- I love the last week of the year so much. Christmas is nice – having Christmas over with is maybe even better, though. And that little pause before New Year. That feeling of reaching the finish line, even though you’re likely to be right in the middle of any actual projects you have going. The chance to just hole up in the dark (knowing that the light is already returning), build fires, be cozy, think about where you’ve been and what’s up next. I love it.
- 2017 has been… bumpy. I’ve felt extremely unsettled for most of the year, never experiencing things quite the way I expected. (I mean. In January I was stressing over whether I needed to be putting my mother in psychiatric care – literally a fate worse than death in her mind – to save her life. Two months later she was dead. It was a weird start to 2017.) But maybe… maybe I’m finding my equilibrium at last.
- I have a lot of Thoughts about my work life – design and other – but the précis is: I’m pretty happy with where I am right now. I think. It varies, and there is a lot of anxiety over the realisation that a Proper Salary may not ever be part of my life again, but: I gave myself a few years (the time up to Max starting kindergarten) as a design “apprenticeship” – a time to learn as much as I could and not expect anything. I’ve spent much of that time very frustrated with myself, but looking at where I am right now, the work I’ve put out lately and the things I have lined up from here, I have to say I’ve done all right. (When I write about designing in the same breath as career, it always seems a bit misleading. I take it seriously and it matters to me, but I know it’s not ever going to generate a serious income. And yet, it is part of my career hopes. It’s confusing.)
- Overall I feel closer to equilibrium than I have in a long, long time. Three cheers for growing children! I need to learn how to look after myself again – sleep and exercise and so on – but at least I don’t feel panicky and out of control. Everything’s just so much more manageable and okay.
- And I’m really, really enjoying my monsters. I mean obviously they still drive me crazy. But it’s nice having them around. I realise this sounds awful, but honestly, for years and years I was itching to crawl out of my own skin and escape from the whole motherhood mess. I just desperately needed some time to be with myself again, and now I have it, and it frees me to be more present with them, to be glad when they come home. So there you go: kindergarten really is all that.
53 (!) of #52recipes: lemon Mailänderli – cookies “from Milan” if you believe the name, but they’re not, they’re very traditional Swiss Christmas cookies, go figure. Fairly plain butter cookies with just a hint of lemon.
Woolly thoughts (and fuzzy logic) 
🙂