Anna Koop

Mickle is helping on my New Year’s resolution to be more mindful by crawling onto my lap as I work and purring madly. When I stop to pet her, she makes cat-bliss-face, and her eyes are the colour of green labradorescence. I am lucky indeed.

I was thinking about ghosts the other day, in particular imagining how I would respond to someone who asked me if I believe in ghosts. (I believe this was prompted by the unfamiliar noises of the hotel we were staying in.) This imaginary person had a ghost story of their own and was sympathetic to the “science can’t explain everything” philosophy (doesn’t everyone have backstory to their imaginary conversation partners?).

So: belief in ghosts. I do and I don’t. I have grave doubts about the empirically-testable existence of a particular ghost haunting a particular place. But I am convinced of the ability of the human mind to experience wild and wonderful and individual things. So your grandmother’s tale of feeling a comforting presence late one night after your grandfather passed away, of her opening her eyes and seeing him standing there smiling down at her and then fading away into a bright light—I believe that she experienced that, whatever would have been measured and confirmed by instruments in the room. And the story of the dedicated student that still haunts the school paper’s newsroom, opening drawers and tramping around upstairs late at night when the building should be deserted—that story has power, and insisting that someone shouldn’t believe their lying ears is not always useful.

The problem is that people who believe in the (empirically-testable) existence of ghosts are not completely happy with the “I believe you experienced that.” response. And “I believe that something happened” is a little too gullible for extreme skeptics or hard-core logical positivists. But, being the indirect realist that I am, “I believe you experienced that, and it is not something that can be measured or reliably experience by me” is the most accurate thing I can say.

On to crystals: I love rocks. I have collected them one way or another since I was a child. I like the sparkly structures of crystals and the rich hues of gemstones and the smooth lines of river rocks and the cutting edges and flat planes of slate and all the images and letters and patterns that we find in perfectly ordinary stones. I am (in spite of the dreadlocks) emphatically not a believer in their mystical powers.

But I do believe in the power of symbolism and ritual and mental cues. So I have been contemplating ways of presenting this in an intellectually honest way. I do not think that putting my bit of kyanite near my computer will protect me from evil emanations, and I love my labradorite sample for its hidden aurora borealis, not for good luck and clarity of thought. But since I once used a ladybug sticker to remind myself to “just do the next thing”, I can certainly use rocks to remind myself to be mindful or calm or whatever affirmation is most important at the time. In fact, stopping to play with the labradorite and watch it glow might be a perfect antidote to thrashing.

And, being an incorrigible schemer, I’m thinking of ways to systematize this (personal) symbolism and make wire cages for different rocks and customizable stitch markers and keychains and a billion other plans. So it goes.

Still, labradorite for mindfulness works pretty well, since you have to play with it to catch its beauty. I’ll give that a go.

If you’re going to go for 3-ply using a plying ball, do not start with a 2-ply ball and a spindle full of singles. Start from 3 cops, 3 single-ply balls, or 3 spindles. Three individual strands being joined for the first time into the final plying ball.

The rest of the plying experience will be much more pleasant (read: possible) if you aren’t trying to keep the 2-ply properly aligned with the extra single.

In semi-related news, I have decided I need to do some more spinning projects from beginning to end before filling up all my spindles. Turns out spinning, plying, finishing, and using all intersect in complicated ways. Need more experience.

In unrelated news, I just had cereal for lunch. It was a stroke of genius. And my PDA will no longer turn on, so I have to finally give up the idea of using it for Windows-only audiobooks. Curses.

NB: I’ve been winding around pennies rather than starting with a butterfly. I might try Amelia’s way next time.

I had an epiphany yesterday. The kind I have had before and will probably have again, but it has to do with writing the proposal-that-won’t-die.

It is: It’s just a proposal. It’s just words. It is, in fact, words and ideas for which I have done a tremendous amount of preparation. All it is going to take now is writing time. If I learn nothing more, develop no new ideas, run no experiments, and even think no new thoughts—I’ll still have more than enough material for a proposal.

So. I got quite a bit done today by realizing that it isn’t such a big deal. Work, yes. But the kind of work that you can get done if you just show up and do what’s required. Fill in the gaps. Write a paragraph or sentence or page, then edit a paragraph or sentence or page. No big deal.

Like all epiphanies, it’s more in the feeling than in the words. I read all this last year in How to Write a Lot. It remains good advice. I’m back to feeling it in my bones.

A recurring issue for me is the need for a place to offload the whirl of ideas that fills my head. It can get quite overwhelming, since it is tied to decisions about what to follow up on and a mixture of should-dos and could-dos.

When I was an undergrad I used a Palm program (I can’t remember the name anymore). It was great for juggling class deadlines. I tried using it as a grad student but it didn’t work as well for that. The nature of deadlines changes so much, and the projects turn into these flexible things that can infinitely branch into different areas of research, different paper deadlines, different thoughts to follow up on.

I also, in undergrad, started using Getting Things Done. Now I use a slightly modified version of that with OmniFocus. Most of the time when I’m feeling overwhelmed by my todo list it’s because I either haven’t been putting things into the inbox, or haven’t been reliably clearing things out (In David Allen’s terms, I’ve stopped being able to trust the system and so it all stays in my head).

It’s still not a perfect fit for thesis work, because I haven’t figured out a good way of breaking the proposal down. There are a long list of things I could do (hunt down references, write precis for the lit review, make diagrams, write any portion of the thing itself) and they are all variable length. I think GTD works best when you have countable finite tasks for the projects you’re doing.

I suppose I’m also using a kind of First Things First approach, in that I use OmniFocus for offloading lists of pesky things, but in picking what to do each day I look at what is most important rather than urgent. Which is how thesis work makes the cut without being exhaustively enumerated in OF.

And GTD is way too much overhead for joint projects with Joel. Joel does not have the same intense need for a system—he manages to compartmentalize to-dos better than I do, and tends to just do the thing to get it out of his head. He still (I think) needs some kind of system, depending on how many projects he’s juggling, but he’s more of a visual do-er than compulsive organizer. So we haven’t exactly found the best solution for our joint projects, although the whiteboard and calendar figure hugely in our current work.

If anyone has suggestions for other todo or idea management systems, I’m always interested. Go productivity p0rn.

We had a series of houseplant mishaps in our last several living places, so as part of Joel’s Christmas present(s) we got a watering system from Lee Valley (thanks in part to a GC from Mom & Dad Koop) and then went to Home Depot together to pick up some replacement plants.

We were using these lovely PlantMinders but Asha loves dumping them over. Attempts to make a cage to keep it safe didn’t work, so we needed something new. The watering system we got is more elaborate (there’s a big reservoir, and a series of hoses and valves), but should help with plant health. Asha has investigated but not pestered the valves. Seems like a win.

The watering systems make a big difference in fungus gnat defence, as well as keeping things lush. No damp soil==no breeding grounds.

We have a peace lily and anthurium again! We got an ivy for the corner, although it’s small yet. And we’re attempting a fern once more—we’ll see how it goes. Survivors are the dragon plants, the figs (one from my mom that is older than I am, and a shoot from Joel’s grandma that is still hanging on), a spider plant, Christmas cactus, the rubber plants and philodendrons.

You can see the reservoir in the top right of this picture. On the rock coffee-table there’s the arrowhead plant that never dies (regularly comes close), and a new lipstick plant.

A bright spot for the dead of winter. The days are getting longer now!

The only resolution I’m allowing myself this year is to be more mindful—live more in the moment and less in frantic plans for the future.

The edict “Begin as you mean to go on” has been dancing through my mind lately. Although it refers to the future moment, I think it helps to bring my focus to the now—every moment is a new beginning, and it’s in this present moment that I am showing how I mean to live, and what I mean for the future. My intentions are clearest in my present actions, not in schemes about what I should do or will do.

So. Here’s to a year of living in the now.