self-care

Stockinette stitch

Stockinette Stitch: I can’t job search right now

Erica, Free

My last post made it abundantly clear that I’m unhappy. In a big way. And my job is driving me crazy. Which begs the question, why am I making time to practice knitting stitches I already know instead of job searching? 

The short answer is because I don’t feel like myself right now and I don’t want to job search when I don’t feel like myself. The long answer is I’m afraid that if I job search when I can’t get excited about anything, much less feign excitement about a job I don’t want and my embellished accomplishments will just land me at another shitty job where I’m underpaid, overworked, and stuck doing emotional labor for an incompetent man child running an inherited business. That was a mouthful. 

Normally, I get back to feeling like myself by doing a big creative project. But because of the vicious cycle of my job sucking all my energy, which keeps me from anything creative that might give me more energy, that’s just not going to happen. That’s why I’m spending a week knitting a tiny swatch of a stitch I learned 15 years ago. I’m not doing a lot, but at least I’m doing something. 

And on the actual crafting front, I am relearning to manage my tension, keep my stitches even, and count rows. All useful skills for when I eventually work on a larger project. 

-Erica

dead plants :(

In Memoriam: The Plants We Lost Along the Way

Ella, Free

It is that time of year to remember those that were lost in the creation of the garden. Starting from seeds always carries the risk of great losses, many through no fault of the seeds themselves. 

After her middling success at gardening last year, Erica decided to expand her garden this year. She wanted to start plants from seeds to help defer the cost of expansion. This was a great idea. Seeds are cheap and starting them early helped her through the home stretch of late-winter depression. 

The problem with using the tiny sprouts to help with her depression was twofold. Sprouts need consistent attention and when she was too depressed, she tended to forget them and when she started to emerge from her depression and be more active, she also tended to forget. The hardiest of plants survived this and made it out into the garden. For now, we must take a moment to remember those that did not. 

Rainbow Carrots: She was so excited to have rainbow carrots this year. Erica is always looking to add variety to her diet, but rainbow carrots aren’t always available at her grocery store. These plucky seeds were some of the first to sprout, but unfortunately after thinning they were moved to the birdcage in the living room where they were forgotten 

Swiss Chard: they were the very first seeds to sprout, and she was so looking forward to adding these to her greens rotation. Sadly, they also ended up in the birdcage, etiolated, then forgotten. The ones that did make it outside weren’t able to withstand the shock and the early spring rain.

Chamomile: these tiny seeds were planted last and sprouted almost immediately. So many sprouted. but almost none made it to thinning. Erica was just too busy with the plants that had already made it outside that they dried out in their little egg carton.

Luckily, Erica is not deterred. It’s still early in the season and she has started new chamomile and rainbow carrot seeds outside. Hopefully since they are in the same location as the rest of the plants, they stand a better chance of survival. Here’s hoping those early losses were not in vain.

-Ella

This isn't a picture of the garden, it's just a picture that I have.

Hindsight is 20/20: Gardening Tips that aren’t useful anymore

Ella, Free

Last year, Erica started a garden by the driveway at her apartment. It was small and she didn’t end up getting a ton of food from it. Her most plentiful harvested were cherry tomatoes and herbs. Her potatoes and garlic turned out small. Her raspberry bush, blueberry bush, and strawberry plants didn’t provide any fruit at all. Still, she seemed to enjoy the experience. 

This year, I wanted to help her make her garden more prosperous. I had her institute a few simple changes to help offset the costs and hopefully lead to a more prosperous garden. 

  1. Planning ahead: at the end of last year, Erica took all her strawberries out of their containers, planted them in the ground, and covered them with leaf litter. They survived the winter along with some garlic bulbs from last year!
  2. Lessons learned: last year, Erica planted root vegetables in the ground and everything else in containers. Harvesting her root veggies from the clay soil was extremely taxing. This year she will do the opposite 
  3. Starting with seeds: this takes the most work, but hopefully will pay off. By starting with seeds, Erica can grow a wider variety of veggies, especially greens. 
  4. Choosing new plants: Erica thought a lot about what kinds of vegetables and herbs she actually wants to eat/use. New additions are coneflower and chamomile for homemade herbal tea.

Hopefully these changes will help Erica’s garden thrive this year. As always, I will be here to help her out whenever it gets to be too much for her.

-Ella

Your First Stalker: The Unexpected costs of a single incident

Erica, Free

One of the incidents that took me away from this blog last year was my very first stalker. While the incident in question was brief and quickly resolved, the stress and trauma lingered. Before I begin, I would like to clarify that this is for illustrative purposes only and is based solely on one young woman’s experience with a creepy neighbor leaving a weird note on her car. This is absolutely not meant to judge anyone else’s reaction to a similar situation. We all do what we must do you feel safe. This is also not meant as an invitation for advice or consolation. I have already received plenty. Anymore, especially from strangers on the Internet, would be unwelcome and extremely overwhelming.

The cost in time:

  • One hour spent frantically calling your parents asking what they would do. A note on your car is just over the line enough that you are spiraling into terrifying and dangerous possibilities. You can hear the fear in their voices too. They are 1200 miles away and cannot protect you as they feel compelled to do.
  • One night spent quietly alone in your apartment not lost but exchanged for a night of getting drunk with the friends who were kind enough to let you stay over on such short notice.
  • One morning lost to the hangover.
  • One hour of working on your ongoing issues in therapy lost to this new and terrifying situation. And asking a mental health professional how to deal with a crazy person (crazy person is not the word you use. In therapy you say “potentially dangerous” and “unstable”)
  • One hour of your afternoon of your Saturday afternoon lost to filing the police report. Crying in the police station because you did not expect the officer to be so understanding.
  • Two hours on a weekday evening pricing out doorbell cameras home alarm systems and privacy film for the windows.
  • Half an hour installing doorbell cam
  • Two hours installing alarm system
  • Four hours installing window films on all windows

Monetary cost

  • $200 doorbell cameras for front and back doors
  • $250 (on a 30% off promotion) for home security system
  • $30 a month optional monitoring for security system. Who knows how many months you will feel this is necessary?
  • $150 for privacy window film. Most important for windows the directly face your neighbor’s apartment. You want nice ones that you will enjoy looking at. You don’t want your house to feel like a prison. You’ve done nothing wrong, after all.

So there you have it. Six hundred dollars up-front and an ongoing cost of $30 a month and over 24 hours of my precious time lost to some piece of shit who at best thinks he is entitled to my attention and at worst has taken the first step down a path to putting me in physical danger.

I have not had any issues with my neighbor since the incident, but I think it is important to talk about these kinds of things so that people know they are not alone and should never be made to feel unsafe.

-Erica

View From Outside: Life As A Supporting Character

Ella, Free

Last year was not a good year for Erica. I’m not going to detail what happened. That’s her story to tell. I will offer some insight on how I did my best to support her.

When we started, I was helping Erica learn to use her powers in alignment with her talents. This past year, I did my best to help her stay above water. Between her increasing workload and some particularly stressful events, her mental health took a nosedive.

I used my powers to remove as many of the obstacles as I could, but often the scars of what had already happened remained. It didn’t help that she chose to move right before everything got to be too much.

That doesn’t mean the entire year was terrible. Erica started a garden at her new apartment. I helped her with that. It was small, but the food was good. She did some sewing, some crocheting, and started a new project with her old origami.

She didn’t feel like writing though, and I didn’t want to push it. She didn’t need another obligation on top of everything else. That was my main job over the past year. Letting her enjoy what she could without any sense of obligation. I’m sorry for the hiatus, but hopefully this explanation helps. If Erica felt like she needed a break, we all did.

-Ella

New Year’s Resolution

Erica, Free

This year, my resolution is to actually be honest with myself about how my life is going. 2022 was hard and I sort of just powered through and pretended everything was okay. It wasn’t okay. I’m not okay. Things are probably going to get harder before they get better and that’s just how it is sometimes, but I don’t have to pretend like it’s easy or like it’s somehow positive.

And I’m going to be honest with myself when things are going well too. Just because I’ve been going through a tough time doesn’t mean I’m going to ignore the good moments. Those are important, and they’re what’ll keep me going. I’m not going to get so caught up in powering through that I forget to take time for myself. 

What does that mean for this blog? I don’t know. I’m not giving up on it. The posts might be different. I’ll probably focus more on mental health than the actual mechanics of crafting. And I’ll share some of the stuff that made last year kind of a nightmare. But everyone else should be the same. Anyway, hope this year is a good one.

–Erica

New Year’s Resolutions I Can’t Be Bothered With

Erica, Free

Mid-February (or late February by the time I actually post this) is the glorious time of year when everyone’s New Year’s resolutions fall apart. I used to be part of that “everyone,” setting lofty expectations for myself each January only to run out of steam in six to eight weeks.

In celebration of my epiphany that I can’t make a daily habit out of anything, and trying to only leads to self-loathing, here is a list of New Year’s Resolutions I refused to make this year:

  1. Any Kind of Exercise Goal: Any kind of exercise goal. I know I feel better when I exercise. And I know I feel better when I can make a routine of it. But my schedule does not always work for goals like exercising a certain number of times per week, and any other fitness goal will end up with me overextending myself and hurting myself. So I will just stick with the knowledge that I feel better when I exercise and seize the motivation whenever I remember.
  2. The Same Thing, But with Meditation
  3. Learning a New Skill: There are so many things I hope to learn and so many options for a resolution like this, I find it overwhelming. I do hope to learn some new skills, or gain a deeper knowledge of the ones I already have.  kind of goes on this is just too much pressure and text the enjoyment out of it.
  4. Goals For This Blog: If I did pick a resolution for this, I would say to keep the posts and newsletters coming out in groups throughout the year. But as I saw last year, sometimes I really do need a break and while this blog is very important to me, it is far from the most important thing in my life or my main source of income.

What are some resolutions I did make? I do better with New Year’s resolutions when they are simple, one-off things that I just need a little extra motivation to accomplish. One of them was to get a new bedframe, which I accomplished before the end of the year (yay me!). The other will be to harness my powers so I can haunt my boss. It’s been too long and he just deserves it.

-Erica

Why Vampires Make The Best Depression Buddies

Free, Jane

I waffled back-and-forth over whether or not I should write this, but with Erica prioritizing herself through this mild depression, as she should, I felt I us sad folks were rather underrepresented. Ella does her best to try to understand Erica, and it is helpful to have someone who is willing to give you the space you need and can demonstrate what it will be like on the other side. But sometimes, you also need someone who knows exactly what you’re going through, from the anxiety to the depression and the exhaustion. Someone who understands without hesitation. So I am here to explain my role as Erica’s emotional support vampire.

I’ve known Erica for a while, and Ella for just a bit longer. I was drawn to the building independently about a year before Ella and Erica moved in. I was delighted to have some supernatural company and became fast friends with both of them. Which is how I ended up as Erica’s emotional support monster during this latest wave of depression.

It was only fitting that I be there for her as she helped me through my last particularly rough bout with depression. I had endured a rather tragic event and came to a traumatic realization that nearly paralyzed me and Erica was with me every step of the way. Although you wouldn’t know because both she and Ella have done wonders to protect my privacy until this time. And no, this particular tragedy was not my transformation into a vampire. While tragic, I was transformed nearly 200 years ago and for the most part have accepted my fate as a vampire.

One overlooked benefit of vampirism is that it makes it easy to be there for the people you care about when they need you. We are largely inactive during the day so we make great binge watching buddies. When we do venture out, we must stay out of the sun which makes us great companions for the trip to IKEA or Home Depot that has been weighing on you but right now seems to overwhelming.

Some reasons might be more specific to me, but are still heavily influenced by my vampirism. I love listening to people, and hearing what human life is like, even the bad stuff. Just to know what I missed out on. And I know exactly what it feels like wake up wonder why on earth you were dealt this lot, and that there are certain problems that you have to deal with no matter how difficult and exhausting and complicated they are. And I know the feeling of hopelessness when you cannot immediately change your circumstances. And I know the feeling of waking up one morning and, even though your circumstances have not changed, something has clicked in your brain and you have found the world once again full of joy and wonder. And I will never stand in your way when that morning comes when that morning comes arrives. I know so intimately what it is like to be robbed of the joys of human life that I would never, in my own indulgence, drag someone back into a depression keep myself company.

So get yourself an emotional support vampire. Unless you are not magical. Then we might try to eat you.

-Jane