Wednesday, Oct. 13, 2010 - 11:34 a.m.

The week of silence was because J was on 2 trips back-to-back. He's back now, so hopefully a return to normalcy. Whatever that is.

It was my birthday last week. I am old. I don't care. I still think of myself as about 30, even though I am way past that now. (And 30-year-old-self thought of herself as about 24; I've always been slow to catch up).

My mom asked me again, "So what are you doing with yourself these days?" as a conversational gambit. I wish she'd stop doing that.

The truth is, I have given up on a few things and thus am finding the situation less stressful, although I am not proud of how I have given them up-- i.e., just disappearing off the face of the earth, so that I'll have much more work to do when I want to start everything back up again.

I also hate seeing people and having to explain the the jewelry-making isn't going, not so much. Jewelry-making is the new dissertation.

But I still deny that any identity has been lost. Shouldered out of the way temporarily, but still there, still primary. Just not something that I can perform every day.

But I did buy myself an excellent calligraphy book (Sheila Waters' Foundations of Calligraphy-- the best instructional book I've seen; after reading a page or two I had to immediately recognize that there was lots I don't know and was doing wrong; it isn't easy to get me to admit that) and have begun again with that, where I should have started in the first place. Foundational Hand. Daily practice and analysis. Discipline. Having a little discipline about something helps a lot.

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