And I forgot

In the middle of busy-ness and concerns, I forgot the blogiversary this year. I started this thing on January 26, 2002. So Sunday the odometer rolled over on the little blog and now it would be old enough to vote, were it a human.

I suppose it's a little surprising I've kept up with it so long, but then again: I've been in the same job for 20 years, lived in the same house for 19. I don't particularly like change, at least not the big upheavaly type of change. Once I find a groove, I like to stay in it.

I will say I miss the days of knitting blogs being a bigger thing. There are still a few out there but a lot of the simply "enthusiast" blogs (as opposed to dyers or pattern-writers or people who make a living from something at least touched on in their blogs) have just gone away. I mean, I understand that: a lot of people started blogs in college/their early 20s, and then they acquired partners and often children and usually other jobs, and knitting either took a backseat or went away all together. I know I don't knit as much as I once did, because I have a lot of other things going on in my life, good and bad. The good: I am more involved at church than I was back in 2002, because that was before our split, and also, now I'm one of the longer-term members so it's assumed I know stuff (I really don't) and people look at me for leadership. And also, things like Bell Choir that are more just fun.

But I also spend more time hanging out online, places like Twitter (I know, I know, but I have friends there and it's an easy way to communicate without really intruding on someone's time: I don't like texting without some purpose because I feel like I'm intruding on someone's life and like they will feel they "have" to respond (and phone calls are even worse) but on Twitter I can throw something out into the general ether and sometimes people will respond and a conversation gets going. And Ravelry, which I mostly use for the Boards feature (though I also look at the pattern sections a lot).

But yeah. A general decline in blogs. Part of that, I'm sure, is due to other options: Facebook, though I think that's somewhat in decline now, at least in some circles (I know people who say they left and never went back because they got tired of infighting from friends/family on there, or tired of glurgy reposts, or tired of the concerns about privacy) and Twitter (and yeah, I hang out there, but it's ephemeral; I see it more as like a conversation than like writing, because even a couple hours later it's hard to re-find a tweet and their search capability is awful).

But also....some people have quit blogging for reasons bad or good (I am trying not to bring up the blog that will never be posted to again, that I used to read daily, because it makes me too sad).

Some people have quit, I suspect, because of work pressures and I do kind of get the feeling in the post 2008-recession times that lots and lots and lots of people are either having to juggle several jobs, or are pushing so hard at their only/main job ("Always Be Closin'") that they have less time for hobbies than they once did. (And I've also recently seen several pushing-back articles, about how people basically get told "you could SELL that" about their hobbies and how the expectation that we monetize our whole darn lives is awful and soul-killing and probably psychologically bad, and yes). But I do get the feeling a lot of people are doing fewer "for fun" things, or more "ephemeral fun" things (like: going out to eat dinner instead of, I don't know, growing a garden) because everyone is tired and pressed for time and kind of looking over their shoulder about "Am I doing enough at work?" and I suppose for some people that's not a question....but it very much is in academia. (I handed in my post-tenure-review packet this week, and while I admit this time, I feel a bit less dread and horror about the whole thing, that's largely because I used up my "dread and horror" stores for the month on the "but what if I have endometrial cancer" worry).

But yes. I know I am knitting and quilting far less than I once did, and it makes me a little sad. I look at all my fabric and all my quilt patterns and think of all the tops I would *like* to make, but then I get home at the end of the day and I have maybe an hour, if I'm lucky, between dinner and grading and other stuff like laundry, and even though I have a sewing room, it seems not worth plugging in the iron and sitting down for that short a time. And often on weekends I am working now. And also with knitting: I mostly do simple stuff because I am often tired and jangled and just want to relax without having to think so hard. (I have mostly been working on the giant crocheted afghan because I have the pattern memorized and I only have to count to four to do it, and even if I lose count, I can look at the stitches I made and figure out where I am). 

The world has changed a lot in 18 years. I have changed in some ways too. I think what I see as changes in the world include a whole "everything comes at you so fast now" thing where the churn-and-burn in some corners of the internet, where people get Milkshake Ducked on regular occasions (and sometimes then rehabilitated, or it turns out the incident that milkshaked them didn't happen, or was different from how it was presented) and how what is seen as "acceptable" in some corners changes so rapidly. (At points I've even seen stuff that make me wonder "wait is my insistence on being a kind person to people and kind of letting God sort it all out, rather than constantly 'calling' people on every personal failing now something that is Bad, Actually?" and that thought just makes me so profoundly tired).

And my own life has changed. I will not recap the tiresome changes in the last year or so. But I will say I feel like I have more responsibilities than I once had, and the stakes for those feels somehow higher. There's more little "administrative" tasks I have to do on a regular basis. I also feel like - and maybe this is a factor of being over 50, I don't know - that I don't have as many exciting dreams of what the future might hold as I once did. Like, my "hopes for the future" have shrunk to "maybe a real bookstore will open up in my town" or "maybe an evening knitting/handquilting group will start up at a time when I could actually go" or "maybe I'll get back my post-tenure-review without too many uncomfortable suggestions of how much more work I need to do."

I think my "bounciness" and resilience has declined. I mean, right now I feel better than I have in a good long time - part of that is the distance from all the Bad Things of last year (even if, in my darker moods, I recognize there are more Bad Things that can happen, and some of them will happen, eventually), part of that is the thing last week that worried me very much is almost certainly absolutely nothing and in fact is "you are physically normal." But I do remember a time - back before the losses of 2019, before the budget cuts of 2016 and the realization that keeping my job is not 100% dependent on how good I am or how hard I work, and that I have less control over things that happen than I thought I did, and even maybe back before the recession of 2008, when it was beginning to feel like maybe there was starting to be a bit of a groundswell of "we want to take back some of our time and stop being like we are living to work, rather than working so we can afford to have a life." It feels to me - rightly or wrongly, and I recognize that part of this could be my own growing pessimism/being battered about a bit by life - that the world seems more precarious, that there's more danger, more cruelty, and that if you try to act in good faith and be honest and kind (as I was raised to be), sometimes you will wind up being taken advantage of. Or you will be the target of bullying and unkindness. And yet....I cannot bring myself to be otherwise than what I am, I cannot harden myself against other people. And so the world sometimes feels like a less welcoming or kind or friendly place to me than it did when I was in my 20s and 30s and even early 40s. And I don't know if the world has changed, if I have changed, or if I am seeing stuff that was always there more clearly now. (And if that last one is the truth? A little ignorance really is bliss)

But anyway. Onward and upward. The weather looks promising for this weekend (no rain or snow predicted) and I'm mostly done prepping the biostats stuff for next week, so I guess I can go to Whitesboro if I want to. Maybe even think about it as the "kickoff to my birthday month"