You start to feel Winter turning…

“Tomorrow is always fresh, with no mistakes in it.” – Anne Shirley, Anne of Green Gables, L.M. Montgomery

New Year’s Day is upon us, bringing 2025. I can’t help but thinking about how 2020 and on seemed like a rehashing of the same Groundhog Day-like scenario, until in 2024 it began to feel like the gear in the world’s clock had finally unstuck. I don’t know what it was that brought about the unsticking, maybe it was that Covid was starting to become a memory, or maybe it was a bullet flying through the midsummer sky, but the clock began to tick foward again. But while 2024 did bring a feeling of resumed forward motion, it also brought it’s heartache.

I don’t want to make this part too long, and I may write about it more later in its own post, but our Old Time Scotch Collie, Rowdy, had a series of health issues starting in 2023 that culminated in us learning he was having seizures. We were late getting home after church in August, where we’d been planting hydrangeas in front of the foyer, to find him foaming at the mouth and his back legs not working. After the initial panic and quickly getting him outside, we realized that it could only be a seizure. After that, we had him sleep in the room with us indefinitely, and since then, his seizures have progressed to the point that we have had to put him on medication. It’s been really hard. He’s scared to go to sleep at night, so none of us are sleeping, and we hate the lethargy from the medication. The medication was started just a few days ago, so that’s how we’re entering the New Year.

The other heartbreak was that a very close loved one was diagnosed with cancer, and for privacy reasons I don’t want to get detailed about it, but it’s a situation we’re covering in prayer right now.

On the happier side, I’ve been more active in our church, and even been dipping my toes into a ministry role in coordination with others. It’s been challenging and rewarding at the same time. The year closed with me organizing a huge Christmas party for the Women’s Ministry, and though I could never be defined as a “social butterfly,” I think it was a success.

In my planner I wrote down a few goals last year. Let’s look at how I did, shall we?

• Learn to bake bread
Yes, I got a good start on this. Jon had bought me a Le Creuset bread oven for Christmas the year before, even though I had only baked a couple of sort-of successful loaves, and I love it. I mostly focused on perfecting the Basic Bread recipe from King Arthur Baking School (still working on the “perfect” part), but I also made a couple of sourdough loaves.

• Play with Rowdy at a park
Sadly, Rowdy was so busy with other things that this did not get worked on. However, some dietary changes have improved his behavior and made him easier to manage, so this could be on the horizon. I can’t make it a goal for 2025, because to be honest it’s painful to try to think beyond just reducing the number and severity of his seizures.

• Learn & get ready to perform “Carol of the Birds” on the mandolin for Christmas
LOL! No, this did not happen. Not even close.

• Make key projects from Elizabeth Zimmermann’s Knitting Workshop.
I made the color pattern hat again a couple of times. Does that count? What I did learn is that I need to go a couple of needle sizes down to get a fabric I like; that’s what making the color pattern hat taught me this time.

• Learn baking from the King Arthur Baking School book
I did start on the first section, which is bread. And not from the Baking School book, but I did start baking a lot more often–pies, scones, tarts, etc.–which has made the fear factor go down quite a bit. I’ve always baked pies, but so rarely that every time I had to do it there would be a moment of dread, and sometimes abandonment as a result. That feeling is pretty much gone.

I don’t think I did that badly. Truth be told, I probably did better than most years. I feel satisfied with what I got done, considering all the unexpected events that occurred in 2024, and I think I can go into the New Year, if not feeling exactly encouraged, with a little hope.

I want to keep my goals for 2025 modest. Usually I go in with huge reading lists and too many plans that I can’t follow through on. But we’re sort of in desperation mode as far as time goes. So I’m going to limit it to the following:

  • Read the Bible more – I just want to get a habit of reading it daily and recording what I learn.
  • Knitting a sweater – using the Knitting Workshop book.
  • Baking through the Bread section in the King Arthur Baking School book – I would feel really happy if I could turn out nice sandwich bread and move on through the section.
  • Drawing every day – in my planners, sketch journal, and a sketchbook I got to draw pictures of Rowdy.
  • Hybrid Calisthenics & Interval Walking Training – I started using a Hybrid Calisthenics routine in the last quarter of 2024, and I’m working on consistency.
  • Forming better housework habits – I have a lot of work to do in this area.

Notice that besides the Bible reading, there aren’t any reading goals. It’s the first time in many years I’ve not had a single reading goal.

I’ve given up thinking, “Maybe next year will be better. Maybe there won’t be any trouble and I can accomplish something.” There’s no point to it, because it’s out of my control. All I can do is choose (my word for 2024) how I react to the challenges I encounter, and try to be like Jesus in the face of them. But still, it’s impossible not to feel like the New Year is a time to start fresh.

The New Year turns in the darkest part of the year, just after the shortest day, and with its turning you start to feel Winter turning slowly into Spring. It’s not there yet, but you can smell it, not far off. And if you’ve been struggling through Winter, if your heart has been breaking, if you’ve been a witness to suffering or have been suffering yourself, New Year’s Day can feel like a glimmer of hope in the midst of all that darkness.

Have a Happy 2025.

Grace

Our Last Winter Here?

Is this our last winter in this house? Jon asked the question last night as we lit the first Advent candle. We’ve been looking at a piece of property in town, and apart from the price, it seems perfect for our needs.

This little house has been a struggle to love. It’s just a shoebox with a garage attached; Jon owned it when we married, and because of the malaise that settles in when you’re just getting by, he had not done much to it except paint the interior. It felt non-descript, unloved, and more like a rental. There’s no privacy to speak of; because of the situation of the property, both front and back yards are visible from streets lined with similarly non-descript houses, the “contractor specials” of the booming ’90s: small houses made from cheap materials with as little personality as possible. When I first came here, having grown up in the woods, I felt watched from every angle. I wanted to move as soon as we could.

But the town where I grew up and where we go to church has gentrified, house prices skyrocketing and then skyrocketing again. So we stayed. The neighborhood has been quiet and relatively safe. We tried (and mostly failed) to grow a garden, the high desert winds and extremes of heat and cold making it difficult–not to mention, a septic leach field on a quarter of an acre; we’ve only grown food in a raised bed and Greenstalk towers. We’ve made cosmetic changes to the bathrooms and put in some new doors, but with no space to work, and high winds picking up whenever you venture outside to do something, the new trim and other doors have had to wait. All along, I’ve fought between the strong desire to move, and the understanding that moving probably was out of reach. I determined over and over again to make the little house feel loved, like people who loved it lived here, so the next people who came would love it and feel loved by it, too.

A new paint job and beautiful black door with an owl-shaped knocker. The name of Jesus carved into the stump left from a juniper we cut down. A fence to keep the dog in and that, surprisingly, made the lot feel larger. A little shed, with windows added just because. Slowly, it started to feel like a home. The final thing, and surely the best, was the cast-iron woodstove, small but putting out so much heat we can’t keep the fire going after 11 o’clock. The woodstove made the house feel finally cozy and like it had a personality of its own. The house had become a home.

The idea that we might move after all these years is captivating and scary at the same time. Right now, we’re holding our breath, because the property we want costs too much and we need to have a place for my mom on it as well. I’ve no idea if we’ll really do it, if we’ll really be able to buy it and build a life closer to town and our church and the people we love. But sitting there in front of the Advent wreath last night, I knew that in spite of all the problems, when we do go, I will surely miss this little place.

Grace

To not be pulled under.

A few years ago—I think it may have been just before the wonderfulness of the COVID experience—I had a dream. I’ve heard that we dream every night but don’t always remember our dreams, and I find that I sleep so much better now than I used to that I don’t remember them as often. But even when I do remember them, they rarely feel as important as this one did. I’ll tell you the dream.

I was standing in the ocean at night, and it was lit by moonlight. Everything was bathed in deep blue. I was in the ocean at least to my waist, fully dressed. (This calls back in my mind to a real memory I have, of when I was walking on the shore ankle deep at Agate Beach, wearing a sweater and jeans, and a wave came up and pulled me down. When I came up, I was waterlogged and my pockets were full of colorful agates, from pea-sized to the size of seeds. Anyway.) In the dream, my hand was raised up as high as I could raise it, and in that one hand, somehow I was holding both my laptop and a book. I was trying to get to the sandy shore, and as I was fighting against the ebb and flow of the water, I knew deep down, as if God were telling me, I would never make it out, and I would die by being pulled under and drowned, if I didn’t let go of the laptop and book.

I think the surface meaning of the dream is fairly obvious, and it hit me really hard, so that the next day I searched the internet for a picture of the ocean as I described it and made it my background image on my computer. I think that’s why I haven’t forgotten it until now, really. Because for a long time I didn’t really give it much more thought than that, but whenever I noticed the background of my screen, I would think, “Oh, yeah. That dream,” and revisit it for a minute or so in my head.

It came back to mind recently, even though I have a different laptop now and no longer have that image as my background. And I felt convicted. Why hadn’t I paid it more mind to begin with? I took the time to think over what it meant, because at the time of the dream I felt that its meaning was quite literal, that I needed to spend less time on the computer and reading books, and I never really did that. As I thought it over, I realized that possibly the meaning was less literal than I thought (though it might be a good idea to spend less time on the computer). Because for one thing, though I have hundreds of books, I don’t read as much as you might think, considering. So why was there a book in my hand?

I was thinking it over in bed, hurkle durkling (as you do), during a time when I was going through one of my bad anxiety spells. Battling the pervasive, intrusive thoughts. And it occured to me that what God might have been telling me through the dream is that I need to quit always trying to find answers through the knowledge of men, and instead trust in Him. You have to understand that when I go through these anxiety spells, or sometimes what will kick one off, or just sometimes, when my brain is kind of stuck in gear and fixating on something, I will do an internet search to figure something out. And I will search, and search, and search. Sometimes, I might even be looking for something I was able to find a long time ago, but can’t any more. And not being able to find it doesn’t make sense, and my brain gets stuck trying to find it, and I can’t give up. I will sometimes waste a whole day or even multiple days fretting over this, and trying to find the answer. And what I think is that I need to learn to say “no” to that. That I need to trust in God’s ability to get me through, and that it’s the anxious searching and fretting that is the problem.

It’s not that I’m supposed to ignore the issue, or deny reality, but instead say to myself, I may not have the answer, but God does, and He will take care of me and my mind and I can trust in Him. That by not doing so, what I’m actually doing is treading down those negative, cycling neural pathways even further; if I stop doing that, and trust in God, I believe He’s saying that He will actually heal those neural pathways and I will be able to form new, good ones. It may not be overnight, but over time, if I let Him, God will heal my mind. Writing it here, after a few weeks have passed, I feel even more convinced that this is the answer and that this is the meaning of the dream. I need to let go of needing to know and let God heal me and help me recover from those bad thought habits. As always, the hardest part is remembering what it is I’m supposed to be doing, or rather, not doing.

BOOK REVIEW: Refuse to Choose by Barbara Sher

Refuse to Choose by Barbara Sher
Periodically, I find myself searching for the solution to the same problem as always. The search terms are various, but all boil down to the same thing. “How to focus on only one thing.” “How to narrow down my interests.” “What should I focus on?” “How to become great at one thing.” “Too many interests.” “Too many hobbies.” “How do I choose what to do?”

I’m a woman plagued—or gifted, take your pick—with an interest in almost everything. I mean, of course there are things I don’t care about. Thank goodness, I have no interest in football or raising gerbils. (Though I’ve thought about raising angora rabbits.) I love reading, and not just in one or two areas, but gardening memoirs, history, theology, handcrafts, homesteading, and classic literature. I’m sure that’s not all. I have around 1,000 books, many still to be read. I have hobbies. Knitting, hand-spinning, cross stitch, learning the mandolin, drawing, colored pencil drawing, watercolor. I also like writing, hand-dyeing, want to learn to bake, cook Japanese food, cook French food. I could go on. Also, if it happens I see something fascinating on YouTube or Pinterest, I might latch onto a new interest with the fever of first love. So whenever a conflict arises about what to do, whenever I feel like a failure at getting good at any one thing, whenever I realize I have no time and will die without leaving a blip on the Earth, I panic and do what any panicked Gen X-er does: I run an internet search.

I found in my searches that help was not coming. It seemed no one but me wanted to figure out how to narrow down their huge lists of interests. What was wrong with these people? There were a couple of YouTube videos on the subject, but most of the time, the solutions presented did not help. They mostly suggested figuring out whether you’re really interested in said enormous list of things, or just indulging your “fantasy self” or somesuch. One quote I wrote down to consider was, “Are you in love with the work itself, or the idea of the work?” YES I AM IN LOVE WITH ALL THESE WORKS. Most of my interests are not new; I’ve actually done the activities and enjoyed them a lot. I just have so many that I can’t seem to make time for them, and the ensuing feelings of guilt that fact induces result in a lot of time wasted, wondering what’s wrong with me.

However, the last time I ran the search, I encountered something different. Yes, I found that most people were still encouraging each other not to choose. But this time, they referenced a book, Refuse to Choose by Barbara Sher. So many people mentioned and recommended this book that I gave in and looked it up, expecting some kind of upbeat self-help manual. I figured that it was going to be some self-indulgent post-hippie coddling for “artistes” and “creatives,” but I told myself I could get it as an ebook and whip through it quickly, just to be sure. Now, having read it, I’m glad I did.

While Refuse to Choose is written in the same conversational and witty style as Confessions of an Organized Homemaker (another helpful book) and other light self-help books, it’s not a book about making excuses or expecting other people to indulge you in your mental chaos. It’s a quick read that guides you in understanding why you have so many interests and gives you strategies in managing them, suited to your personality and your reasons for not sticking with one thing.

Author Barbara Sher first outlines a general sort of person, whom she calls a “Scanner.” This is not my favorite name; it reminds me of an ’80s horror movie or a piece of office equipment. I have a feeling the name derives from the person’s habit of “scanning” for new horizons and excitements; though she might have explained it in a previous book, in this one I don’t recall that she ever really does. Anyway, she says this person is “genetically wired” (whatever that means) to have many interests and move from one to another quickly in comparison to most people. She talks about the reasons for this, and gives some encouragement that there’s nothing wrong with it. She also gives examples of Scanners from history. She makes the assertion, which I think is probably correct, that in the past, this kind of person with broad and changing interests was not frowned upon, and that it’s only with the rise of specialization that everyone was expected to stick to only one interest, which would also result in a career. If I was to guess when this began, I would say it was probably with the rise of corporate work, but that’s just a gut impression.

After Sher puts you at ease about your Scanner proclivities, she gives some general strategies for managing your many interests. My favorite is the suggestion for twenty to thirty three-ring binders, each one designated for a different interest, where you can record your learning, planning, thoughts, and ideas, and put in clippings and print-outs that you find useful, basically allowing you to open a binder whenever you feel like working on something and pick up where you left off. I think this would really help me pick up and put down projects, freeing me to work on something new without anxiety.

The second part of the book is comprised of the different types of Scanner, helping you figure out which one you might be and offering strategies to be effective as that type. Sher has chapters for nine types of Scanner, but in a video I watched around the time I started the book, she affirmed that there might be more or fewer types—these were just the ones she had been able to identify so far. The two main categories are Cyclical Scanners (those who revisit a certain number of interests over and over) and Sequential Scanners (who go from one new interest to another). Each of these categories contains a number of different types. In addition to offering suggestions for how to manage your interests, Sher also includes ideas for career paths that can either spring from your interests or give you time to pursue them (i.e. the “Good Enough Job”).

Besides not liking the term “Scanner” and some of the names she chooses for types (mine is the “Sybil” type, and you know, I’d rather not think about a mental disorder every time I think about my type; look it up if you aren’t familiar with the reference), my main complaint about the book would be the abundance of success stories and examples in the text. I realize these serve the purpose of encouragement, and in many cases are meant to help you identify your type, but it can feel like unnecessary padding; books like this often seem like they could be published as a 15-page white paper with a quiz and be just as helpful. But, it also gave me some pages to skip (as did the order in which she presented the types, which go from more to less cyclical in their behavior), which made me feel like I was really blasting through the book.

Though there’s still a part of me nagging that I have to choose one or maybe two or three interests, since I’ve read this book, I’ve felt a lot calmer and more comfortable with my multi-interested mind. Sher says, “Scanners can, so they must, explore many things.” I think what this means is that since I have the ability to be interested in many things at once, I should try to pursue them all to the best of my ability, since not everyone has this skill. The other consequence of allowing myself to work on many projects at once is that I no longer struggle with so much decision fatigue, which was probably my biggest obstacle up to now. Whatever anxiety I still feel over the questions, “What do I work on?” and “Will I ever get good at any thing?” can be allayed by following through on some of her suggestions, like the “School Day Life Design Model” (which I’ll write about another day) and the many three-ring binders.

I recommend this book for anyone who wishes they had only one or two interests but feels despair when they think about “narrowing down.” I’m sure I’ll write more about this topic and my type in the future.

Purchase Refuse to Choose by Barbara Sher.