accrue (phrases from bullet journal)
homebody | cocoon | 2020 atrophied some of my hard won progress | change that officially by calling | 2021 the year of | visible thinking | grow a backbone, thicker
face, roots in new earth, a stronger voice, wings | make it real | this journal as a secret
garden | sacred space | grow towards a little complexity
afternoon was leaning on the shoulders of evening (1) | interrupted sleep | murder dreams | yielded by visit to Tumblr | little bit of elliptical | the idea of wifi use of data as finite resource hasn’t really occurred to me | started a pouch of scrap cloth like a proper war-time lady | compiling tools for apprehending the world | lonely | love letter | my days feel empty | weighed down with sand | what to document | sleep routine | activity name & duration | intentionality | long enough to make a tangible difference | you can start by figuring out how to be useful to yourself (2)
curled up in bed reading covid news | numbers remain high | follow-up | not here to weigh the value of my writing and give it a number | next time don’t try to cook 2 dishes at once | for the aesthetic | personal universe | darning mushroom, yarn, bent-tip needle | patchwork scraps and random stitches | comfortable against skin | oversensitive from overbrushing | won’t say no | will process it | wind loud & constant as a river | to get bloodwork done | time waster | zoom call | if I don’t skip a day, reward | rescheduled | blanket statement | acknowledge the unknown in the space of teaching and learning (3) | ghost stories | god-construct | in paper form | give myself white space to keep notebook readable | vivid dreams | watching with half-attention | shortening distance between idea & reality | balance | stress response | toothache coming/going | stitches to frayed cuffs | absorbing negative miasma | grounded in body | happiness is still home-made (4) | health check: skin inflamed | cardio hurts | maybe add some exercise today—DID NOT
chat with Sarah about umbrellas | nostalgic | “not so nice” dance mix | feel helpless & hopeless | “liberated” it | flickers like a rustled page / with a poem on it (5) | maybe because it curled up | more straightforward | took micronap | not enough sleep! fight off sickness! | basked in sun | cloud watching | contradicting recipes | just a smidge of milk—it didn’t get that hard | find value in what you already own (6) | shared | boundaries | ‘repaired’ a strong word | as bystander | big row | black coffee | stir fry | second pair of eyes | focus on content not optics | the world looks desaturated | briefly, elliptical | what does thriving look like? | community is not a spectator sport. (7)
Sources:
1. From Gwendolyn MacEwan’s Mermaids and Ikons
2. From Ryder Carroll’s The Bullet Journal Method
3. From Brent House’s paper “On Unknowing Creative Writing Pedagogy” (The CEA Forum, 2014)
4. From a framed cross-stitch in a short film “An Aesthetic Indulgence” (Larry Kurnarsky, 1985)
5. From Christopher Gilbert’s poem “Marking Time” in Turning into Dwelling
6. From David Cain’s blog post “Go Deeper, Not Wider” (https://www.raptitude.com/2017/12/go-deeper-not-wider/)
7. From Tumblr post by Grey-Haired Geekgirl (https://greyhairedgeekgirl.tumblr.com/post/185016573556/tubaterry-saw-an-op-ed-that-was-on-the-surface-a)