Red Cedar

Two weekends ago I turned forty-two and recorded the better part of an album in two days on the Sunshine Coast. I then took all of last week off work. Since then I have finished sewing a blouse, finished crocheting a sweater, cleaned my house, went to Vancouver island for two nights, lead a meditation class, had a long visit with my mom, attended a dharma talk and ritual commemorating the Buddha’s life, and attended a concert at the Chan Centre. After all that, I have to admit that I had a really hard time caring at work today.

I’m 80% of the way to finishing a cardigan crocheted with the above pictured yarn and I am already thinking about buy new yarn for the next project. Thing is, I have at least two sweater-quantities of yarn in my stash and I am attempting to stay on my stash-busting track to use those before purchasing anything new. As I mentioned yesterday, I have the same goal for fabric – I simply do not need to stockpile anymore. And yet I still find myself perusing and pinning items that I would like to have, that I plan on making something with. I’m lucky this week that the Canadian dollar has taken such a significant tumble

I have to admit, probably the only thing which has held me back from buying new yarn or fabric this week is the collapsing Canadian dollar. which makes online purchasing way less attractive. As the prices on imported goods start to climb (and they will, it’s only a matter of time), all purchasing of non-necessities is going to look pretty unattractive…. (and that is the sound of a contracting Canadian economy, right there).

This is helpful to me at the moment, it really is, because one of my big focal points at the moment is to pay down the line of credit that we’ve racked up over the last two years with our land purchase and cabin building project. Going back to work full time has definitely been helping with that, but also since November I’ve been strictly budgeting myself (not counting the new violin purchase) each month using a program called You Need a Budget which my friend Emily introduced me to. Using this system, I set all spending allotments on the home computer, and then track incoming and outgoing money using a simple phone app which helps me notice what (junk) I am spending my money on as well as how much I have left in each of my budget line items. While I think the budgeting system has some flaws, it’s the best one I’ve found to date and I’ve found that I’m able to use it consistently which is the point.

I know I said that I wasn’t going to go on a tracking kick this year, but this is one of my concessions. Since using the app I have managed to pay off my credit card entirely and make a few decent payments onto the line of credit – which I wasn’t doing before, even at the same income level. YNAB is at least partially responsible for this shift – though I have to say that another aspect is that outside of fabric and yarn for making things, I have experienced a serious decline in my interest in stuff over the past few years. Not that I have ever been much for shopping, but I’ve become increasingly stressed by just owning things even if they come into my life for free.

This sounds hypocritical, coming from someone building a second dwelling structure (shared, but still, not a necessity by a long shot), but it’s not! (Or maybe it is, but hear me out). One thing that budgeting and thinking about consumption patterns has really helped me to think about (and I know my partner has similar feelings about this which is why we do so well together) is how and when I do like to spend money. While I absolutely *hate* purchasing clothing, I love doing a big, bulk grocery shop that ensures my family and friends will be able to eat well even if there is an emergency. I can’t stand household knick-knacks, but it’s imperative that I have enough dishes to feet thirty people at one sitting. That cabin is somewhat similar in that I will forgo a whole lot of mindless going out, driving around, purchasing new household items, etc – in order to create a space for people to gather outside of the city. It’s pretty much all I envision doing outside of making things – insuring that the space is there for friends to gather, rest, recharge and face the world again. And of course one can do that without owning property – but my dreams always include a place to which people add on as the years go by – their footsteps and photographs, the cracks and the scrapes which come along the way. That we come to know a place by all the people who dwell there and pass through over time.

I have been missing our land and our cabin all winter, since we are not built to a state where the cabin is usable and the winter has been somewhat cold and snowy (not to mention the fact our woodstove never did get installed in the spring). I’m hoping we will get up there as soon as March, even though work won’t begin again until we are firmly in the spring. This gives me at least three more months of payments before we start spending off the line of credit again…..

I’ve been here all along, but things have been busy what with my boss quitting the day after I last posted January and me taking on his job temporarily while they search out a replacement. Not to mention the fact that this week I wrote my last significant piece of writing for my graduate program and now simply must attend two more months of classes in order to finish this spring. And I’m reading Proust, leading weekly meditation, attempting to go to the Zendo regularly , and spending more intentional time with my partner – all of which has short-circuited my ability to just sit down here and say hello, how is it going out there?

What is true, however, is that my boss’s absence has given me a reprieve from a certain kind of stress that was crushing me in December, and in fact I’ve come to know that I actually have been doing his job in all its facets for the past six months, which gives rise to a certain satisfaction but also a certain anger. I feel most outraged at the fact that while he was doing no work (and collecting a large salary), literally closing his door and pretending to be in meetings or on the phone when he wasn’t, he would routinely call me into the office to critique the members of my team who were performing their job duties – for not being “ambitious” enough, for thinking too much about their life outside of work and not being focused on advancement, and so on. And then he would tell me how hard he had worked to get to where he was, which wasn’t at all true, as evidenced by the fact that when he left our office a few weeks ago there wasn’t a single file handed over in transition. It’s more than a little shocking – despite all the jokes about public servants not working, I don’t find that to be at all true – though obviously this manager believed it should be.

In any case, I am in three roles at the same time, but it is actually very quiet at the moment and so my team is in a state of calming recovery after the boss’s departure. I just hope that our next director will be a stronger leader with a better work ethic. You never really do know what’s coming next in these situations.

The photo up above is the shawl that I finished earlier this month, and I am currently working on a sweater that I hope to pair with a new dress (fabric still to be chosen). The dress that I posted about last time has become my favourite meditating and lounging staple – being too shapeless for much of an out and about dress – I love it so much I am going to make another in solid black for a more formal meditation garment. As noted in my year-end post I started off 2015 with a vow that this would be the year of no lists, no tracking, no sweating over what I am and am not doing – and so I am choosing projects as I feel the need for them rather than making big lists of what I am going to do. These lists just cause pressure in my life and I have seen how often they do not facilitate getting more done or in a more organized fashion. I am also trying to use up fabric and yarn in my stash so as to clear out the old and be more intentional about what comes in. I did just buy some of the Amy Butler print pictured at right – out of which I will make a new spring coat. I fear it might be too garish for me – but I do love the colours. We’ll have to see how that turns out.

It feels like spring here today, which it most decidedly is not! We often get a false spring just before the second phase of winter kicks in…. but I will be using this reprieve from the rain to get a bit of tidy-up done in the garden on the weekend. I was occupied with other things in the fall and I didn’t get as tidied up as I would have liked. It will be good to get my hands in the dirt again.