Tag: mental health

Why Not Fall Cleaning?

It’s that time of the year when I come alive the most, and that means I prepare like its a new year, before the frozen embrace of winter sets us in place. I feel a flurry of energy to take stock of my yarn and fabric, go through my wardrobe to declutter, up cycle, and repair. I organize, I dream, I plan home improvement projects for those slow, hunker down days. I don’t feel this way at all in the Spring, I feel worn down by the winter icy, and dry air. I feel the weight of the garden, on my shoulders, and the desire to be outside again and sketch on the porch. The last thing I want to do is re-organize my house and clean. So is it the cadence of the four seasons that brings this rhythm of preparation to fall? Is is our fixation on the academic calendar? I’m not sure. It has been a time tested fixture of human culture. Forever, we have been preparing for winter, harvesting, hunting, and making.

So why, is it called Spring Cleaning? Surely Fall Cleaning would make more sense. I found that it is an ancient and modern phenomenon. The earliest mentions of a “spring cleaning tradition” are found in two west Asian cultures – Persian and ancient Israel. Iranian culture celebrates Persian New Year, Nowruz, on the first day of Spring. To recognize the new year, Iranians prepare by “shaking the house” a thorough clean, or “redd up” as my Western Pennsylvania culture would say. This makes a ton of sense to me. Honestly, I wish our modern New Year wasn’t in January, for my climate dictates the New Year kicks off during the coldest month! Not a time to do anything really other than waiting for the snow storms and negative Fahrenheit temps to pass. It makes for quite a boring holiday. The latter should have been obvious to me, growing up in the church, but I did not connect the two that Passover preparation could be the origin. During Passover, all things made with leavening or fermentation were removed to remember the Israelite flight from Egypt.

For a more modern origin, coal based heating systems would prompt a cleaning ritual in North America, to open up the windows and clear the soot. Honestly, quite a lame origin story, but important. I think a house down the road is burning coal in an burner, and I absolutely despise the stench of it. The smoke is thick and dark, permeating the air in the cold pockets of January’s bitter wind.

My fall cleaning, I’d say has a lot more in common with Nowruz than Passover or cleaning away soot. I love the description of shaking the house, it reminds me of how my Papa would describe my Grandma’s penchant for order, “She’s mean on clean.” As a child, I had no appreciation of her passion for cleaning, now as adult with my own spaces to keep tidy, a good straight up of the house brings me joy. I’ve been tackling the ever-present chaos of my craft room. It began with a sort through of my inventory, organizing it all into banker boxes and a new drawer set from Amazon to keep the fabric folded and yarn skeins arranged by fiber and weight. I can actually find what I need, when I need it, for the first time in my sewing and knitting life! Who knew a few boxes could be life changing? Organizing my stuff the way my mind processes it, well it has cut down on distractions. My easily distracted Neurodivergent brain used to find everything in my tornado of a closet, but the project I was looking for. It made everything take longer than normal, a simple search, an odyssey of investigation and forgetfulness. I couldn’t take it anymore.

I rode this high into my closet, going through it all and organizing more, t-shirts by color family, mixing up my storage solutions from hangers, to zipper bins, to planning shelves to make there be a flow. Putting clothes away can turn into a series of doom piles, because the system was badly designed by me. I needed a way to keep the organization going, while I sorted and folded my clothes, yet again a bad plan led to me sorting through a random drawer for the third time that month, instead of putting the rest of the laundry away. It was a waste of time, leaving me frustrated once again at my squirrel brain. A flow to getting dressed, and a choreographed dance of freshly laundered clothes waltzing into their places once again. But why stop there? Less to organize would be ideal. Thus began a lovely fall purge of clothing into piles – donate, up cycle, repair, and trash/scraps. All the clothes, shoes too! I feel so empowered. I have struggled to part with anything since experiencing grief and trauma in the 2020’s, and it has been embarrassing. I will live with too much stuff, wanting to re-home it, yet being unable to part with it, in some guilt that I don’t understand. I think the burden of my mind is fading, with healthy clarity returning to my heart. I’m not saying goodbye, over and over again, I am being a good steward of things, and sometimes that means you have to let things go. Even my handmade items that may not serve me, but could make someone else happy.

With a clearer mind, I feel inspired to create. This comes ever fall, with a flurry of ideas for new sweaters, accessories, and clothing. This year is a special one as I have been making pants, from scratch and from up-cycled materials. I will be fine tuning my cold weather accessories too, with plans to make excellent hats, mittens, and socks. I’d also like to make a bag or two. My sweater plans are more focused this year. I understand how to make the thing now, so how can I make them better? I guess I shook the house of my creativity too, in this clean.

Do you feel motivated in fall to get things done? Are you a fall cleaner or a traditional spring cleaner?

A Sea Of Shifting Sand

The more I feel like I should suppress my feelings about something, the more I feel it pressing upon my heart to be bold and talk about it. Can you relate?

I feel like my world has been swirling around me since 2024. Change. Good or bad, I never feel prepared. Leveling up in life, it is rewarding yet sometimes it is more akin to biking up hill and shifting gears downward for the tough pedaling ahead. And I wonder if there are more people feeling this way?

My early thirties have been incredibly rewarding – buying a house, adopting a rabbit, building a garden, successfully sewing pants, etc. But they have also been a sea of shifting sand globally, professionally, and personally.

We all know the public, political bad – the orange fool that has put us all on blast for 2 years. The price of everything, including yarn & fabric has challenged my professional goals because it is so expensive. It zapped my creativity and threw me off my game. I mean, how can I feel inspired to create when neighbors are being kidnapped and put into concentration camps, and our tax dollars are going to fund a war and a genocide. It’s dark. Like where is the joy when that is happening and your “representatives” are trying to silence your right to vote?

I basically took a year off from sewing to regroup, picking up my thimble again this August. I threw my focus into yarn crafts – knitting and crochet, pondering what my plan is going to be to fight for what is right. It’s been humbling to understand that I can help and also this whole situation is systemic, and will be far more difficult to get to the bottom of then I realized. But game on.

AI and the poor economy has been discouraging to my professional goals of becoming a pattern designer. I would like to be a full time, fiber artist, that is bringing in money. But AI has been a one two punch of stealing work and stealing engagement of artists everywhere. It has made creativity feel hopeless, and sharing work online, like I am contributing to a malevolent overlord.

AI and data centers are like a curse dropped into our lives, disrupting what worked and what gave us joy. Now, we have to fight for our water, environment, and creative expression. I know we humans will win this one. I fully believe AI is a fad that will cause a bunch of damage and then collapse – like mining and steel, it is just going to be messy in the present and future. 

What I wasn’t prepared for was the personal complexities of marriage, healing from childhood trauma together, and the doom spiral of parents having health issues and also toxic parents dropping in to rock your world. I have felt some days like nothing feels familiar. Some days, this healing journey that Kyle and I are together has feel like a canyon, spreading between us, and we’ll never rejoin on the same road again. It has been so weird.

Why doesn’t anyone prepare you for how hard marriage is? Or how outside forces and generational cycles can seriously fight the strong bond you have with your spouse. I feel like he and I have been in the trenches on one of these outside problems for a decade now, and I just want us to be able to climb out of this together and walk home hand in hand, but people are complicated and so for now, we keep holding on together and waiting for the hard work to be over.

I have never tried so hard across so many different relationships, and tasks (gardening, house responsibilities, social media marketing) to grow and succeed just for things to unravel over and over again. I have felt like I am on a boat that cartoonishly keeps springing leaks, and I am out of limbs and props, to stop the leaks. Some days I wish the cartoon rapids would just appear already so I can sail over the waterfall and smash the boat to bits, because my best efforts feel so futile. I get burnt out and want a change. Because perseverance is exhausting. Choosing to be hopeful and keep going can feel like a cruel joke.

What has shaken me to the core though, and I’m nervous to talk about, is the way the church doesn’t feel like the church to me. My churching friends have become far too comfortable with Christian Nationalism and it is freaking me out. The blind eye to suffering, and the hyper fixation on “sins” that are not sins. I have always found it baffling that the concept of a person in the church getting a divorce, or seeing Catholic believers as “real” Christians is controversial to some people. It’s those kind of opinions that get canonized by the group, that are so destructive.

That’s not even dipping our toes into the sexism, purity culture, and racism that has been alive for centuries. Seeing how normal this is, has been infuriating to me. It has made me feel like I don’t know where I belong anymore. And to be honest, has awoken real life pain of never feeling good enough to be a “good Christian” to some because my parents divorced.

To be clear, I 100% believe in God and that God is good, and that it is the church, the humans, that are taking things to a bad place. I’d like to elaborate more on these reflections in another post, because I don’t think I’m alone in feeling like I am at risk of being sucked into the corruption in these normally “safe” spaces.

It’s not what I thought the church and my christian friends would become. The corruption is running rampant here, and I hate it. But this is not the first, and won’t be the last, because constant sanctification is needed to continually keep our focus on what is important – loving others as God loves us.

I have a ton of stuff to work through, and I am so far from perfect. I just want to open up about things I have been too afraid to open up about because of the highly controlling religious school settings I have found myself in as a kid, and no I did not go to Catholic school, I went to very Calvinist leaning private schools.

So we’ll see if I am brave enough to keep unpacking. I think we all just need to air this stuff out to move forward as the body of Christ in a healthier place, that is not wrapped in a fake cloak of hidden sin and cyclical shame of those who want to talk about the sin being tolerated, because the church in America is fine with teaming up with the political machine and money chasing.

This was a rambling one, but if you stuck through, I appreciate you.

Tyra Banks, Gap Happy Stripe, and Project Runway 22

This post is a little bit of a mash up, I guess the connecting thread is Zac Posen, or maturity? I’m not sure. I’ve been mulling over two topics that have been in my head this week. The first is the premiere of Project Runway Season 22, the second, being a knitting “controversy” that I believe is not a controversy at all. So, maybe, the connection is drama fatigue?

The Television Evolution from the 1990’s to the 2020’s

Social media is bad for us, we can agree on that. It compresses nuance, and that is exactly what is happening here. But, in the case of television and the fashion industry, it seems to be brain chemistry altering, to borrow an internet term, and the effects are getting strange. This is far from a comprehensive history, just a quick snippet for context.

Television has gone through several iterations in my lifetime – from the rise of cable, to the golden age of reality TV in the 2000’s, to streaming. In 2005, YouTube transformed who could occupy our attention, shortly following in 2007, the Iphone brought a new screen to our lives. In 2020, Tik Tok became the supreme ruler of culture, with the short-form content revolution. Now, in 2026, streaming platforms of shows and film, are self aware that they are the second or third screen vying for our goldfish-like attention spans. This is bad for business. What are networks supposed to do? I’d say they are letting this short form content culture lead.

Enter Project Runway Season 21 and its new, Tik Tok and YouTube editing style with quick cuts and comedy edits, that are self-aware to a level, that was a bit jarring to me. It was like internet culture was uploaded to an established show of 21 years, in order to modernize it. It did just that, it laid its cards on the table of what producers think a successful television show must have in the mid-2020’s – drama and internet-personas instead of contestants, in my opinion. It’s only gotten worse with the announcement of Season 22.

Why is it so loud here?

It’s noisy. I feel like everything about the show is shouting at me. I tried watching the first episode, and quit after the intro. Instead of letting the viewer sit back and engage with the show, the show demands shock, shade, and a level of seriousness that is simply undermined by how the contestants, presenters, and judges act. They are caricatures of humans. Like Zoolander or The Devil Wears Prada, it’s not an accurate representation of human behavior. The drama has been dialed up to a point of puppetry and theater, which would be fun if it was for say, in the pursuit of comedy like RuPaul’s Drag Race, which I am a fan of. This version of Project Runway is not about the clothing or the craft of sewing. It is for the purpose of creating internet buzz and translating that into streaming numbers. It feels so trite to say that. Project Runway is a business, what I miss is the illusion of the storytelling.

Tim Gunn, Zac Posen, Michael Kors, and Nina Garcia brought an industry seriousness to the show that provided context. With the elimination of all but Nina Garcia, and the death knell of losing the spot to show at NYFW, the legitimacy of the show is in shredded. What is all for? Internet fame. Even the challenges were different last year, with sponsorship themes shoe horned into a semblance of “design criteria” and it felt off. For example, the PNC “brilliantly boring” challenge to use boring fabric. There was the Eczema awareness challenge, that should have gone deeper, but instead gave us a concept and then quickly shooed it off screen.

In contrast, I have gained greater appreciation for Drag Race and its the commitment to staying on topic.The causes presented on the show seem genuine and it is refreshing! Like it is all in alignment with worldview.

Lack of Integrity in the Fashion Industry

I think this is because to have a clear worldview in the fashion industry right now, it has to be political, and they don’t want to do that at Disney, and so the political stances are muddled for the sake of saying nothing. Which is a political stance, indifference is infuriating with the amount of clout the show claims to have. This show is fashion “influencing” but make it a reality show.

The worst part of this muddled stance is the inclusion of Tyra Banks. The Netflix documentary from this winter makes sense now, it was a PR project to rebuild Tyra’s image. I grew up with America’s Next Top Model, created by Tyra Banks. I watched ANTM long before Project Runway, and it was a sh*tshow.

She let the cameras roll in Season 2, when a dangerously inebriated contestant, Shandy, experienced SA, and then Tyra had the gall to keep her from the hospital and police, to keep filming. She framed Shandy as an example of cheating, and publicly shamed her for a decade. She pressured contestants, Joanie and Danielle to undergo dangerous dental procedures. Tyra created photoshoots promoting blackface.

She fat shamed and encouraged ED on the show, ignoring the dangers of ED, all while shaming contestants who couldn’t “hide it” well enough. This is just a short list of the problematic behaviors on the ANTM show, a show that preyed on young women of color, and then made a mockery of them, reinforcing racism again and again for profit. I have no interest in watching a show that Tyra Banks is a part of, when she danced around an apologize in her documentary and, in my opinion, did not take any responsibility. Just have integrity, it’s all I ask for. Apologize. Truly make amends and rebuild your reputation through real change. This path is not fooling anyone.

Connecting the Two

Okay, so how are my two topics connected? Well first off, I wish they had brought a quality judge back like Zac Posen, but secondly, I think as much as people are not up in arms enough about Tyra coming back to television, I think the internet is always trying to drum up knitting controversies, that are not that serious.

I was definitely dragged into caring about The Game of Wool, by my corner of the internet, and proceeded to make a bingo card, as my farewell, once I realized I didn’t give a hoot even if this show was a let down. The most recent “controversy” I’ve seen is the Gap Happy Stripe collection for Summer 2026, promoted by the CCO, Zac Posen. The collection is not a knitwear focused throwback, instead it utilizes technology to make something “knitwear” centered. The image of the original knit has been printed on a mesh collection, that I believe has a decently high polyester content, because mesh.

As a fiber artist, if I want a happy stripe inspired piece, I’m just going to recreate it. Done. I don’t need to feel slighted by Gap, or be frustrated that they are not centering knitters with “fake knitwear” as I have seen touted on the internet. Gap is a fast fashion company, the knitwear would be machine knit, and the workers are not being compensated fairly. It’s the fashion industry, its problematic. They make poor choices and they create a ton of pollution. They also favor tech “innovations” so this is not radical, it seems inline with Project Runway to be honest.

I don’t think Zac Posen should “canceled” for this or for us to spam Gap, with anger that knitters have been slighted again. I don’t buy store bought knit anymore. I certainly don’t buy store bought crochet, because its either fake or created with slave labor. I try to buy thoughtfully, make what I can, mend, up cycle, and treat clothing as a permanent object. I think that is the best we can do right now. The problems with the fashion industry are not contained to Gap. It’s world wide. I have no reason to buy a mesh printed garment, so its a moot point for me. Protect your peace, the world is incredibly messy right now, this is a drop in the bucket.

Do you remember the Gap Happy Stripe collection? I don’t. I remember colorful knitwear from the early 2000’s and wearing one from Old Navy or Aeropostale. I’m getting tired of the internet shouting. I’m getting tired of endless knitting drama. I’m quite tired of dumb reboots of shows I liked. Whew, I think it I did it! Thank you, reader, hanging in with me on this random post. I hope you have a wonderful weekend. ❤

Learning To Walk Away From Arguments

What is one way you have grown this year?

When someone is attacking your character, threatening pillars of security like your house, your cars, your bank account, for their own revenge, and is inciting derision in your relationship, how do you stay calm? I’ve been wrestling in these thoughts for the last month as a very unexpected thing happened that threw us for a major loop. I’ve been slow to write for this reason, because I felt so angry and bitter. All is good now though, in spite of the stress and the anger at the perpetrator of this stupid drama, but it begs the question, what does one do with these emotions?

When someone is attacking me, it’s a real struggle not to fight back and defend myself, or respond from a place of past pain and fire back with more gusto than the other person in an attempt to shut the argument down. But does that actually work? A younger me thought it did, but then younger me got the butt kicking of a lifetime by my uncle, who took a declaration of frustration at him and him alone, and manipulated it into a full on family fracture to hurt someone I love very much, my mom.

Lesson number two came from another family member, on a different side of my family, who doesn’t stop arguing. It doesn’t matter what the situation is, this person won’t stop nagging, or pushing their agenda. They refuse to take responsibility for their choices. They are the final boss of arguing, and it has taught me that fighting with this person in any way is futile. It doesn’t matter how wrong they are, they will not concede and so arguing, although it may feel good in the moment, for the temporary release of the emotional pressure valve, is dumb. There is nothing fruitful in addressing the problem with them, because they are denial of what the problem is really about. It’s terrible.

This has a paradoxical shift in my mind. Addressing the problem and dealing with it, is what I believed the healthy purpose of arguing was based in, but life is not that simple or noble. People are far more complicated and broken for that simple notion to be true. Learning to not engage, and walk away, even when someone is hurting you with their words, is the only way through sometimes. And it is incredibly difficult to master. It’s something you usually don’t learn until you are faced with impossible people. In the moment, you feel like the weight of their words outweighs what you know to be true. It feels like giving into manipulation, but it is not about surrendering at all. It is about preserving what is left of the relationship and moving on.

It is the art of learning not to argue. In both examples, my uncle and this other family member, created a stressful environment for me that left one option left. I have to walk away and not defend myself. I have to leave the argument behind. It is not weakness but instead a firm boundary rooted in the promise of a better tomorrow. It is taking the space to breathe and realize this relationship meant more to you than it did to them, and letting them go to fester in their own creation of chaos. You want better for them, but you can’t change them, or control them.

I have not mastered this, not even close. And to be fair, I have had many one sided arguments in my head. Their has been tears and lots of ranting. But not trying to explain myself or defend myself has helped me understand that their minds are already made up, and peaceful co-existence not being possible, is a them problem. I can’t want it more than them, I just have to let that part of our relationship evaporate into the sunshine. I have to focus on protecting my mental health by releasing the stress and hurt in healthy ways, like laughing, exercise, and quality time with family and friends that value the relationship with you, and want the best for you.

In time, walking away from arguments will get easier, I hope. This has been one of the most difficult lessons I have learned, in life. With both of these people, being members of the church, it has been a rough one for my faith. There is such hypocrisy in these relationships, and they both claim the high ground.

Leaving these relationships unsettled and broken feels like a failure, as we are supposed to live in harmony with each other, including other believers. Why doesn’t this bother them, like it bothers me? It makes me feel like a bad Christian. But that is probably another argument I need to just walk away from too.

Do you ever feel this way? Have you mastered the art of walking away from arguments? What helped you develop this skill?

I’m Going to Miss Watching Colbert

I was pretty late to the Late Show party, becoming a fan after it was canceled by CBS, for ‘purely financial reasons.’ What a shame that is! I think what we need more of is laughter. Pure, intelligent comedy for the sake of the joke. Not for the algorithm, or to bow down at the altar of tech bros, or the gold Nebuchadnezzar statue of Trump. But to instead frustrate the heck out of these life-draining entities with comedy.

In both my personal life and the greater world around me, the stress level is high. Morale is low. I think we’re all feeling tired by the burden of man doing what is right in his own eyes. But wait, there’s more! Now, the so-called “Christians” are whoring themselves out again, like the Israelites did in the Old Testament, raising up idols for their own gain and neglecting the covenant God made with them. It’s infuriating to be an adult and realize that this story is not a Bible story from the past, but a living example that continues to evolve with the generations, in repetitive cycles of taking God’s name in vain. Being the absolute worst representatives of God’s image, and claiming their actions are blessed by God.

As a kid, I naively thought this was what people from the past did, not us. In our “Christian” nation. I feel so dumb remembering how duped I was by the authority figures around me. As I got older, like we all do, we begin to see the signs of hypocrisy and corruption around us. Nowhere was it more apparent than in the Christian bubbles and institutions I interacted with. I remember my parents and grandparents warning me that the deepest cut would be in these circles. That sinful actions would feel more harmful in these environments, because we expect the believers around us to play by the rules, but we don’t. We treat each other just as badly, and sometimes worse, than the non-believers around us.

Politically, the age of MAGA and the culture wars of the last decade have exacerbated the tension in this dance of Christians being terrible representatives for the gospel, but wonderful representatives for their political parties, and the sin patterns being held onto, instead of being transformed by the sanctification process.

What I have the most irony, as I reflect right now as I write this, is that for my whole life, I have heard that the problem with America is that the church doesn’t preach sin anymore. This is usually targeted at things like unmarried couples living together, promiscuity, homosexuality, and gender expression. But I realize that, yeah, this is one of the problems with America, but not for any of the reasons listed above; instead, racism, bigotry, political idolatry, Nationalism, greed, capitalsim, extraction of the global south, ICE, Fascism, and more recently, worship of Trump, are some of the sins that are not preached about in the majority churches – and these sinful behaviors are running rampant in our world, destroying whole nations like Palestine, Iran, Congo, Sudan, and Lebanon for the sake of these bloodlusts “sanctioned” by people who aren’t being taught by churches that this is sin.

Getting back to the point of this post, all this darkness has felt like a dense fog spreading across all the light and truth, but comedy, by those like Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel, has cut through the complicit silence. Now we only have one of these shows left, although Trump calls for Kimmel’s job constantly. I’m going to miss Colbert’s voice in the void and hope that he finds a new place to do the same thing – call out the evil and stand for the truth, while making us laugh. The sweet pressure valve release of laughing through things that scare us is essential, I believe, for us to maintain our humanity.

It is a non-violent fight against fascism, an unwillingness to buy the crap they are selling us, and remain focused on what is good and true, when the propaganda tries to drown it out. That’s what is happening here with CBS, a complicit, chicken-sh*t response to pressure from above. What they have chosen to silence is the reminder to be kind, to be unwavering in our beliefs, and to not let the bad around us determine who we will be.

I’m thankful for the time I got to watch Colbert’s show, for the comfort pause to laugh through the ‘Hormuz news you can uz’ segment, in the middle of a war that none of us want but can’t depend on our leaders to stop, while watching our tax dollars be ripped from social programs to bombs and guns. It was like a balm to the soul, a place to reset and breathe, with a laugh. A way to process together. Thank you, Colbert!

In the meantime, what will I do? Watch Jimmy Kimmel. Rock out to the Piedmont Raging Grannies, and laugh my butt off watching RuPaul’s Drag Race.

Learning to Start Seeds With Calmness

tomatoes, peppers

Being completely transparent, I started this post with the intention of writing about my struggles with seed starting and how I’ve been questioning my abilities to do so. Part of that was because I was initially having issues with starting seeds this year. I actually wrote about these problems in a post titled When Is It Time to Restart Seeds? In it, I described the struggles I was having with our pepper seeds. Germination rates were low, which led me to question my ability to start seeds and figure out what went wrong. In that post, I mentioned that I was going to take a patient approach with them and not restart seeds too quickly. I followed that up with a post about how happy I was that I took a patient approach. I let my first set of seeds go for an extra week or so, and the majority of the cells germinated. It was because of this result that the direction of this post has changed.

Success Has Been More Than Patience

Although being patient with our seeds has played a large role in the success we’ve had this year, I think the success is the result of more than simply being patient. That thought stems from a conversation Magz and I recently had. A couple of days ago, I was showing her how successful our starts have been, and she commented that she thinks it has something to do with how calm I’ve been when it comes to this year’s garden.

In the past, I’ve approached pretty much everything with a degree of excitement or agitation. I wasn’t necessarily overly excited or agitated, but I struggled to control my emotions, which resulted in not being chill. When it came to gardening, it led to rushing through things, making mistakes, and working hastily. I’ve tried to have a different approach this year, both because of how poorly certain aspects of last year’s garden went and learning how to manage my emotions better.

tomatoes, peppers
Our pepper and tomato starts

This change started by delaying the seed-starting process a few weeks. Last year, I started them when the packets said to, which resulted in leggy plants by the time the weather cooperated enough to transplant outside. This year, I nearly started them too late and forgot to buy some of the supplies we needed. But despite those hiccups, the result has been overwhelmingly positive.

What Does Calmness Look Like When Gardening?

This question will likely have a different answer for everyone, but for me, calmness means a few things. The first is approaching every task with the right mindset. That doesn’t mean having to be in a perfect mood all the time, but it does mean that I need to be focused and not sidetracked. I need to be aware of what needs to be done. This allows me to see things clearly, notice when plants are growing or struggling, and address things accordingly. If I’m unfocused when I go downstairs to look at our starts, I may overlook something or do something wrong.

Things are going to go wrong with a garden. It’s a fact. Seeds won’t germinate, transplanting starts will fail, the temperature will be too warm or cold, and you’ll get too much or too little rain. Those are all things that will inevitably happen on a yearly basis. It’s like baseball: a batter can get on base 4 out of 10 plate appearances and be an All-Star or Hall-of-Famer. Failure is part of the game. But when you fail when gardening, you can’t be too hard on yourself or let yourself get too low. Every failure is a learning opportunity to succeed next time. That mindset helps you stay calm, which carries over to the last point.

peppers, cucumbers, tomatoes, molokhia, leeks
Pepper, cucumber, tomato, molokhia, and leek starts.

I think it’s important to be gentle. I think it’s important to have gentleness in all areas of life, even though it’s something I struggle with, and considering mainstream society doesn’t promote gentleness, it’s rare to see it in public. But when we act with gentleness or out of love, the reactions are positive. With humans, it can be disarming and lead to real conversations. When gardening, it can result in healthy and productive plants that reach their full potential and provide great yields. To me, being gentle when gardening means having soft hands and being delicate. When I’m starting seeds, I need to be gentle with the seeds, taking care to plant them at the appropriate depth and to not overwater. When transplanting starts, gentleness means supporting the root system so that the plant has the best opportunity to thrive in its new home. When the plant is growing or it’s time to harvest, it means picking when it’s the right time, not letting plants crowd each other, and ensuring that branches aren’t weighed down, causing unnecessary stress.

It may seem crazy, but I think there is something to having a calm demeanor when gardening. I doubt that there’s scientific evidence to back it up, but I’m convinced plants can sense our stress levels when handling them and respond accordingly. It’s similar to animals: they can tell when we aren’t calm. Perhaps we’re rushing through interactions with them or being short. That behavior affects the interaction and relationship. And I don’t think that this mindset needs to stop with animals or plants. If we all took a second to step back, take a deep breath, and treat others with gentleness, we’d be a much happier society.

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Pivot! An Important Sewing Skill

Okay, as a millennial, I can’t hear the word pivot without thinking of this scene from Friends. But, silliness aside, Ross was correct; you have to pivot and pivot well. The longer I sew, the more agitated I get when I make foolish cutting or measuring mistakes in my garments. Like my shortalls from last year, I tried them on over the weekend because it is feeling warm and springlike here, and I was shocked by how poorly I fit the shorts. The top portion of the shorts fits excellently, but not the shorts. No one wants weird bunching when it comes to shorts, and that was exactly the problem!

At first, I went through the stages of grief – denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and finally acceptance that no matter how delusional I chose to be, these shortalls are uncomfortable. I would not wear them. This made me feel so many regrets. The pink overalls I drafted completely from scratch, using a special fabric featuring corgis and bread from a Japanese fabric brand called Kokka Fabric, sourced from my local fabric shop, Firecracker Fabrics. The second pair was cobbled together as a challenge of fabric and repurposing. The fabric was 1 yard of 59″ cotton twill from Mood Fabrics, and the pockets were sourced from a pair of shorts in my closet. I refused to scrap these. But what could I do to fix these? With all the patterns at play, adding in a new fabric sounded scary. Cutting these into bags or future quilting projects was throwing in the towel too soon for me.

My solution came to me one night, as I was washing my face; I didn’t have to make a drastic change. I had to address the problem – the way I cut the curve of the pants. I could remove the section that divided the fabric into legs, and transform the shortalls into pinafore dresses with a few cuts and stitches! It was a success! The shorts are now a skirt, by cutting away the curved line and sewing a straight seam on the back and front of the skirt. I also made a quick swap to the back bib of the brown floral pair, adjusting the square bib to the triangle shape of the pink ones. This adjusted the fit of the dress in an excellent way. The purpose of the triangle, I believe, from the fit change on my garment is to eliminate gapping between your shirt and the back bib, so the fit follows the line of your body.

Now, sewing is not the only place to pivot, obviously. Problem-solving is a fundamental part of the creative process. Projects rarely work out the way you want, from knitting to cooking to building a piece of furniture. In this fast fashion, consume and donate, culture poisoning my country’s culture, we are losing the art of problem-solving. This has been exacerbated by the rise of AI and ChatGPT. Why think at all? Why imagine, ponder, or research? Why try if you aren’t going to get “expert” results? That is what the rise of optimization culture is creating: the fear of trying. But you have to try to become an expert. AI is not an expert; it is a thief, stealing the knowledge of humans who have spent years and decades striving to know, unafraid to try and fail. It’s literally the scientific method. So if you are an impressionable person, who is growing up in this current era, don’t give up your creative ability for AI to do it for you. You will lose crucial thinking and creative skills if you don’t exercise your mind and problem-solve on your own. Just do it.

#81 – Ten is My Magnum Opus

Commitment is scary. It feels like a box that closes around you. My mind wanders to all the negative possibilities. Will I become stagnant? Will I fail? Will I regret this? Commitment is not a bad thing, though; it is a fundamental to our relationships, to building character, and completing goals. Finishing any project, big or small, such as painting a wall or completing a degree, requires commitment. Being there for a friend. Adopting a pet. Planting a garden. Buying a house. Getting married.

The last one fills us as humans, living in the 21st century, with the most trepidation. I think because of how obligatory marriage can become in our human cultures. What is a Jane Austen novel without commentary on the role of marriage in 19th-century England? Women can see it as a burden, a life goal, or a way to survive. It is complex for all people – he, she, they to enter into a legally binding commitment built on the hope that this love we are choosing to pursue until we die, will not fail and consume us both.

As I have mentioned before, my parents got divorced when I was little. It was finalized when I was two, actually, so beyond a PTSD memory that is hard to dwell on, I don’t remember life before my parents divorced. My memory and examples of marriage in my life come from my grandparents and my mom, who married my wonderful stepdad (more like true dad) when I was 16. Without these two positive examples, I’m not certain marriage would have happened for me. It’s hard to understand, unless you experienced it, but living in the aftermath of your parents’ failed marriage shapes your opinion of marriage from a young age.

You are the living proof of failure, and are looked on with pity and dismay from many church people and people in your community. You are the weirdo. People want to “help” experience the normalcy of two parents, as if there is something wrong with the family that you have. I had three parents instead of two, and it felt normal to me. I learned about love, of all kinds – storage and agape, aka “affection” and “unconditional love.”

I think these loves are even more important to grasp as an impressionable youth than fixating on the hope of romantic love someday, because what brings you through marriage is all four loves – charity, agape, philia (friendship), and eros (romantic). Because marriage is built on vows, and keeping those vows is wonderfully challenging some days, but keeping them and not giving up has led to this exciting milestone – our tenth anniversary!

Growing up, knowing that marriage can and will fail for a lot of people, no matter how much you fight for it, scared the crap out of me, staring down the aisle. I didn’t want to fail, like a destiny I couldn’t shake. My parents’ divorce was not a curse to inherit, nor was it Kyle’s to inherit from his parents’ divorce, yet succeeding felt like the highest mountain I would ever climb, and honestly, I do feel that way today. So many things have changed in my life in the past ten years – jobs, friends, locations, family, pets – it’s been a roller coaster, and yet, here we are. We didn’t let the bad times get the best of us – the economy, the pandemic, job loss, grief, and hubris – we figured out how to navigate the things that scared us without ripping the seams to tatters.

What I thought would be the way through this would be never approaching that line, but life actually pushes you to the brink quite often. I think we, as humans, focus so much on perfection that we forget that even when you let your spouse down, you can dust yourself off and recalibrate. Even your worst moments don’t have to break you. Holding on to the highest highs, the wins, is important too. It’s a journey that you walk with your spouse towards the goal. It’s a sanctification process that will break you down with certainty, but I feel refined by the wisdom and the struggle, and the wins.

The bottom may come as close as you can imagine to dropping out, but your fears are not a prophecy for your life. Good things are not there to slip away from you; they are the victories. And so this exciting anniversary feels like a victory over all the voices in my head telling me to give up when things got hard, and to not enjoy the good moments in case something bad would happen. Yeah, good and bad have happened, and will continue to happen, but what Kyle and I are building, this commitment to be there for each other for every step of the journey, is a balm to the soul in these uncertain times. So I encourage you, in these heavy days, to plant your garden.

This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says to all those I carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: “Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce… Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.” 

Jeremiah 29: 4-5, 7 NIV

Why I Quit the Clique and Cliche of Twenty One Pilots

So it’s 2026, and if you’re online, there is a good chance you have seen the 2026 to 2016 posts. The nostalgia for 2016 is real, even making me look at one of the most volatile years of my life through rose-colored glasses. But even though the 2010s were full of change for me, beginning with my junior year of high school, and ending with 2019, globally leading us into the pandemic. How weird is that? I got my license, my high school diploma, traveled to Europe, graduated from college, got married, moved out, had my first job (more like jobs), tried to have a career, reunited with my dad, met my siblings, moved out of state, wrote a novel, and lost several loved ones in 2016. My family fractured – it was so much personal change! But even so, I miss the optimism of the hipster era. I miss the simplicity of the pre-AI era and the pre-social media domination of our world. We were less logged in, less screen addicted. I’ve been drawn to watching Portlandia again, yearning for a coffee shop to spend the day in while listening to indie music, a simpler time. This week, I’ve found myself walking down memory lane in the form of 2010’s alternative music. Bands I haven’t thought of for a decade – The Joy Formidable, Phantogram, Joywave, Bear Hands, Sir Sly, etc. But one band, I determined in this holiday, into nostalgia I will not listen to again, even though they were a band I loved in the 2010s – Twenty One Pilots.

This is a bit of an oddball post. I haven’t listened to Twenty One Pilots since 2018, but for a three-year stretch, they were my favorite band. I collected merch, CDs, and ate up the lore. The para-social relationship was built on mental health struggles, faith, and being “quirky” felt comfortable. I mean, this was the mid-2010s and the height of the “not like other girls” trope. I relished in the alternative feel of their music, what I now understand to be noise music, and the darkness I felt in my own life craved the outlet to plug into. Josh understood my shyness, and Tyler understood the anxiety and depression I was feeling at the time. It felt safe because they were “Christians” and their music had “biblical references,” but they were also questioning everything and challenging the void. I didn’t see at the time how much un-aliving yourself idealization there was in the nihilistic moments of their music. The more I listened to their music, the more depressed I felt, and that is where I began to wake out of the dream I was walking in. I haven’t seen them or their music the same way since.

I think right now, with all the ways Christianity is being watered down, misused for political manipulation, and trampled upon by religious fundamentalists, I don’t want to listen to a band that is “somewhat Christian” again. That is not an estimation of their music either; that is what I found when I looked at the TOP subreddit today. That sentiment reminded me of what turned me off the most from their music, Tyler’s waffling. Or should I say deconstructing? That was another discussion I found on the subreddit. Now it is only fair to discuss this, with my own struggles out in the open. There were some things that came to light in recent months about someone I know, who is a pastor, which contradict the Bible, and it made me furious. Combine that with the DHS sharing misquoted scripture to claim their racism and violence as a “holy” thing turned me into this character.

What has my spiritual life been like in 2025 and now in 2026? Clinging to who I know God is in the midst of all these evil, power-hungry syncophants. Have I been reading my Bible daily? No, I have been a slacker. Have I been praying consistently? Yes, more than I have been reading my Bible. Have I been avoiding Christian culture? Yes. Where have I found myself gravitating towards? People who are acting out their faith and non-believers acting in ways that mirror what the Bible calls us to do. Never in this muck and mire have I wanted to imagine a world without God. If anything, it has made me crave God’s presence in this world with more frequency. It has to be a real connection. Faith is not a feeling, and it is not something you choose one day and rip apart the next. It calls for trust and for submission to align every part of your life under what you believe in. Faith is telos. Faith does not exist in a vacuum, nor do our relationships. Some days, having faith in good triumphing over evil feels like an extremely radical thing. There is no space for indecision.

Now, Tyler is allowed to feel and think what he wants, as long as he is not hurting anyone. I don’t care. But do I think he is a good example? No. There is an immaturity to his faith. A fence sitting that is only hurting him. As Earl Smooter says in Sweet Home Alabama, “You can’t ride two horses with one ass, sugarbean.” My need for conciseness and clarity is, for sure, part of my neurodivergence. I like it when people communicate directly. Honestly. I prefer the path laid out by another favorite artist.

I give life to my words
(Yeah, I’m doing what I say)
I reach heights from the dirt
(Yeah, I’m doing what I say)
You know I bite the way I bark
(Yeah, I’m doing what I say)
(Doing what I say, doing what I say)

Creed by Stray Kids

Decision matters. Being aligned with what you believe in, in every aspect of your life, which takes being truly honest with yourself, will bring mental peace. Mental peace was something I never personally felt from their music. I could feel the overthinking, tearing at the seams, the complete drifting in the current. It could be dressed up with lore or cringing lyrics, but the identity was never solid. Taking time away from their music gave me such relief. Ironically, my time of being part of the Clique was followed by a period of listening to mostly worship music for a few years before landing in K-pop. I think I personally matured out of the place where the Clique remains, waiting for identity. Where their leader remains. I think it is easier to not confront ourselves than it is, to have these times of personal crossexamination. But I think it’s a poor witness for your faith to never pick a side. How can something so integral to your life, your worldview, be left with unresolved doubt? What a loose end.

Deconstruct with integrity. Affirm your faith with integrity. I’m all in favor of confronting the church for its cowardice over injustice in America. Jesus showed us how. So did his servant Paul. But to leave it as a vague, Blurryface, is immature thinking. Through my research for this post, my searches for a clear answer about Tyler’s faith left me with more questions. Like a politician, it is vague and hard to define. Answers offered were that he can’t put it into words, he is wrestling, still defining, or can’t put it into words. What? More digging led to answers outlining TOP’s music as his way of communicating his search for understanding. To explore doubt by supposing a world without God – well, that’s why I found their music so dark! I am actively shaking my head. Again, there needs to be more maturity in songwriting, creative writing, philosophy – something to explore these themes with more nuance. I am just not impressed. Especially when you contrast Tyler’s exposition of his faith and the world we are living in, to the faith journeys of J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. In summation, I find the faith and doubt of TOP to be cliché and played out. Go deeper. Tell us what you believe in, like fans have requested, concerning the genocide in Gaza.

Now, TOP fans, this is my opinion, and everyone is entitled to their own opinion. None of this was written as an attack on you or your favorite group, just my honest reflection on a time of my life where Twenty One Pilots spoke to me. I’d say really the only part of this “lore” I’ve listened to is these four albums – Twenty One Pilots (2009), Vessel (2013), which was my favorite, Blurryface (2015 the album I started with, and Trench (2018), which I disliked so much I sold my concert tickets and donated my merch. You, Clique, have popularity on your side. I know I am in the minority, but I’m also in the minority of thinking Taylor Swift is a terrible songwriter, and that hasn’t stopped me.

What kind of music did you enjoy in the 2010s? Has your music taste changed? Thanks for spending time with me today, dear reader. Until next time ❤

Emotional Endurance, No Cap

What do you do when you need a break, but you can’t? I’ve been wrestling with this for months. It’s been a tricky thing to discuss on here, and without feeling ready to write without revealing too much, I have been spinning on it, to quote NMIXX.

Any time I feel overwhelmed, I take that space. But what if you can’t? Like what if the thing that is weighing on you is as interwoven in your life as a single thread in the warp and weft of your jeans? It’s a tricky one that I don’t think anyone has taught me; it’s just kinda hanging there. We struggle alone, because we are human.

Relationship University

I’ve been thinking alone, pondering my frustrations, my overwhelm, my weariness for a break because I am a neurodivergent, deep-feeling, overthinker. It does not come easy to me to pause, to force my mind to stop and breathe. It’s something I wish we had learned in school. Any of the schooling – elementary, high school, or college? How wonderful would it be to learn about emotional intelligence and algebra? Traumatic stress coping mechanisms and world history? What about grammar and proper communication tools to de-escalate a tense argument? Literally would be life-changing. Meditation with a side of physical education? We mostly played soccer(football) because it was cheap, and it was monotonous. Both Kyle and I would feel less we are drowning in the complications of personal struggles if we had an education in relationships.

We did the brief marriage counseling, sure, which I guess prepares you for marriage? I think getting through the first year is truly what teaches you the most. (We are a few months away from celebrating ten, so we do have some experience.) We also had the years of friendship experiences, some previous dating experiences, and the lifelong knowledge of being part of families – but they don’t prepare you for the stress that comes with multiple, personal struggles that you and your spouse sometimes have to tackle all at the same time, meanwhile life keeps moving forward, and you feel like a hamster in a wheel.

Burnt Out, Like Toast In Obsidian Crumbs

What I felt the most since these stressful situations began to weigh on Kyle and me was the desire to hit pause and process what I was feeling while the world held still. You know? Just a moment, where you could feel without the expectation to be who you are and do the things others depend on you for. Even the little things, you depend on yourself to do. Of course, that feeling grows to a desire to stop the world for days, and escape to a zone where the stressful things can’t bother you. A yearning for the before and a hunger for the after, this is all resolved and back to normal. It’s so easy to get wrapped up in the big emotions of personal things that you forget to have fun together. You forget to just be yourself. It’s a bizarre version of your life that doesn’t feel familiar, and I think after months of feeling like this, 2025 ended with me feeling chewed up and angry.

So why do we pretend like this is a normal state of being a responsible adult? Like if I hadn’t decided to stop drinking alcohol in 2021, this season would have been months of riding out a buzz, ignoring my problems, and choosing unhealthy coping mechanisms. Subbing in a source of temporary joy, depending on a thing or a feeling to get you through, is avoiding the inevitable mess that upset you in the first place. But I think this is the box we put ourselves in as adults, to stop from appearing weak or vulnerable. Substitute a drink for a shopping haul, sports betting, s*x, doom scrolling – what I’m talking about is far more common than we admit. So why do I feel so alone in this feeling?

It is still my present burden to bear, Kyle’s present burden to bear. Contrary to the calendar, your problems on Dec 31 are still there when you wake up on Jan 1. Doesn’t that suck? I felt myself wishing more than ever at the end of 2025 that the “fresh start” effect was real. Because life requires emotional endurance with no cap. That is quite difficult for us humans to do. It requires patience, hope, faith, self-control, gentleness, and love. We grow weary, we hide our struggles like they are something to be ashamed of, instead of a common part of life. We are odd creatures. That’s why I decided to share this, because I don’t think we discuss this enough, and I plan to talk about it more.

Marriage is hard, in more ways than I could even comprehend, but that doesn’t mean it is impossible. As we are both kids of divorce, we stubbornly refuse to address the stress that is negatively affecting our relationship because to do so feels like we are already failing, but that’s not true. So I’m writing this for you, the one who feels the weight of their parents’ divorce on all of their relationships, like a curse you are inevitably going to repeat. It’s not true. Keep going and stop bracing for the bottom to drop out, like I waste time waiting for. We are survivors, and we are going to make it through the mess.

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