[...] like to be inspired to do some nontraditional journaling, check out creative blogs Art Slam and Turning*Turning. While I work in words alone, making something visual might be a more effective approach for [...]

However, I do blog and have many of them. Aspects of my life are recorded in all of them, but they are on separate topics at the same time. I suppose if I needed to I could piece together a significant history of my life from reading blogs and websites I have operated.

also, thank you for your honesty about your eating issues.

your job sounds VERY interesting. i didn’t know there WAS such a thing. i am curious to know more. i will continue to read through your blog – i just surfed into it today from gennines art blog (mostly i’m procrastinating working on my recent art quilt, but also i’m trying to bring awareness to my scrap giveaway that i just posted – i linked the giveaway to the art now for autism auction – please considering entering). thanks for your inspiration on art journaling. i’m bookmarking your site.

My plateau has been more subconscious, and not terribly visibly dramatic- a weight gain of twenty pounds, and with it, years of guilt and self-torture for not being able to lose it. I seem to believe that I will only be completely back to completely “well” when I drop back down… I don’t like to be this size.

But I suspect that feeling shitty about myself is serving some sort of psychological purpose. Of course that weight gain coincided with something really stressful and frightening in my life.

I suspect that I will live out the rest of my life not regaining the clearness of mind that I enjoyed after my initial recovery. (I had five really good years after that. Now it’s been about ten years of mental struggle…) I can get really discouraged about it.

Do I journal? sort of. Should I start up another, completely private blogspot that no one knows about and then totally spill my guts? (I like the typing…)

maybe…
maybe not…

Journaling always has given me insights into things I can’t seem to figure out. Somehow writing things down makes it more clear. it gets things unstuck. Perhaps the reason I haven’t been progressing lately is because I haven’t journaled in quite a long time.

I also quilt. Well, I make quilt tops and SOMETIMES they actually get quilted!

The worse I feel, the better my dogs tend to look, at least so far as brushing is concerned. I need to feel pretty good to give either of them a bath, so that’s not as reliable an indicator of my emotional status. But the brushing is. It’s very Zen-like and relaxing to brush a dog who has been raised to enjoy such attention. Both of us enjoy it.

I’m often able to get to sleep after a good brushing session, or at least breathe more deeply.

Re. the quilting: cutting fabric, or sewing strips and then cutting them into smaller units, is satisfying, too. It’s a tangible result at a time (often) when good, tangible results are hard to come by.

If I’m really stuck and can’t even negotiate the stairs down to where the sewing machine lives, I crochet hats to go to (wo)men in chemotherapy who have lost their hair. No danger of sticking myself with a pin or slicing the wrong part of a piece of fabric or even brush-burning doggy ears. Just yarn and more yarn and double crochet, dbl st, dbl st, until it’s time for sl st and a new round…

Life. No one gets out alive. But I’ve always believed that it is our life duty to do as much good for others as we can manage for as long as we’re here.

Ta tvam asi. Namaste.

[...] Original post by turning*turning [...]