I am resisting the urge to start yet another knitting project. A quick glance at the number of unfinished or sleeping proejcts on my Ravelry page remind me that the last thing I need is another distraction. I should at least finish ONE of them before starting something new. But I have several piles of lovely colors and textures that will start appearing in my dreams if I don’t start heeding their calls. I guess what this means is I need to knit faster.

I’m also attempting to write at least once a day. Mandatory daily journal entries and at least a half hour of self-selected writing exercises. I suppose this post counts. Hurray! I have discovered a large stockpile of blank journals in a box with my non-blank journals, and this is a complete disgrace. They should be filled by now. My goal at this point is to finish the notebook I started back in 2006 - it seems impossible that I’ve been filling the same book for two frakking years - and to fill another before 2009. In the past I’ve filled a journal in two to three months. This should be completely doable.

One thing that being unemployed gives me is plenty of time to create. After a month of wasting my time, I am trying to make good use of my days. Fortunately, even television and video games are part of the “work” - they’re inspiration! True, hours a day of NetHack isn’t particularly productive. But one must have a vice, and since chain smoking and binge drinking are right out, video games are a cheap and safe alternative. Although they might lead to early deterioration of my wrists. But so will everything else I do.

My other hobby these days, as for most of my life, is cultivating unrealistic projects and collecting half-realized dreams. I should start a gallery of orphaned fantasies. The gallery itself can be the first tenant. A place where all my grandiose schemes and forgotten realities come to rest, and remain there until I or someone else find a use for them. All the magazines I started as a child, copying out each edition by hand because I didn’t yet know about photocopiers (or at least, I didn’t know I could access them). All the reading circles and writing circles and book clubs I dreamed of beginning, all the stories left unfinished, sweaters that never made it belond the perfect yarn gathering dust in the corner of my apartment. The sketchbook I barely touched, the watercolor pencils I was intimidated by, the cross-stitch that sits half-finished in a plastic bag on my bookshelf. The artist’s collective that may yet see the light of day when I have a new job and income to support the cause. All these tattered, dingy children could be on display, could play with one another since I no longer have a use for them except to lament their stunted growth.

Why do I have the sudden feeling that I’d be a terrible mother? “Sally seemed like a great idea three years ago, but I’ve come to realize that she was really a lot more work than I had counted on, so she’s tucked away in a closet and I’ve been focusing on the cat instead. Maybe I’ll pull her out again someday when I’m looking for a bit more of a challenge.” Uck.