Polar Vortex Jitters

For a week now, I've lived with ratcheted-up anxiety.

 A constant, low-level, jangling vibration running through my solar plexus chakra, which is where I usually experience worry, fear, anxiousness.  In the last decade or so, I've had a great deal of healing surrounding patterns of panic and anxiety, but found it difficult to find my space of tranquility with the intensity of this winter storm, the almost-a-foot of snow, the subzero temps, the threat of losing our power as so many others did, and a definite skirmish with some virus, threatening to end my record streak of not having any horrible respiratory infections since December 2012.

I sit here today, with the temperatures in a perfectly tolerable range, with the snow melting away, with our internet back and the stopped-up kitchen sink (which we lived with for 3 days) fixed. I am breathing pretty easily and feel - dare I say it - a bit perky! But also,  looking back over the last week, feeling a bit defeated. I'd hoped to accomplish so much this week!

 I even thought being stormbound was going to be a deepening of the journey I am embarking upon this year - a journey marked by my personal 2014 year card being The Hermit.

 IX - The Hermit, from Full Moon Dreams, a handmade deck by Lunaea Weatherstone
(She has an oracle page, using this deck. Try it!)


 I thought that auspicious when I did the calculation - The Hermit is also my Soul/Personality card for my whole lifetime. The Hermit. A kind of inner Seeker. Wisdom unfolds with Hermit. I'd like some, please.

But all I felt was anxiety and a sort of malaise that kept me from the tasks I'd embarked upon (for one, a great purging of my personal books as well as the bookselling stock.)

 Instead,  sleep, sleep, more sleep. Cocooned under two blankets with Lily curled in the bend of my legs. Delicious sleep. No anxiety when I slept.

And distraction. Reading when the internet vanished. Mostly Yeats'  Celtic Twilight: Faerie and Folklore (free Kindle edition here.) Watching Mr. Selfridge when it came back.

And knitting & crochet?  In my mind, I kept visualizing myself getting to projects I need and want to do:

tweaking and writing up patterns for my Starbrim Hat, my short-row hat & shrugs
selecting my all one-color yarns for the 2014 Freeform Challenge
finishing the piece I only submitted as a work-in-progress for the 2011 Challenge
pulling together the freeform workshop I will be teaching in April
sitting down at my Saori loom for the first time in months.

Instead, I sat and knitted another Very Long Scarf. Much garter, with random bands of stockinette. Knitting sleep.

)O(