Bye-Bye Lonelies, Sometimes....

This blog post is in conjunction with a previous post that VB wrote.

Sometimes I get a massive case of the lonelies.  In truth, I am hardly ever alone.  Between my two year old son, who I stay at home with, my husband and the revolving door that was our house, I don't get much alone time.  So my loneliness is a different kind of loneliness.  My loneliness comes from a lack of friends that I can call up and say, "Hey, if I can find a babysitter to watch my son, do you want to meet up for coffee or go see a movie or both?"  My loneliness comes from the isolation of where I live.  The nearest place that has anything resembling culture is Great Falls, and most days it's just not worth the drive or the gas it takes to get there.

I do have one thing going for me though.  I have, after 3 years of living here, found a friend my own age that has kids around my sons age.  We have library time every Wednesday and then a play date afterwards until lunch time.  Sometimes, we even get together on other days and let the kids play and we just talk about our kids and other things going on in our lives.  For privacy reasons I will not tell you their names, but I can say this about our new friends, they have saved my life here.  I had given up on making friends that I can talk to about anything here and not be judged because I am the pastor's wife.  And then all of a sudden enter these wonderful people and everything has changed.  The power of consistent and badgering prayer folks.

I still find that most days, unless there is something really pressing that I just have to do, I don't leave the house.  Having our garden this year has alleviated some of my hermitage behavior, in that I have to go outside every day and inspect, water, prune and pick vegetables that are ready to be picked.

I can call or skype with my best friends that don't live here, but sometimes all I want to do is see them and give them big hugs and listen to them talk about their lives and share what is going on with mine.  Sometimes, I find myself day-dreaming about taking my son to the Como Zoo in St. Paul and meeting up with friends and just making a day of it.  Or I get flashes of walking around Lake Calhoun with friends and talking and exercising at the same time on a lovely late-spring, summer or early-fall day.  Basically, I find myself missing some of what my life used to be and I get the lonelies.

But nothing stays the same.  Even if Jason and I end up moving back to Minnesota someday, everything will be different.  I will have kids, when before I didn't.  I may or may not be working, or I may work out of my home.  I may have a more traditional job, or I may find something unconventional to do with myself.  Jason will continue to be a pastor.  And not all of my best friends live in Minnesota anymore.  VB lives in St. Johns Newfoundland, others live out East and others live out in the Northwest.  Again, thinking about all of this makes me feel lonely.

Thankfully, facebook exists, texting exists, skype exists, email exists and with money, planes, trains and automobiles exists to whisk me away to see my people.

I will look back on my time here, however long it may be, and tell stories about how I made a good friend in my small town and survived the lonelies.  Until then, I'm just going to keep on keeping on and try to stay positive about what the future may hold.

Projects I am Working on in My Non-Existent Free Time....

Free time around here only exists during nap time, which doesn't happen everyday now that my son has reached his toddler stage in life.

I am the type of person who needs to have something to do.  I like to call them "projects" because when I actually complete a task, I feel better about life.  I feel like I'm not wasting my life away because I don't have a j.o.b. and am not contributing financially to my family.  But I wrote about that situation in my previous post, so I will not dwell on that here.

I have several "projects" in the works these days and work on them when I have time to do so.  I have a lot of project ideas for the future too that I am excited about and am going to share some of them with you now.  They involve crocheting, reading, writing, paper crafts, amateur landscape photography and getting some of my papers published.

As far as crafting, I had the idea a while back to start doing paper crafts, like making my own cards and antiquing paper and making journals or cards with it.  I haven't started learning how to do that yet, because of the time crunch of being a stay-at-home mom of a 2 year old, very active little boy.  I am still very interested in learning about and doing paper crafting though, so it is on my list of projects to do in the future.

I have been doing a lot of crocheting lately and am getting better and better at it.  I still only know how to do one stitch and am not ready to learn another until I get better at the one I know.  I have made a throw blanket, two rugs and am currently working on a scarf.  All of these are gifts I have and will be giving to people.  It is something I enjoy doing and giving to others.  I had aspirations at one point to try and make some money by selling my completed projects, but I am far too slow and can only work for short periods of time before I start to have an allergic reaction to the yarn.  I tend to work on my crocheting projects during the afternoon when my son is napping and I don't have to do anything but stream tv shows and crochet.

I find that when I don't read for a while, I get cranky and actually depressed about life.  Reading allows me to use my brain and learn new things, even reading fiction.  I just finished reading Twelve Years a Slave, which everyone should read and am starting to re-read Life After Life, a fiction novel that is one of the best books I read last year, for book club.  My life is so dull without a good book in it.  I don't have much time to read during the day, so I do most of my reading before I go to bed at night.  I'll read a chapter or most of a chapter of a book or several articles from my Time Magazine before going to bed.  Reading my Time magazine during the day is easier because I can easily put it down and pick it back up again throughout the day.

And with my new-found commitment to reading, I am starting to write again too.  I am writing in a journal and blogging a couple times a week.  Writing, for me, cures the soul.  It is easier for me to blog because it is a shorter time commitment than say, writing a chapter of a novel or a non-fiction book.  So I plan to blog twice a week and would like to journal several times a week, if I have the time.  I have a great idea for a novel and several ideas for histories as far as future writing projects, but those, I shall keep to myself until I am ready to reveal them.

I have recently gotten the bug up my butt to research publishers both magazine and book publishers.  I have several papers that I would like to try and get published in an academic or some kind of magazine.  I also have two graduate theses that I would like to do something with so I am researching book publishers too.  I have found several online and am trying to figure out the best way to submit my work and have it be successfully published.  I have submitted one of my papers to a publisher already but haven't heard back.  They were quite explicit on their website that if I didn't hear back from them almost right way, I wouldn't be hearing back at all.  But that's okay, there are many more publishers to try.  My last resort would be to try doing self-publishing online.  I'm just not convinced that is the best way for me to go at this time, at least with my non-fiction work.

And just for fun, I am continuing to dabble in amateur landscape photography.  This town might be boring but the landscape around here is amazing.  I am thinking about ways to make some money by selling postcards or prints of my photographs to people.  I am having trouble figuring out copyright so no one can steal my images.  I don't want to have to start a company, but it might be worth it someday if I become more than an amateur landscape photographer.

So, as you can see, I have a lot of "projects" in the works and ideas for the future.  I find I can be overly ambitious sometimes, but when I do find the time to complete a project, it just makes life that much more awesome!  :)