May 2022 Wrap Up
May was mostly a wash if I just compare my written goals to what I actually did. I just read through my goals for the month that I posted earlier and, well, they mostly didn't happen. And that is OK. Other things happened instead.
My main priority above all else always is to maintain brain health so I don't end up hospitalized again. At a point early on in the month, I decided that I would only do the things that quiet my brain and made me content. This kept my body healthy, too.
So what did I do?
I was a gardening machine. I hauled dirt nearly every day. I worked on some big landscape overhaul projects. I transplanted all the things that needed transplanting. I worked from a big ambitious list I made last fall and was able to cross off every single thing on that list. I feel great about this. It was physically and mentally challenging in all the best ways.
I finished that denim pencil skirt. It looks incredible and is one of my favorite makes ever. I also made a t-shirt and a sporty knit dress. I decided to make the fitted vest and coordinating shorts at a later time. After the very detailed skirt, I needed some easy wins in the sewing department. Plus, I spent little time inside so I focused on easy things I needed rather than wanted.
I continued making good progress on the EPP Triangle quilt. It's honestly not my favorite in regards to color layout but it is very satisfying to work on and watch come together. It's easy to bring camping, too, so I worked on it while on my first camping trip of the year.
I journaled the heck out of this month. I pulled some pre-made journals out that I hadn’t been using. A few times each week, I update these. I like that they each have their own purpose:
Birding
Garden plants
Nature phenology
The birding and phenology are writing based but in the garden journal, I'm sketching every plant as it flowers and making detailed notes about its needs and history. Working on this has been a complete joy. It will take me a few years to complete all the sketches but I love that I will have this complete documentation of a sort of plant dictionary of my gardens.
I worked minimally on my grant requirements plugging in a half hour here and there.
And that's May. With the state of the world as it is, war in Ukraine and in our schools and grocery stores and churches and shopping malls and so on…and COVID breaking through vaccine boosters and defying testing but no one here masking or bothering with any precautions leaving folks like me completely isolated…I can get angry thinking about all of it. I avoid all social media and only allow myself very specific news consumption (CIDRAP daily journal and one local news station) because I cannot change any of it. The United States is no longer a democracy. It hasn't been for awhile. It is slowly toppling under the weight of its own hypocrisy. It is quite sad to witness. I actually hoped that the pandemic and the protests of a few years ago would help it to self correct as it had been a pendulum in the past. But the pendulum is broken. There was no correction. Both political parties are heavy dinosaurs walking towards a figurative ice age. I am very worried about the future.