life, death, and the in between.

I just want to keep posting today, I guess I am feeling particularly bloggy!

So far Monday has gone by rather fast, thank goodness. (That’s obvious, since this is my third post today and work isn’t even over yet. Then again, work is light for some reason and my boss just left early for the day. Must be nice!)

I have to get some groceries after work today–I have been eating oatmeal like a fiend every morning. I wonder if my cholesterol has gone down any. I had planned on going to SnB tonight, but unfortunately I am going to play hooky once again. (Tasha, don’t kill me! ) I am still SO nervous about my interview tomorrow morning, so I’m going to try to go to bed early tonight, for once. (Early = not 11 PM or later on a weeknight.)

When I’m not obsessing over my forthcoming interview, I’m fighting the urge to cast on something new. Lately, either out of laziness or…um…yeah I’m just lazy, I haven’t been dragging out my swift and ball winder. I’ve just been winding my yarn by hand. (Except the laceweight. That, I refuse to wind by hand. Luckily, JaggerSpun Zephyr from Sarah’s Yarns comes pre-wound.) I think it started with my Malabrigo–it’s just so buttery soft that I didn’t want to put it through the winder and potentially get it all fuzzed up in the process. And last night, I wound my skein of L&V Dancing With the Yarns in Rhumba. I loooove the colors, but I have no clue what to knit with it. I do know that I want to do some type of lacy scarf, but I need to choose a pattern.

And then there’s the problem of continually rearranging my Ravelry queue. Sometimes I go through it and think, “why did I queue that in the first place” and then I remove it. And yesterday after doing this, I promptly added a bunch more projects to the queue. Then again, if I never bought new yarn between now and 6 months from now, I could probably burn through my stash pretty well, don’t you think?

(I’m well aware that this post is rambly and all stream-of-consciousness but I had too much caffeine today and I am all worked up about the interview tomorrow! Have I mentioned that??)

oh, something else I’ve been doing lately? Reading. Yes, I have resurrected that hobby from under all those piles of yarn that have been taking up my time the past few years. I read Ghost Hunting and loved it, naturally. Then I found out that Nicholas Sparks just released a new book, The Choice, which I got for $13 at Barnes & Noble, thanks to their 40% off for members and an additional 15% off coupon. I <3 B&N.

Now, here’s the thing. I know Nicholas Sparks writes these chick books and they’re semi-cheesy sometimes, but I’ve been reading his books for years and I’m definitely a fan. (But still, I’m not as fond of some of his books. Nights in Rodanthe, um, sucked, if you ask me, lol. And I don’t normally say that about books. And I’m even a fan of his! But if you ever read The Bridges of Madison County, don’t bother reading Nights in Rodanthe, basically.)

I think something happens often with writers, they have this initial spark when they write their first couple novels, then it’s as if something fizzles and the next couple books are just ok. It was like that for me when I read The Notebook, Message in a Bottle, and A Walk to Remember. I’ve read nearly all his other books, but those three stand out for me.

And funnily enough, even though I went through a drought of reading his books, I continued to buy them as they were released–I have The Wedding, True Believer, At First Sight, and Dear John, none of which I have read. Yet. Since finishing The Choice in 3 days (!), I picked up True Believer and I’ll likely mow through the rest of them since I’m on a roll.

The Choice, btw, was rather interesting. No spoilers, but I will say that he (Sparks) threw a curve ball in the story about 3/4 of the way through that I really wasn’t expecting. And while I thought the ending was a little…”eh,” the book still made me cry. And something that affects me that much gets at LEAST 4 stars.

I’ve missed reading so much. That was basically all I did before I took up knitting, and now it’s interesting trying to do both. (Not simultaneously, though apparently there are some multi-tasking talented people out there who can read and knit at the same time. I have never been able to accomplish this. The minute I drop a stitch, either the knitting or the book is going to go flying across the room and I can’t be held responsible for anyone injured or offended in the process.)

Before I moved back to Virginia, my yarn stash hadn’t quite reached the proportions of my book stash. Thankfully, I broke ties with all the books I knew I’d never read, as I was merely collecting them and they were quite literally collecting dust. I ended up donating boxes upon boxes to The Salvation Army in New Mexico. It was a weight lifted (literally), and now my library is much more manageable as well as realistic. I *can* read all my books in my lifetime now, as opposed to before, which never would have happened.

There are some books in my library (and when I use that word, I mean merely my “meager shelf and stacks piled by my bed”) that I’ve always meant to read, like the biographies on Edgar Allan Poe and Sylvia Plath. And then there is my first Stephen King book, which I had a heck of a time choosing because he writes so many books and it was challenging trying to choose just one.

But then there are books which are dear to me, which are on my shelf now because I brought them with me across the country, which I couldn’t part with no matter how limited my space was. These are the ones that bring me comfort in some way, the ones where all I need to do is glance at the cover or the spine of the book and instantly I think of the characters, people only on paper and in my mind but who seem, and feel, so real to me. (And not just the Outlander series. I do read other books. )

Where am I going with this? I guess I mean to say that all this knitting and reading and pondering my next knit and planning my next read and wondering about tomorrow’s interview have all got me thinking very deeply about my future. I don’t want to say that everything depends on this possible second job, because if for some reason I end up not getting it, I would be crushed. I will say, though, that just the sheer possibility of a better life for myself and my beloved dogs makes me feel, for the first time in nearly 7 months, hopeful. And hope is a good thing.

I’ve had a post saved here that I haven’t yet published because I wasn’t sure I wanted to put all my feelings out there in such an exposed way. It’s still sitting there, in case I change my mind. But I think the act of getting it out, of putting down one’s thoughts, even if no other human ever sees them–that, in some way, is powerful. And that is something else I have missed along the way: putting down my thoughts, even if only I read them, even if I never go back and re-read them. But just getting it out of my mixed-up brain is good for me.

I’ve mentioned many times that The Shawshank Redemption is my favorite movie ever, hands down. There is a line from that film that I have always loved and held as a motto, a mantra, a dry twig of hope in the past year, while I’ve gone through some of the roughest stuff I may ever go through:

Get busy living, or get busy dying.

That says it all for me. I can’t tell you how many days and nights I’ve sat and emptied my brain of all else, only to sit and wonder: what am I doing here? Not geographically, or every day when I get up in the morning and go to work–really, what am I doing with my life?

I still don’t know.

But I do know that I need to make another choice. Everyone’s alive, but not everyone is living. And we’ll all die someday, but we don’t have to resign ourselves to being miserable while we’re still around.

I’m not saying that you should look on the bright side, because sometimes there really is none. But I will say that you can go through all the crap and all the heartbreak and all the spilling out of your guts and somehow, though beaten to a pulp and looking like hell, you can come out on the other side. And I guess that’s worth it.

I realize that this post still makes no sense. I’ve started out babbling about knitting and books and somehow have ended up pondering the meaning of life. My brain just works that way.