Knitting things in perspective

I'm not sure if it was taking a day off in the middle of the week, joining a knitting circle full of more mature women, or my attempts to quit coffee that have brought on the blissful wave of calm that I'm experiencing amidst everything I have to do.

I kept telling myself while I was writing my dissertation, as I increased my coffee consumption from one cup to three, that "desperate times call for desperate measures." I'm not sure if someone famous once said that, but it was a college friend's mantra, one that was repeated frequently as we stayed up late writing papers, eating donut holes and drinking our very fancy root beer. Clearly, this was before I had discovered lattes. Our all-nighters were frequently followed up by breakfasting on mocha-almond-fudge ice cream, justified because it was clearly high-protein with all that dairy and nuts in it. But, I digress, the point is that now, three cups later, the coffee has done me in more than I care to admit. My experiments with quitting this week, drinking weaker coffee and less of it, appear to be resulting in a level of calm that I have not experienced in decades.

Ofcourse, this is terrible for my productivity, reading, wordcounts and such, but I am still getting work done. I'm just not breaking my back the way I am so easily prone to.

I was admiring a friend's knitted shawl the other day and then I felt so inspired that I decided to start another knitting project. We ran into each other at the yarn shop and then brought our knitting to my favorite coffee shop in town and sat and talked and worked on our knitting. The next evening, we joined a group of women in a knitting circle, just some good conversation and knitting. I was amazed at some of these elderly women because they just seemed so grounded and centered and happy with where they were. I felt like it rubbed off on me. My usual angst seems to have disappeared somewhat and I'm feeling like the week just sort of melted away.