* I cancelled the subscription. It was due to renew in November. They won't refund/cancel the crates already paid for so that's one or two I can't use (I don't know if the November crate would be under the renewal or the old payment)
so anyway: when it comes, if it comes, and it's the food, I'll offer it up here, I guess. I don't know. I'm disappointed they wouldn't refund me. But this company has gotten shadier and shadier and the last crate, I should have known as it was just random stuff, not the usual curated collection; I guess they were clearing out their warehouse.
* I still haven't come up with a replacement "nice small thing in the mail" periodically but right now I'm still unhappy about the situation so not in the mood to hunt for solutions.
* Part of it is the whole end-of-an-era feeling; like I said, having these to look forward to got me through some hard times. I dunno, maybe there's a tea subscription crate? Or tea-and? I saw a couple sockyarn ones on cratejoy but it's really more money than I want to sink into something like that.
* I started a new pair of simple worsted-weight fingerless mitts for invigilating. I'm not sure yet that I love them, but they're also a color combination (pink and lavender) none of the women I might give gifts to would like (unless I use them as the AAUW gift, and if someone who hates the colors gets them they can regift them).
* I do want to finish some of the backlog of projects; I pulled out the long-stalled multidirectional diagonal scarf and picked it back up. I don't know whether to work on the thing that seems closest to done or trade things off.
* I'm (probably) taking the weekend off even though there's stuff I could do up at work (evaluating job candidates, writing an exam for week after next, finishing the set of bags) but I'm also kind of worn out - I graded my largest class' worth of exams this afternoon; got home around 5. I do need to do some yardwork; it will be cooler and we've had rain and I really need to weedwhack the edges of the yard because it looks very untidy. (There is SO MUCH life-maintenance. I had no idea when I was a kid/teen how much just WORK you have to do as an adult, work you don't get paid for)
* I finished "Wives and Daughters" last night. It does break off before the last chapter or so; the author died before completing it. I guess she left some notes; an editor of the magazine where it was published in the 1860s or so had written a brief concluding essay about it. I mean, you kind of know how everything would end. And now, I wonder if Elisabeth Gaskell died somewhat suddenly, or if she had been ill and knew she wouldn't complete her novel.
Next up is "Legends and Lattes" which I know is VERY different (a fantasy, apparently a comic one, and the main characters are a same-sex couple). But more and more the "light comic fantasy" or "hopepunk" or "philosophical but not depressing" types of fantasy are appealing - the escape, the idea - especially in the hopepunk books that the world COULD maybe get better, and just.....lightness in general. I find these days the world is often too heavy for me.
I do have a couple pre-ordered books coming next year (I joked on Bluesky that the world better still exist - and I better still exist - then). One of them is a "caper novel with some magic and light romantic themes" ("The Frame-Up" by Gwenda Bond) and the other is more true fantasy but "light funny fantasy" called "The Spellshop" by Sarah Beth Durst. Both of these are books I saw discussed online (in the case of the Spellshop, the author shared a picture of the gorgeous cover and I know you shouldn't judge books by.....but.....it sounds like such a fun story and maybe is the sort of thing I need in my life?
Anyway, yeah, struggling with the whole hope thing these days; it's hard for me not to see the world as having "peaked" and that we're now sliding into a worse time where everyone seems to be crueler and the stuff we need is more expensive and nice things are harder to come by.
And yet
On tumblr, someone posted a short poem they made up of comments different people had made about hope, and set it to the "Dr. Seuss cadence" (Anapestic tetrameter, and I had to look that up. I never learned much beyond iambs and trochees and "blank verse" (that's Shakespeare)
Anyway, the person behind it calls themselves "mumblesplash" on there. I don't know a "realer" name, sorry. But it struck me, so here it is:
"Hope is a weapon
Hope is a skill
Hope is a plant you can care for or kill
Hope is a discipline
Something you choose
Hard to stop looking for
Easy to lose
Hope isn’t something to have or to take
If you can’t find it, it’s something you make
Make it from willpower
Make it from spite
Learn how to weaponize love in a fight
Hope is a shield, and a thing to defend
End in itself, and a means to an end."
And yeah, I might quibble with a few of the lines in there (I am not sure about the idea of weaponizing love) but the idea of making hope.....yeah, that's true, even as I struggle with it. (And spite, yeah, spite is what kept me going through much of 2020 and 2021).
And it being a discipline - how I keep sitting down at the darn piano even though a lot of days it feels like I'm not getting better at it and I will never be good at it. But I still do it.
*
No comments:
Post a Comment