an ounce of action and a bundle of spring

Running is becoming less painful as more and more shades of pink and green appear and spring begins. Despite the cold rain and rainy cold and slush and snow and rain and clouds and wee bits of sun and clouds. Fractious weather, fractious season. But I surpassed my running goal this week, reaching 11 miles. So this week's goal is 12, if the weather is kind and willing.

Other goals for this wonderful week:
Finish my grandmother's embroidered portrait.
Complete my lame-ass PSU class! Hooray!
Build planter boxes for kitchen windows.
Choose a theme and create invites for baby shower for J.

I found this lovely blog by a Portland writer and artist. Her name is Alicia Paulson, and she said this about starting and maintaining her blog in an interview over at Feeling Stitchy. It really resonated with me:

I had been a writer all my life and had worked as a book editor -- but before I started blogging I hadn't written a word just for myself in over eight years. So blogging was, in a lot of ways, a return to a version of myself that I had lost along the way. In the moment, it was sort of a direct reaction to these feelings of barely controlled professional chaos I was experiencing: staying organized on the blog helped me re-organize my real life and work in real time, somehow. But in a much larger way it also allowed me to reconnect to an essential part of myself that I had kind of put behind me. I think my reasons for blogging are still exactly the same as they were in 2005. I'm still very selfish about it. I still maintain that it's just a place for me to do and say and show what I want. I still see it as a personal blog and a way of telling my own story to myself.

In many ways, I feel this way about my own blog, "telling my own story to myself" and helping me organize my life around the aspects that are meaningful: nurturing health, staying goal oriented, and being creative. And I used to write. I filled journals and comp books with stories, poems, character sketches, and diary entries, and blogging is a way to keep writing--personal, creative, expressive writing--in my life. This is why I value this space and am becoming more confident and more insistent that it is my true voice.

Can't wait to finish my class! I ordered a few books using my free month trial of Amazon prime, so they should be all on my porch by Thursday! They include a book on urban farming by Novella Carpenter and a guide on over 400 embroidery stitches.