So let me share with you...

What I've been up to!

All month I've been doing events, and they've all gone excitingly well! I'm making a ton of jewelry, and busting my butt in school. I love being busy, but I'm relishing this weekend of quiet to spend with my friends and family.

Last weekend I attended the Sheep and Wool Fest in Rhinebeck, NY. Except I didn't know it was Sheep and Wool, I thought it was a Gem and Mineral show. Turns out it was both, and my wallet hasn't really eaten much since we got back.



I got this lovely Drop Spindle, and learned how to use it! I've been wanting to learn ever since I was very young, and I finally have! It's addicting, and wonderful!



Additionally I got this adorable Tumbler to use with silver! I'm hoping this will open up some possibilities in terms of maximizing my time, and I'm really pumped about it!

Happy Birthday, darlings.

Yep, Wednesday was my second dready birthday.


See my time line and read all about how I'm feeling about it over yonder at Get Up Dread Up.

Don't Go Towards The Blue Screen!

Yea, it happens to everyone. Including broke, busy, frazzled college students like me. This week was supposed to be chock full of exciting posts about how much jewelry I've been making and all the sales I'm going to, but those are going to have to wait.

You see, on Tuesday morning, 30 minutes before my assignment was due, I booted up to write said assignment only to find that the momentary freezing I'd been experiencing the week before had morphed into a full fledged, deep-freezer freeze. And each time I rebooted in the following 10 minutes it got worse until my computer could only let out a pathetic whimper and a single white line blinked at me. Dead.

An hour on the phone with a very sweet but not so English-friendly tech guy and I reached the conclusion that my trusty old Dell had gone on to a better place. (Read: it's been riding around in the front seat of my car, monitor and all, since Friday, because I can't bring myself to take it to the dump)

"How are you writing this blog?" you may ask. Well, in true college student form I ran around frantically and took out a couple more loans. So now I've got a slim, sexy Toshiba laptop. Very nice. It's still going to take my a few more days to get back to reading and writing around these parts because, as anyone with a new computer knows, it takes a solid 24 hours of downloading and poking and prodding to get the system running the way you like.

I cried. I admit it!

R.I.P My dearest Dell

As my thoughts return to New Orleans...

I'm not really the type to revisit old journal entries, but I was looking for early images of my dreadlocks, and came across this post of a journal entry I wrote while doing relief work in New Orleans in 2006. It seems like centuries ago, and I look at these images and can't believe I took them. As I may have mentioned before, as of recently I'm the fund raising chair for the New Paltz chapter of Habitat for Humanity, and our spring Collegiate Challenge is in New Orleans.

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Originially posted on Robin Reads in February 2006, upon my return from New Orleans:

Note: This is my personal journal. Typically I wouldn't share writing like this with you all, so please keep that in mind. I've typed it up exactly as I wrote it. I feel like this is something I'm obligated to share with you all, it's an experience that needs to be shared.

January 23rd, 2006
Lakeview-

“What others have said is incomplete.” (Writing prompt) Their stories lacked the tangible disbelief one must feel upon viewing this catastrophe. Part of me is angry, feeling foolish for not being prepared, angry no one told me what to expect. I understand that they tried, even now I can’t put to words the horror and disgust I felt watching my classmates rooting about, exclaiming over something they’d found, surrounded by people’s scattered, broken lives, yet still able to laugh and interact. All I could do was cry. I didn’t want to; I wanted to be able to look on this situation as one looks on to a car accident, with morbid curiosity. I wanted the blessing of being able to distance myself from these people, these sights. I was granted no such thing. Instead photos were peeled apart, salvaged, though destroyed, from a heap of mud and scattered memories. “My grandchildren” she said, bringing me back to an earlier conversation with a 4th grade girl. “Where’s your favorite place in the city?” I asked. “My grandmother’s house, before it was destroyed.”


I’m finding it difficult to hold on to thoughts. I can’t keep my mind still long enough to capture what I think and feel, and writing about it takes the mental strength of a wrestler, pinning words to the page. I lack the graceful ability to mold prose into exactly the phrases I mean to express. It is a terrifying experience to be completely at the mercy of my emotions.

Hundreds of unoccupied FEMA trailers: Bureaucracy at its best.

Flood Damage as far as the eye can see.

Dirt and rubble piled along the streets.

Crushed by debris and water.

Crippled...

Hallelujah! + Tom Waits Obsession

I poured my silver ingot (First try was a success!) and today began the process of hot forging a sundae spoon! It's thrilling, and supremely hard work! I found it thoroughly therapeutic and I think I'll be hitting metal more often. I'm going to end up with a ton of silverware, I fear!
By the way, this is what you get when you YouTube search "pouring silver ingots":

And the moon's a silver slipper
It's pouring champagne stars
Broadway's like a serpent
Pulling shiny top-down cars
-Tom Waits


I think it's lovely! I think I'm going to be obsessed with Tom Waits...as of now:)

I wish I had some pictures of my ingot (read: first-born child) but alas, I've misplaced the cord to my camera and the charge is dead! I have to find it or I'll be in trouble.

My business cards arrived today, but I won't get to see them until tomorrow and the suspense is killing me!!! I must distract myself through other means such as finishing my Taoism paper and watching The Office with The Girlies.

It isn't stress....

And this post is not professional, it's just honest. Really this blog isn't professional, because if it was I'd never write in it because I'm a human being, not a corporation.

I'm extremely busy. Unforgivably so, I think, though there's no one to forgive but myself. I've taken on the roll of Fundraising Chair for the New Paltz chapter of Habitat for Humanity, and we've just purchased 15 spring break plane tickets to New Orleans. The total was a bit over $5000, which really isn't bad until you realize that I've just signed myself up to figure out how to fundraise some $6000 total by early February or else we're all going to get stuck with the bill. And 14 other people are depending on it.

This on top of a whole lot of school work that came up quite suddenly. (None of us, professors and students alike, quite realized it was midterm)

I love projects, and generally I'm thrilled to be busy and not have time to think about my emotions but this week they're creeping in when there's nothing I can do to stop them. I'd forgotten how it felt to be lonely, and now, surrounded by people ending relationships (seriously, 5 in the last week and a half) the reality of it is coming back pretty quick. On one hand I'm wishing I could lock myself away and not face it, cry a lot and mope about, but on the other I know that I'm too devoted to my life to stop doing what I love, and I would only hate myself more if I neglected myself.

What's getting me is the anxiety. Am I capable of another relationship any time in the near future? Will I ever stop being anxious about being capable of another relationship? Will my anxiety about being anxious about being capable of another relationship prevent me from being capable of another relationship and thus will I forever be anxious about my abilities? Is Caleb okay? Will I always be scared of men? Why do I care if Caleb's okay? Realistically I know that it will all be okay, but anxiety doesn't work that way, it doesn't follow logic, nor does it respond to it.

Where do you find energy in a time like this? How does one overcome anxiety without the meds? That's the point of this post. Not to angst and whine, I just genuinely need some advice.