Marigold dust all over my fingers

My friend Peg has a post in which she is talking about All The Things, All the Many Many Things, and she says:

I fret about how everything, but everything, expands into a million marigold petals when I touch it. I want to scrape at the scale on my bathroom faucet with a toothpick, and to paint my living room myself, and to redo every inch of my yard. I plan to find the pillow for the cover that’s been made out of my wedding dress, and the upholsterer I’d hoped to ask about recovering my dining room chairs has gone out of business. I resent work for taking time away from studying.

And yes. Oh my yes. The world–my world–is full of things that want doing. Some of them want doing now. Some of the ones that want doing now are just not going to get done. But the biggest thing here is that I’m trying to keep the opportunities and leave the fretting behind. I don’t think we want to go without seeing all the things that can be better, the awesome things that can exist but don’t, all the opportunities that this kind of reaction to the world gives us. I’m just trying to let go of the component that fusses and keep the component that sees.

This is harder than it looks.

It’s not easy–but it’s easier–when I’m comparing things I have a choice about. “Work on story” vs. “have tea with friend”: I will choose some of each, and which one will depend on the day, the story, the friend, and a dozen other things. But the last few weeks there’s been a lot of “what gets removed from the list because ‘feel ill’ has replaced it?”, and that…I am even less good at that. Whenever I have a bad time with the vertigo, or a cold or what-have-you, I want to catch! up! I want to make up for the time “wasted.” And over and over again I’m being reminded that not running myself into the ground is not actually a waste.

This week Tim suggested that we should get a three-d ice printer*, and I discovered that my head is full of abstract ice sculptures. I didn’t know that about myself until he postulated this gadget, and then there they all were, cold curves that live in my brain without me even knowing it. And…I am so glad that it does that sometimes, this brain I got. Even with the fretting. So very glad.

*No, we know of no such thing being manufactured. We were talking about my need for baking (tangible, ephemeral) as a counterbalance for writing (intangible, lasting), and Timprov thought that ice sculptures might also serve the same need, and it is unwise for people of my balance abilities to use chainsaws very much. So: three-d ice printer. But really, shouldn’t there be one? Isn’t it an awesome idea?