You're Restless Baby

I kept thinking I was bored, but that would mean I have no interests. Which is of course far from the truth. I have a lot of interests. Have I even mentioned jewelry making as one of my hobbies. That I actually still enjoy doing.

My husband told me I was just restless. Now what does that mean exactly? According to the dictionary restless means "Not satisfied to be at rest or in peace." Now that seems a little rough to me. I think I like the definition better of "eager for change." That seems to define my dilemma much better.

Eager for change helps define my newest hobby, knitting. Knitting helps keep me occupied. I can't seem to just sit still. Knitting allows me to concentrate on something. As I mentioned earlier, I do have one nifty scarf for my efforts. I tried to make a scarf for my son. However, he wanted two colors. I learned quite fast that I don't know how to switch back and forth from one color to the next and back again. I did finish, but it's just unraveling, so I will have to try again.

To solve my knitting mistakes, I did sign up for a knitting class. I am looking forward to my first class on Tuesday. It's on how to knit a hat. I hope to learn some new skills to redo a multi color scarf for my son and perhaps have a cute winter hat to wear. It would help tolerate a cold winter. It will also be nice to be able to figure out how to fix any dropped stitches.

My first attempt at knitting led to frustration. I would drop a stitch and not know how to pick it up. So what did I do? Unravel several hours of work and start over. This was not very therapeutic.

Finally a friend reminded me, "Ingrid, knitting is supposed to be calming."

So I thought, o.k. Let me try again.

More success this time. I still don't know how to pick up a stitch, but I embrace my mistakes.

Now you think knitting would be enough for now, but no. I still am feeling restless. What is it I want to accomplish?

"The University offers mini-courses", my husband suggested. The mini-courses were more of a way for him to cure his restlessness during the winter. At first I thought I was not interested in going back to school, even for one class.

However, I decided to embrace the idea and thought perhaps they had a class on writing. I have always been interested in writing, but besides reading a lot, I never pursued writing. I think I actually tried to avoid writing classes. Perhaps I just didn't want to write about subjects other people wanted.

I scrolled through the mini-course offerings and was quite excited to see a class on writing. But not only writing, a class on how to write a family memoir. That's one of the few things left on my high school bucket list, aside from going to Hawaii. In high school I said I would write a memoir about my parents immigrating to America.

Now before I delve into this memoir (another blog post), why in the world do I have a high school bucket list. As a senior in high school, a psychology teacher had the class create a book about us. That's it, just a book about ourselves and the family and friends in our lives. A simple book about who I am (at least who I was at the age of 18).

Besides listing my favorite things at the time, which is quite comical in itself, and my friends describing me (there's a lot of talking issues in those - which seems to be a pattern). We wrote a list of 20 things we would like to accomplish in our life. A bucket list made for an 18 year old. I guess over 20 years later I should start a new one.