Fiber Goals 2015 (.....and my word)

Sucked in by the title of the post, are you?  This year is different.

My fiber goals were ravishingly articulated by Gail-of-the-comments last year.  They are, for 2015, as follows:

Knitting:
1. Knit with joy.
2. Maybe finish something. Now and then.

Spinning:
1. Spin with joy.
2. Maybe finish plying something. Now and then.

Weaving:
1. Weave with joy. 
2. Learn lots.
3. Maybe finish something. Now and then.

You know me.  Of course I am listing some achievable endpoints for the year.  Maybe I will post that later.  Maybe not.  They are currently not the point.

My blogfriends, Margene and Carole and Kim, ignited the idea of one word to provide a focus during the coming year. My FB feed coincidently sent me to BrainPickings earlier this month.  She posted a 10-best list, and there, I found my word.

PRESENCE

“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives,” Annie Dillard wrote in her timeless reflection on presence over productivity — a timely antidote to the central anxiety of our productivity-obsessed age. Indeed, my own New Year’s resolution has been to stop measuring my days by degree of productivity and start experiencing them by degree of presence. But what, exactly, makes that possible?

This concept of presence is rooted in Eastern notions of mindfulness — the ability to go through life with crystalline awareness and fully inhabit our experience — largely popularized in the West by British philosopher and writer Alan Watts (January 6, 1915–November 16, 1973), who also gave us this fantastic meditation on the life of purpose. Watts argues that the root of our human frustration and daily anxiety is our tendency to live for the future, which is an abstraction."

I want to be in the present as much as I can.  Such a habit, this hurling oneself into the future.  Being present is an antidote to that feeling that life is going by so SO fast.  Each set of moments is marked in the mind, which makes them all different.  It is the flow of same moments linked together than makes time feel that it is going quickly.  Slowing the timeline as I experience it seems a worthy goal.

BrainPickings is very cool.   I guess there is actual reading in my future.

 

Comments

[Carole]

Wonderful goals - do everything with joy! And excellent word choice, too.

[claudia]

This is a great word for you. This is a great word for me too. Mindfulness practice is wonderful. Hard but very important.

Those condensed knitting/spinning/weaving goals made me laugh.

[gayle]

Thank you for the gift of Brain Pickings. You are such a treasure!

[margene]

Excellent goals, exactly I'll plan for myself. Maybe a sweater, maybe finish my sewing...enjoy the process, that's how to do it.
I am learning to practice mindfulness and to not measure myself against the accomplishment of others. I am only me.

[Judy]

I've been thinking along these lines a bit lately. My conclusion (suspicion) is that one of the reasons childhood summers seemed so long is precisely that did live in the moment. When we grow older and lose this in favor of living in past, present and future, simultaneously, we also begin to lose the ability to remember. Time gets scrambled and moves in triple time. I will join you in this word. PRESENSE

Off to find Brainpickings.