Is This the Other Shoe?

You know how we always talk about waiting for the other shoe to fall? Basically, when things are going well, we're waiting for the negative things to come and balance the scales, because it's not possible for things to go TOO well - something's going to bring us back down to Earth.

Well, lately things have been going pretty well. I've been asked to do a panel at the Flights of Foundry convention at the end of the month, talking about copyright and public domain basics. The convention is being put together using the things that the attendees say they can bring to the table, and so I had said that I could talk about copyright, and I could also demo a board game. They've asked me to do both! I can't say that I expected them to take me up on that offer, but here we are!

I'm also doing a workshop at GeekGirlCon in November, talking about how embroidery can help improve your mental health and teaching the basics of cross stitch and blackwork. In this case, I had suggested the panel and said that I wanted to do it, so it's not as much of a surprise, but I still wasn't expecting them to say yes.

These are things that involve a lot of work, but they're things that make me excited (and nervous) and happy. It's an overall upswing, and I want to say I'm waiting for the downswing. But...maybe this is the upswing that's making up for the earlier downswing for this year? We've had a rough couple of months, so maybe this time, the other shoe dropping isn't a bad thing.

I'm working to maintaining my optimism, but there's still that little bit that's waiting...

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Wanna Hear Me Talk?

I mentioned in my last post, but now I'm doing the official promotional thing. I'm going to be doing a couple of presentations at the Flights of Foundry convention next weekend! Specifically, I'll be doing a game demo for Rolling Realms on Saturday, September 28 at 1pm Pacific. On Sunday, September 29 at 3pm Pacific, I'll be doing a panel presentation on copyright and public domain basics; finally, also on Sunday, September 29 at 5pm, I'll be on a panel sharing my handwork (specifically my crochet, cross stitch, and blackwork) with a few other fantastic people. This is my first time doing this kind of presentation, and so I'm a wee bit nervous. Still, I'm super excited, and the fact that it's all online means that I'll at least be in my home, and the cats may or may not make an appearance on camera. So! If you're interested in what's looking to be a fabulous online convention (that's FREE!), come join us next weekend!

Calm Your Mind with Needle and Thread

I was fortunate enough to be able to host a workshop at GeekGirlCon last weekend, which went extremely well. My friend Erin was in town for the convention and was kind enough to co-host the workshop with me, which worked wonderfully because she was able to answer some questions that I didn't know how to answer, and also keep us on time (she's a professor, so she's experienced with dealing with classrooms full of people). I thought it would be a good idea, for my own benefit if nothing else, to document the first part of the workshop, which was a talk about embroidery and mental health. I've made the PowerPoint and list of resources available on a separate page of this blog ( here ). I don't know about you, but the last few years have not been especially kind to my mental or emotional health. I discovered early on in the pandemic that going back to something I learned when I was a child, cross stitch, was something that could help ease my anxiety and give me somethi...

Hope is a Four-Letter Word

I've been bouncing around with this for the last few weeks, ever since I read a couple of quotes from the book Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman. The book overall had some interesting ideas about reframing the idea of trying to get everything done. Even though there were a couple of things that made it clear the author was not approaching things with an eye toward neurodivergence (his discussion of distraction, for example, only talks about the "choice" to be distracted, and not how some people's brains simply don't focus the same way others' do), I was feeling generally positively toward the book until I got to the last chapter, and read this: "Hope is supposed to be 'our beacon in the dark,' [environmentalist Derrick] Jensen notes. But in reality, it's a curse. To hope for a given outcome is to place your faith in something outside yourself, and outside the current moment - the government, for example, or ...

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