Saturday in the city

I took my bike to the street fair and had a lot of interactions with people, including reconnecting with my optician.  She's more of a friend really! But she isn't. I mean, it's always been in store interactions initiated by me, but she's always been kind and generous and pleasant with her time and stock and energy.  She shares back, so does her husband, too.  It wouldn't be too much to say friend, yet it's still kind of one dimensional, you know?  But it's good to have that, I should visit more. I do like them. I could sit and knit. Well so I also quite enjoyed bombing around. The spinners and weavers guild were abundantly represented and I confronted again my sense of never being able to catch up fast enough to start making some money so I can afford to keep up the hobby. To me, the free market is inarguably a competition and I never feel equal, much less superior, so I feel like I'll just feel rejected if I even try. Which has in fact happened more than once. I've lost money on stalls, been out competed by people selling the same damn thing. It's why ties seem like a ready market. I think young men want to get a little fancy and I think the local hand made market is ripe for interest. So I'm going to forge ahead perfecting the design and try and make them as fast as I can around the other things I do with my time.  Two days on the current one and I"m only just getting started, again. LOL It's not possible to earn income off it, lets' make that clear. But if it pays for materials it has value.

One man had set up a whole art stand.  You could paint on a canvas for $10 or draw in his pad for free using his pencils!  He even had a prompt to inspire folks "can you draw a perfect eye?"  Well I can't, but I can draw a good eye, LOL.  That was fun. I shook his hand to tell him what he was doing was really good. Later I realized, that was my first man to man hand shake of my life!  Wow!  It came quite naturally and that was also kind of astonishing. I just reached and he responded and I gave his hand a hold and moved up and down. I didn't do any politics with it, just a good hold on and say hey. It felt so right. It always felt stupid and weird when I was doing female. Like women aren't supposed to?  I dunno. But I like being a man, I know that!

I've been filling out the divorce papers.  Last year I vowed to myself not to let another year pass without doing it. Oh the gut twisting tension of it all. But you know, he really is too much.  Oh I also have all this doubt and uncertainty clouding me.  the longer time passes since the last outrage, the less I remember it clearly, the easier it is to question my resolve. Which is what he has been using to remain here this long.

I'm afraid of his response when served with divorce papers. I'm afraid of figuring out how to get social assistance and of discovering I can't live on it.  I did do the math and it looks like it will be possible.  I already live pretty cheaply most of the time.  The main issue is impulse buying. Today, for instance, there was a hat, a book, a braid of fiber, a lost coffee and a mediocre wasted pastry. The coffee got lost in a clumsy hand move, the pastry only got half eaten as it really wasn't doing anything for me. But, with all those purchases, I think I went through nearly a hundred bucks? Eighty?  Something around there. That's a week's food on assistance. But I will have both the hat and book forever. Ok, the book will travel when I finish it.

Anywaay. ew, just remembered Ellen and how egotistic she turned out to be. Too bad. Like many folks with a little too much ego she knew the script she was expected to follow.

So I'm having new stress related problems, this time, it's thoracic outlet syndrome from hunching up too hard too often. It's especially bad when I spin yarn so I'm knitting for now while I try and retrain my body and mind away from bad posture.

See, I carry all this stress from all these little activations all day as both external and internal things ping me. It might be my own feelings or thoughts, or something someone says, or just the startling nature of a city. But there's so many triggers in my head it's ridiculous and so I trip one often enough to create these stress issues.

I combat it with breathing, meditation, chanting, spinning (can't right now)distractions and targeted muscle relaxation.  But I can actually get stressed about how much of my time is spent destressing when I'd much rather be doing the thing that the stress is preventing!  

So the papers need a little more data filled in and I have to type up some kind of eviction notice. That's been driving me mad too. How to phrase it, how much time to give, what to do when he likely ignores it, etc. Then I get all whiney and pissy with "why does he have to be like this?" And that about sums up the last two decades.  I just keep mentally putting a hand on my own back and saying "steady as she goes, I know you'll be happy to get your house back and you might even discover a whole new life worth living. If not, it's same old same, right? But without the constant aggravation of living with your own personal troll." Because this is not a sitcom and it doesn't only happen for a half hour once a week.  It's all so emotional, you know?

How to live forever? Stretch out your time with unpleasant events.