything very deep to say about the 11th anniversary of this little thing. Perhaps the fact that my life has been very stable in many years over the past 11 years is a contributing factor to the blog's survival.

It's funny. I don't know whether to be happy over the relative stability of my life - nothing too big goes wrong, and the things that do go wrong generally turn out not to be as big as I thought they were at first - or to wonder if I'm maybe a bit, I don't know, lacking in ambition to not have filed at least one book proposal or applied for jobs elsewhere or....I don't know, or other stuff that normal people seem to do.

I suppose a big part of my life, especially in my younger years did center on my obsession over "what do normal people do, and what am I doing that is different than that, and what do I need to do to become normal?" And I guess I still worry about that, maybe more than I should: by some people's standards, I will never be "normal," and by other people's standards, I'm so normal I'm boring. (My life would make a particularly stultifying reality show: I strive to avoid drama, I spend large stretches of time in fairly quiet pursuits).

Though maybe the answer is: your life is normal for you. The fact that my sole interactions with Law Enforcement have been waving "hi" to the police officer who lives next door to me, and having the police chaplain as a friend, is probably a good sign that my "normal" is a good "normal" for me.

What would I like for the coming year? Well, I'd like more free time to complete more projects, especially to do more handquilting and get a few of the tops I have put aside for that done. And to get an article published, and start a new research project and have it show promise. And maybe actually design something "real," that is more than just plugging a stitch pattern into an existing 64 stitch sock. I'd also like more "external validation" of my work (especially my work-work, like my teaching and my research), but I don't anticipate that.

So: on to year 12. I hope my blog does not become a bratty "tween."