life

Of course couldn't pull of cards this year for the holiday. Although as of incredibly recently (these past quiet weeks) I reinstalled my pegboard vertically in a little corner of the bedroom. Turned a shelf into a little drying rack. Got myself a nice efficient little work station again. It is simply lovely. Our space is so small, and I'm slowly building in little pieces of functionality into it.

I've finally begun to organize the "office"- the bit of space between the door and kitchen we use for a desk and printer. I installed wall shelves like a champ all by myself. Power drill, level, anchors, and didn't even f them up. I'm not done yet, but strange how these things can change a chaotic and awful space into something that helps your soul to lighten again.

And the craft space not only allows me to make cards more efficiently, faster, but also much nicer it seems. It raises the quality by allowing me to do them more smoothly and in larger batches. It's the iteration that brings refinement. So while neither Christmas cards or Hanukkah cards will go out this year, I'm contemplating a New Years card instead.

And of course, then I need to fast-track my work for dear AE, who has a wedding dress but no wedding invitations. I was off my game in all ways these past few weeks, but also I was psyched out that I couldn't match the vision in her head. But then I realized, in the way that I always try to realize, I simply need to step back and reframe my thinking and how I'm approaching a task.

One of the things I love most about the challenge is when you are able to see it not as an antagonist, but as a moment for brain-storming, refocusing, and re-centering. Then seeing the adaptation that turns a challenge not to a hurdle, but an interesting bend in a river. The very thing that makes life so precious.

I see this in making cards, in the projects at work, in social dynamics.

Frankl said by choosing to find a meaning in life we could face the insufferable. He did not mention that it was something valuable in itself, beyond the point of keeping you alive or sane or whatever. But it is. It seems it is more than a life-raft, but perhaps something greater.

My meaning is to apply all the things I have learned to making the world a little more positive instead of a little more negative. This applies to "problems" and to people. I can only do this when I am stable, but it also helps me return to stability. Understanding human pain, I understand it's healing more now too. Every person my path intersects with I try to make a positive contact instead of a negative default. I talk to strangers waiting for their prescriptions at CVS, feeling overwhelmed by their health problems. I talk to the man waiting in the line at Burger King about life and hardship, reflecting back at him the smile that shines in his face when he talks of the satisfaction of seeing his kids happy on Christmas, even when that means no gifts for him. I smile at the woman walking by, intercepting her scowl with something much more pleasant to take away with her.

And all I can tell you is I believe in human good, even if we have to coax it out. Let's be that.

The best example I saw/heard this year of Christmas, my dear secular Christmas, which is not about baby Jesus but simply human warmth and love between people, was on the history channel- a show called Christmas Truce. Wiki tells of multiple Christmas Truces. Where instead of fighting, young men on the front lines instead choose to acknowledge each other's humanity, and spread greetings and warmth. I find this compelling. This is the Christmas I embrace.

So with this and Citalopram I march onward to a new year with the vision of all the beauty I hope to cultivate within it. Namaste Y'alls.