The simple answer: a journal, an online journal if you will, not entirely private, but a journal nonetheless.
I realized I had lost something, something important, and it took me a little while, and a bit of soul-searching to figure out what. It seems that the internet, online communities, and social media have all moved on, but I have not. I started this blog, or at least its previous iterations, as a way to keep a record for myself, yes one that I shared, but nonetheless a modified personal journal. At first it was about sewing and knitting and eventually my general observations on life. These were things I could have committed to paper, but I have a history of tossing bits of paper, including journals and sewing notebooks. The internet remains here, although I suppose even it is not permanent.
I don't mind people reading what I write; in fact it even makes me happy to hear from readers. But I remain opposed to the idea of marketing, of packaging my blogs to fill a niche, to catering to the reader. I suppose I reject the idea of the curated life, at least the curated life as it reflects outside expectations. I do curate my life; most of us do to some level or another, but I curate my life for my own joy, and increasingly I feel that outside expectations do nothing but hamper that joy.
I suppose posting to Facebook was my first mistake. Initially, I did so at the request of a friend, so she could access the blog easily. But then it became something else. I was never shy about telling people I knew that I blogged; most of the time my friends thought it was something weird, and if they read my blog, they did not, for the most part tell me so. But once I posted to Facebook, more and more people I knew would comment on my "secret" life, and I found myself wanting to please readers, sometimes at the expense of pleasing myself. I was trained to achieve, to please, to rise to meet expectations, and I find I had not quite fully escaped those shackles. As soon as I began to think I "should" write, the joy in writing slipped away.
For now, I am forgoing Facebook and social media links, but I am still tossing my words out into the world. Anyone who wants to find them can of course, but I am feeling no need to make the process easier. Besides, as I have learned, only 10% of my readers find me through Facebook, but that 10% plays an outside role in triggering my own demons, not through any intention of my readers but just through the medium itself.
So, what have I been doing since last I wrote?
I came home from Texas to an overabundance of sorrel. So there has been some cooking, several kinds of sorrel soup, including a Russian Sorrel broth, and the chard and sorrel soup shown above. I have also made, and frozen a large batch of spring spinach and sorrel soup, which doesn't look much different except that it is a darker green.
I have 12 jars of carrot green pesto, and an equal number of jars of canned carrots.
I missed most of the snow pea harvest while I was in Texas but it looked like the squirrels and birds had a feast. I also planted some purple podded peas and they were still producing in late May. I thought they were spent, but we had a cool snap last week and I got another small flush of peas, which I have thoroughly enjoyed both lightly steamed and in salads.
The blueberry bushes suffered from neglect and did not produce much. I just lost my late crop to something, birds or the bear that was wandering down my street a couple of mornings ago, but it does look like I will have a bumper crop of blackberries again this year. The roses that are intermingled with the blackberries are also doing well, even though I fretted that perhaps they had been killed by a harsh winter frost.
I continue to work intermittently in the garden. Nature is ahead of me but I am doing more work than I have been able to in years. Still not as much as my younger self once managed, but I am comparing myself to what I could accomplish 20 years ago, an unfair comparison. I have done more this year than any previous summer since I moved into this house. And I've finally admitted to myself that I did not lose two summers, but three. My first summer here was the summer I broke my nose on my birthday, the summer I found out I was in atrial flutter, and probably had been for some time. I can only accept that now because although my almost-65 year old energy level is not the same as my 45-year old energy level, it is higher than it has been for some time. And if I am driven less than in former years, it is more because I am less inclined to worry about what anyone else thinks.
The other thrilling thing is that I found a roller frame in my stash of needlework supplies and assembled it to work on the next baptismal towel. It is not quite the size I need, and I don't have any cotton webbing so I had to substitute quilting cotton on the sides in order to pull the fabric taut. As you can see, there are still adjustments to be made to the tensioning before I begin work, but I am excited. I have ordered a roll of cotton webbing. I have a box of various kinds of needlepoint and other frames and I think I need to sort them out to figure out what I have and work from there, but that is progress. I am slowly accumulating a set of embroidery materials and tools and am excited to work. No the above is not perfect. Yet it is an improvement over what I have done in the past. My work keeps improving. I tried something new with the last baptismal towel (seen at the top of this post), and I am increasingly excited about this work.
I might wish I had pursued this interest when I was younger, but I did not, and I have made the best decisions I could at any time of my life. I'll never be a master knitter, or embroiderer, gardener, or chef. Truthfully I never cared to. I just wish to pursue what I enjoy for the pure joy of doing so.
In short. Life is simple. Life is good. What more could I ask?
