Knitting … and the peace it has brought me

I’ve just remembered it is Monday and I agreed to try

#glamblogweekly

and have now forgotten several times in one day to come up with a post.

This blog post should be about #VALATechCamp – which was amazing, and inspiring, and has given me a To Do list of 50 new things to try. However I have been going over my notes in between web meetings and my head is far too full at this stage to decant clearly.

So I’m going to talk about getting headspace back instead.

Anyone who has met me has probably been subjected to a bit of a rant on my obsession about work/life balance, and the work required to get to this harmonious and productive point. I have been a workaholic, still there after late night library closing, up sending messages again early in the morning. I’ve also been so disengaged with my work that days have passed without me being able to recall to anyone what I had covered in that time. Now I like to think I am achieving close to balance, and am always interested in new neuroscience research that talks about how to get there.

I signed up for Mindful in May this year, a repeat on last year, hoping to achieve real progression in my capacity to let thoughts go past my mind’s eye without grabbing them and developing each one into it’s own new docudrama or 10 year business plan. Some progress was made but not much.

At my CWA meeting in the same month we talked about learning new crafts, and someone mentioned that knitting was supposed to be good for depression, meditation and letting go anxiety. Then someone on my Mindful in May discussion group mentioned why a repetitive can assist in meditation, and I started to hope that a repetitive practice may help me.

I’ve now been knitting a little bit each day for a month. It has helped me calm down, focus and yes – achieve some mindfulness (for a few minutes or so). Like my pottery class, some part of your brain takes on the subconscious task of completing a known activity, and it’s enough to keep me anchored when other thoughts drift past.  In meetings, where after an hour I tend to get restless, where a part of my brain starts to focus on this as time lost, constantly straining to be doing something else; knitting has calmed that anxious voice. It may not be doing work but it is being used for something productive, and known.

At home knitting is creative, and has me thinking about the upcoming birth of a friend’s baby as I knit booties, rather than what I could be creating at work.

I’m sure it is also helping me that when I knit, both my hands are full and I cannot hold a phone or ipad …