Chickenlips Knitting

Here are some more stitch markers which I managed to bang out tonight--it's my obligatory happy crafty pretty picture, which assuages my irrational fear that if I don't post at least one such photo each time I blog, you'll all leave and never come back. Ok, I'm only half kidding. But only half.

This is a bleary-eyed, late night rant, with no knitting content, so feel free to skip. But if you're still reading, the reason there's no knitting content is because (silent scream) I have no time to knit. Or dye yarn. Or do anything else which really matters to me. Or clean my house, because as much as I hate to clean, it does matter to me. It hasn't been really cleaned the way I would like since I went to work for my current employer. And it isn't so much a matter of cleaning, as it is dealing with the piles and piles of clutter, which takes time, planning, and mental and physical energy. To be honest, I'm not doing so good with any of that right now.

I work full time. I have a husband who travels two weeks out of every month, and when he's gone, I've got to do everything I normally do, plus everything he does, which is a lot, to keep this household running at a bare-bones minimum. We love our animals, but it is a lot of work to care for them, and they also need time and attention. When I try to tell Jason how much stress I feel about his road schedule, he doesn't really get it. He doesn't want me to quit my job. But here's the way I see it: he earns nearly four times as much as I do. Yet I invest a goodly chunk of time in working and commuting. (I'll blog about gender inequality in the workplace some other time.)

Now I know I sound like I'm on the pity pot, and yes I'll have some cheese with my whine, thank you very much. Ninety-nine point nine percent of the world's population doesn't have it as good as I do, and I'm well aware of that. But you know what? I still feel a deep sense of burnout, of having come to the end of something. And I can't seem to shake it.

I just got the biggest cash bonus of my life, and I don't care about my job anymore. Three years ago, I was dying to have this job. Yet this morning, I was so recalcitrant, all right, pissed off about having to go to work when all I wanted to do was stay home and craft, that I engaged in minor road rage. (driving too fast, impatient, that sort of thing. I was the type of person on the roads this morning that I normally think are the biggest a-holes... dear me.) I don't have enough patience with my teen. These are things I need to address, behaviors I need to change, and fast.

I have no answers. All I know is that I wake up each morning wanting to finish this sock, work on that sweater, start that shawl, dye up a storm, and write the book I know is in me somewhere... but I'm living a life of endless details which put me farther and farther away from what I can't stop thinking about. I'm aware that I've done more than my part to set up the necessity of working outside the home, and tending to all those details...but I can't muster the enthusiasm I once had for my work. And for the love of all that is holy, I must find an alternative to the daily, timesucking, soul-killing, resource-wasting freeway commute. I've been doing it nearly all my working life, and that's about 30 years. I'm... done.

Good thing, too, because it's really late, and I've got to turn in. Task force meeting tomorrow morning, dontcha know.

Sorry, everybody. I won't post again until I feel more like Sharon Chickenlips.