Tag: 2024 Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge

What’s New in My Life Lately

Hmm…This is a tough one. Last week, I mentioned crocheting. That was new as of January. But beyond that, I’m a teacher and thus deeply in the swing of the year. Not a lot of new comes up. Classes are all just past the half way point. Not even my free reading (I’m reading Furious Heaven, which is a sequel, so not really a new thing – but excellent). I’m writing my sequel to my novel I’m querying, so that’s not really new (and I’m about 91K in, so definitely not new). I’m back to querying agents again after a bit of a break, so that’s kind of new.  And it is the (Lunar) New Year. So Happy Year of the Dragon! That’s new. 

Chinese Dragon From Qing Flag

Things I like to do on stormy days

Time for Long and Short’s Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge. The topic is, well, things I like to do on stormy days. Writing is the obvious choice. And drinking tea – big fan of the Murchie’s Storm Watcher in loose and bags (and so many of their other teas too; they make great green-black blends like the No 10). A new activity, however, is crocheting. I picked it up during January intercession, when I taught a course on flow activities. What are flow activities? From Wikipedia, the characteristics of flow are:

  1. Intense and focused concentration on the present moment

  2. Merging of action and awareness

  3. A loss of reflective self-consciousness

  4. A sense of personal control or agency over the situation or activity

  5. A distortion of temporal experience, as one’s subjective experience of time is altered

  6. Experience of the activity as intrinsically rewarding experience

Here’s a Ted Talk on Flow from Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the psychologist who coined the term.

Writing is certainly a flow activity for me and I’ve lost more than one day to writing. I hadn’t expected crocheting would become one for me, but thought it might be a good contender for some of the students. My mother came as a guest teacher and a few of them (and my co-teacher) got into it, but it also hooked me (pun intended). 

My first project was the hat that was the class project. Mom had started us off with a little circle. Mine, however, turned into more a beret than than the beanie intended 🤣. Now I’m working on this scarf project. I found the pattern just googling and loved that it came with a YouTube video, that helped me with the new stitches. I’ve been working on it on rainy days (ah for more snowy days!) while listening to Kate Elliot’s Furious Heaven.