I have a lot of cold irons that fell out of the fire. I'm going to stick around Pennsylvania for awhile, and see if I can heat up some projects and ideas. Living with my mom has been great. Slowly but surely I am floating to the surface; grasping reality once again. Bullshit! I am, however, having fun.
Some shit I've been up to:
1) I recently started paying attention to my book selling business again. I need money to do cool shit and stop being scared of running out of money. I'm going to sell books online. I'm really good at it. Problem solved.
2) Last night a person who I've been seeing, Laura, stayed over. I drank a bunch of chardonnay out of a box, and then manically proceeded to show her my condiment packet collection as it currently stands. I have disorganized boxes of packets, and unopened correspondence dating back to 2016. We opened the letters, and I semi-organized my inbox. I had about 25 unopened submissions which included some incredible condiment packets from around the world. What a relief it is to take stock and know where I stand with the collection. Now that I am living at the headquarters of The Condiment Packet Gallery for the foreseeable future, I intend to make an update to the website soon - condimentpacket.com
3) Me and mom joined a quilting club called "Quilts for Kids." We went to our first meeting and it was great. I met a person named Marge who is active and interested in every imaginable aspect of textile arts. We talked for more than an hour. I had many questions, and Marge had many stories and ideas. There were maybe a dozen people at the meeting, and I feel comfortable there. I want to make friends who use sewing machines, and everybody in attendance absolutely does.
4) I am designing and building a living space in Kennett. I am attempting to create a small sewing studio where I also sleep. I bought a queen sized mattress that folds up. I make my bed in the morning by folding up the mattress so it doesn't take up over a third of the entire available square footage of floor space. When I get sleepy, I unfold the mattress. The mattress is on the floor, and that is how I like it.
This is a good time in my life. When I arrived back in Pennsylvania, my brain was bashed apart. Sometimes I am worried about the tenuous relationship we have with the universe - feet on the ground; heads in the stars - it can stretch and pull a person impossibly thin. Recently, I have found comfort in the advice of Pema Chodron to embrace impermanence. Right now my thinking is that I would love to live with my mom in Kennett and stop thinking about other geographical locations. If I can walk slowly through the small daily tasks to reach intermediate and long-term goals, I can resume travel in a year. But Chris... if you are reading this a year from now or more... I hope you are calm, and I hope you are excited to be alive, or maybe about a project in particular.
