The title of this post has a number of meanings. I’ve been working steadily on my knitting for the past few months, and I’ll get to those goodies soon. Yet I’ve also been working steadily on my head and on my skills in functioning in audio over the last few months, on my acceptance of those skills and my belief in their efficacy more than anything else.
This process, of course, required that I come down from the high alert, fight-flight-freeze mode generated by the drop in vision in March and the subsequent weeks of doubt, anxiety, and frantic appointments with doctors. From that time, I’ve several book recommendations to offer: From Pema Chodron Awakening Compassion, The Pema Chodron Collection: Pure Meditation, Good Medicine, and From Fear to Fearlessness, How to Meditate with Pema Chodron, The Wisdom of No Escape, and most especially, Getting Unstuck. From H.H. the Dali Lama How to Practice, How to See Yourself as You Really Are, and The Universe in a Single Atom. You’ll notice the Buddhist trend? (grin) Having gone through a second round of CBT classes while my mother was still visiting, I’ve been even more fully impressed with the fact that I have to work very hard to meld logic and emotion into a more sound and balanced way of handling such occurrences as my increasing blindness and my history with domestic violence.
I’m not instinctively a very physically active person, being much more inclined to think of a book and some knitting rather than a walk – though I enjoy the walk thoroughly if I think to go take it. I miss living half a mile from the state forestry in Indiana, and perhaps that is part of the problem. Having spent so much of my adolescence wandering there, it’s hard to get excited about a park with paved walkways. Having gone camping and canoeing for weeks at a time with nothing but tents and backpacks from the time I was ten, it’s hard to get excited when people talk of camping with Winnebago’s, showers, and trucks. Mindless exercise like treadmills or even my palates machine quickly wears thin and the dust gathers on the gadgets. But meditation, and yoga as a form of meditation, not to mention the bare beginnings of the Ti Chi I’ve begun to learn, I find both satisfying and ever renewing. Odd, that. But there you have it.
As for getting back to work being employed as a teacher, while I accepted the skills rationally, and recognized how much I can do with a computer that talks, (grin) belief in such things emotionally requires another level of understanding, and belief strong enough, stable enough, to stand against the doubt of others and the need to educate those in the rest of the world as I encounter them. In making my way back to the working world, back to my teaching, I am, finally, having to face my blindness in ways I have not accepted it before, if only so I can learn to trust in my ability to function competently and handle questions and doubters adroitly.
I’ve been volunteering in a local yarn shop for the last few months, and I’ve enjoyed the dependability of the position and MY dependability in the job, as well. I’ve also been experimenting with making knitting and crocheting stitch markers and with selling them or trading them. This has been going well, though it’s not something that will ever feed more than my yarn habit – at best. I focus on making up cute, inexpensive markers that people can use and not be too upset if they loose them. Eight dollars for a set of six or twelve dollars if I’m using semi-precious stones like moss agate or fancy jasper. A percentage goes to the yarn store, and I had some nice success when the store took my markers to Stitches in Chicago, so I’ve decided to keep it up. Maybe someday I can make a profit from the hobby! Ya never know.
This has turned into more of an update than a show and tell, so I’ll finish off this entry, and then work on another that focuses on pictures of the fun I’ve been having. More soon!
![[Blind & VI Web Ring]](http://www.viguide.com/images/bvi1.gif)
