How I'm dealing with all this anxiety

 I've been putting off writing because of too much stress and depression. I mean how can someone who feels so much empathy for others not want to hide in a closet and only come out a few times a day? Oh right, I also have trouble with claustrophobia.

The DH isn't helping with all the doom scrolling. I now tell him to keep it all to himself, I just can't take it, the news is hard enough to watch, I really don't need more.

I know I'm not the only one feeling this way, most of the world is. Between the war in Ukraine and the people in this country who seem to be backing Russia I'm ready to become completely agoraphobia again.It's always an internal war with my brain and it can be horribly cruel to the rest of me.

More and more I'm turning to  embroidery and art classes to get thru all this hard stuff. My brain won't settle down enough for reading a book but following some's video or printed directions draws me in. I've also been watching some old movies. Today was 'Bell, Book, and Candle' and 'The Boy With Green Hair'. If you get a chance you should watch them. I found them on a digital station, MoviesTV.

I thought I'd share a few of my favorite links:

1. For embroidery - Creative Stitchery

2. For art - Every Tuesday Jenny Manno has a new you tube video.

Here's a link to some free classes at sketchbook-revival-2022 They will be starting on March 21 till April 18.

Another free class is Melanie River's Medicine Circle Retreat. It's starting March 25 and goes for a week.

Take care of yourselves and let's pray for peace everywhere.

I'm sooooo tired, how about you?

I'm dealing with lack of sleep right now. I'm doing some dog walking for extra cash and not sleeping good at all. You'd think with all the exercise and fresh air I'd be tired enough to sleep but a few days I wandered around the house till after 6 am. Since I knew I was too tired to do anything constructive I finally took 3 Tylenol and they knocked me out for 4 hours. I drug myself out of bed at 10 because I had to go walk the dogs by 11 and I knew I needed a quick cold shower and a lot of caffeine to get me going. One interesting thing is that I'm too tired to fell anxious.

The dogs seemed to find it funny watching me walking around and tripping over rocks and branches I was too tired to notice. I finally fully woke up after one of the dogs, who had gone for a swim in the pond while I was pretty much sleep walking, decided to shake off the water in front of me. Cold and slightly muddy water in the face really wakes you up. I'm beginning to think he may have done it on purpose to get me awake and moving faster. 

Time to get ready to feed them dinner and go for another walk. I think I may bring my umbrella........

 

This is a pic of what I did with the embroidery I mentioned in my last post. I still need to remove the bits of twine from the front. It stupidly had the hanging twine on the front instead of the sides at the back. The box kept tipping forward at the bottom so I fixed it but need to find my needle nose pliers to get the staples holding the tiny bits of twine. Not sure what to do about the hole in the center. That held a plastic tag for hanging it at the store. I wonder if I could squeeze some toothpaste in it like I seen people do with hole in the wall?

I Love Johanna Basford! and Angela Kennedy! and drawing! and embroidery! Really!

 I really do love Johanna. She's so kind to share talent by doing free videos and giving away drawing to color. I found her last year in the spring and spent time getting back to easy drawing. It's kind of doodling and I find it soooo relaxing.  The Inky Wonderlands book is great but I can't make myself draw in it so instead I've been drawing my own versions of the pages. I'm not much for coloring but I will get to her videos on that skill too.

The 2 drawings of the girls are from Angela Kennedy. I LOVE her work, too. She has Facebook groups for drawing along with her and these are from the 100 days of hair group.

I'm also working on drawing flowers so I got that book, too. I just want to do simple ones not realistic so I skip the last 1 or 2 steps shown for each flower. 

Oh, and I did return the big drawing set and didn't bother to get anything else. After looking thru all my various pencils and erasers I found I just didn't need more right now. It's so easy to want to buy tons of supplies when I start a new hobby.

I'm still doing a bit of embroidery, just quick projects. Creative stitchery has free monthly ones I'm doing. I glue each month to pretty scrapbook paper, and frame it in a shadow box that I add small treasures I've collected that go with the embroidery. I change it each month. I'm finishing July right now with the sailboat. I should get a pic up here, sorry. Got behind with the drawing instead of stitching. Here's the link to her blog: Creative Stitchery

 Jennifer has free flowers in pots at her site. Again I'm not religious but her quick embroideries are fun to do. https://www.elefantz.com/

I recently found these sites, too for embroidery and more:

flamingotoes       Great name, huh?

https://stitchfloral.blogspot.com    beautiful flowers!!

If you're not the pretty flower type there are lot's of other free embroideries, too. Or why not write out words, trace on fabric, and embroider those?  How about "I could be social or I could embroider"? or "If you can't be kind, be quiet"? or "Don't believe everything you think"? or maybe more Jenny Lawson type quotes might be your thing.

There are tons more but I'm off to gather up my supplies and do some stitching :) 

BTW, if you want something to keep your mind busy so you don't stress and cause yourself anxiety, try embroidery, just stay with the simple stuff like I do. I tried cross stitch but kept losing track of where I was on the pattern so I keep away from that. The ones where it's all embroidering on the lines with back stitch and outline stitch are fun for me. Oh, and French knots, and lazy daisy stitches. I love to do those.  And yeah, I went overboard and bought lot's of floss from different companies. It's hard to rein in my hobby shopping :)

Back to where I belong ....... writing

 

 

I haven’t posted since last year because of working on a new book. I was also thinking about the choices I made in my life and those that needed to be made now that we were in covid-land. Knowing it was best to stay home made me worry that my agoraphobic tendencies would start their tempting but oh so destructive thoughts in my brain that hates me. I mean it can’t like the rest of me if it’s willing to cause SOOOOO much destruction. It becomes addictive to just stay home, to not have to go out and very possibly deal with sucky panic attacks. Lucky for me I could drive from home to the DH’s work house Jeez that sounds so Dickensian. I’m gonna call it the “play house” since the DH and furry kids love being there to play on all the acres of woods. In fact the cat, Andy, stays there full time now. So does the new pup the DH brought home last fall all the way from upper Michigan. He had a crazy trip going there during a time when covid was really bad in Michigan. I may have to write about it sometime because you’d never believe how much poo was involved (and it wasn’t dog poo). Oh, and in case you’ve read my other posts and know we also have a lab named Matty, he comes back and forth with me from home to the “play house”.

Ok, back to the subject of trying to avoid becoming housebound. I was basically saying it’s nice to have two houses so I could get out without going shopping and be worried about covid. I have a niece who got it last May and still feels awful. Our family lost two people to covid and one to cancer. My nephew got cancer and passed 12 weeks after diagnosis. The DH was helping a friend clean out a garage and offered to move the atv. Big mistake as he had never driven one. Backing up he hit a pile of wood and flipped it over on himself. He ended up with concussion, cracked ribs, stitches in his mouth, and legs so bruised he got blood clots. As for me, just the usual sprained ankle and ending up using crutches for a week after being clumsy.

Life has changed again now that most of the family and our friends got the covid shots. We got the Pfizer with only minor side effects like a sore arm and being tired. In fact no one I know had any worse side effects from either double shots but when I talk to people who refuse to get vaccinated they always say they know or have heard of people who’ve gotten really sick. I don’t know but I bet its fear after reading all the lies spread online. The internet has become a place of even more craziness, lies, and danger. I don’t even go online everyday any more. I just can’t take the hostility that’s growing everywhere online.

So anyway, the choices that are now on my mind have to do with getting back to this blog and keep my other writing going, too. I finally feel inspired to start writing here again. It’s so easy to indulge in being lazy about writing and instead just read and embroider. It comes down to doing the necessary things and sorting out the stuff that isn’t. I found it really does help calm me and have less panic.

Like many, I truly enjoyed this year of a quiet life, well except for all the awful stuff I wrote about a few paragraphs ago, and I’m not going back to a stress filled one that only ends in panic attacks. I’ve learned how to spread out all the work that needs to be done, that ½ hour gardening can be enough because more will mean my allergies will make me extra sick. The same goes for the time spent in the office/crafting room. If I can’t get inspired after 1 hour it’s time to move on to something else.

The hardest part of making these changes may be making the people in my life understand how important living a quieter life is to me. How just because they feel the need to be busy to the point of stress, that I’m just not going to fall back into that way of living again. I refuse to thought of as a failure because I figured out what works for me.

BTW, have you ever heard the term FOGO? It’s short for fear of going out. Aren’t we lucky the press has come up with a new shorthand for agoraphobia?

I'm baaaaack - - - - -

Don't be scared, it's just me, Willow.

I know it's been years since my last post. Life really slammed me hard when my Mom died. I gave up writing and lost my funny. I just didn’t want to think so I read a lot and played online games way too much.

Eventually I got tired of games (a very huge surprise) and after being disappointed in 4 new books from 4 series I had been reading, I gave up books, too (a huge but sad surprise).

So what did I replace them with? Thanks for wondering! It’s embroidery! First I came across posts that linked to EGA while spending (wasting) time at Pinterest. I’m really not happy with Pin anymore. I keep setting it so videos don’t auto play but every time I come back to the site there they are, slowing everything down and playing stuff I have NO interest in. The site’s becoming crap.

Back to embroidery, BTW thanks for letting me have a small vent. Have to admit I lost interest in EGA since the monthly projects have been cross stitch and I’m SOOOOOOOOO over it like years ago when I was a kid. Now it’s a site called www.pintangle.com that's got my interest. There’s a weekly post with new stitches every Tue, though since it’s in Australia and I’m in the US east coast I get the post on Monday afternoon. It’s been fun learning new stitches and using them on an old crazy quilt I started when I belonged to the local quilt guild. I quit when I found I couldn’t fit in.

 

I’m not much of a joiner or friend maker. Guess it’s from having agoraphobia since I was a child. Plus the older I get the less patience I have for people who aren’t nice to others. I am, even when I don’t like someone. You know that ancient golden rule (bible) saying, “Treat Others Like You Want Others To Treat You”. It was one of my Mom’s favs. She really should have had it embroidered on something. So, anyway it’s kind of been the way I’ve always lived. It’s like karma, if you’re shitty then that’s what gets thrown back at you. I’m going to embroider some of these sayings, maybe I’ll share them online. I did find some pandemic type embroideries. Have a look at: www.heislerscreativestitchery. There’s a new one each month. If you’re religious then try www.elefantz. I’m not so much but I like her freebies, plus I can change the text ones. Another embroidery site I like is www.pinsandneedles.com.

I will admit I did find a new game called Lily’s Garden but only play it on my phone. If you’ve read any of my past posts you know how much I HATE phones but thanks to Mom I did get one. Though to be honest I mostly use it to play the game.

That’s enough for a first post. I'm working on finding my funny again. Stay safe, avoid crowds (like agoraphobics need to hear that),and WEAR a damn mask!