_______________________________________
/ all the depressed townies around here \
\ need to grow a pair...                /
 ---------------------------------------
        \   ^__^
         \  (\/)\_______
            (__)\       )\/\
             u  ||----w |
                ||     ||


         ________________________________________
        / ... of extra arms because here come so \
        | many hugs and so much support that you |
        \ need another pair of arms!             /
         ----------------------------------------
                \   ^__^
                 \  (@@)\_______
                    (__)\    <3 )\/\
                        ||----w |
                        ||     ||

Also, incoming! Here comes a spoon brigade from the federated spooniverse!

 _______   .==.   _______   .==.   _______   .==.   _______   .==.
[_______>c((_  ) [_______>c((_  ) [_______>c((_  ) [_______>c((_  )
  <3 <3 <3 '=='    <3 <3 <3 '=='    <3 <3 <3 '=='    <3 <3 <3 '=='

> Welcome back to the world! Grab a spoon!
> -Joey Tribbiani

---

I got an amazon package in the mail yesterday. I didn't remember having bought
anything recently from amazon. Especially not recently, because we're only a
couple of days into Frugal October, or "Frugtober", wherein we don't buy
anything unless it's a neccessity. Even the things that I consider "needs"
fall below "neccessities" in this hierarchy. For example, I really *need* to
buy a travel crate for my dog because his travel anxieties have reached
unacceptable levels of disruption and harm. We usually tie his leash to an
anchor in the back of the car so he can't get into trouble, but the last time
we took him out for a hike and I tethered him down, I mis-estimated the length
(shortness) of leash required to allow him to roam freely in the back trunk
space but which will also prevent him from trying to climb over the back seat
into the passenger area. Shortly after we started the trip, his travel anxieties
manifested, and the way in which they manifest is this: he suddenly can do
nothing but follow the compulsion to crawl into the lap of a human and touch
their face with his face, and sometimes even this degree of close contact
isn't enough to make him feel better and then it's really all gone to pants
because he doesn't know how to climb inside of a human and even if he did,
that would not be allowed.

So he started following this anxiety induced imperative and started trying to
scale the back seat, the first obstacle to completing his goal. Normally this
would not be an issue because normally the leash tethering him in the trunck
is short enough to prevent him from climbing the seat, but as I said, this
time I mis-estimated its length.

So instead of remaining safely tethered in the trunk, he had enough length to
climb to the top of the back seat, but not to climb down, so he stayed perched
up there, and at this point--I was driving--I started to pull over because I
knew about the single-mindedness that comes from the Anxiety Induced
Imperative (AII) and that he would not long stay atop that back seat but would
soon try to climb down the other side of it despite not having the length of
leash to do so.

I pulled over onto the shoulder of a highway exit ramp just as he decided to
take the leap, and he slid down the backseat a couple inches until he hung by
his neck from his collar where the short leash was attached. The lady had
already bolted from the front passenger seat around to the side of the car to
reach him, and I lunged back from the drivers seat to grab him so that I was
holding most of his weight and the stangle collar was holding little of it.

We got him down and he was just fine. Physically. A couple of deep breaths,
and the humans were fine too. Physically. Emotionally. The dog was
retethered with a much more carefully measured length of leash and the rest of
the trip was uneventful.

And so, I really *need* to buy a travel crate for my dog because his travel
anxieties have reached unacceptable levels of disruption and harm. But it is
not *neccessary* that I get one until the next time we take the dog for a long
drive, which is pretty much only when we go hiking, and now it's October, and
in fact it is snowing outside, which means that it is pretty much winter, and
so it's not an immediate concern because I rather don't enjoy winter hikes.

All of which is to say I hadn't bought anything lately--not even for the
health and safety of my dog--and I wasn't expecting a package from amazon.

I opened it up and inside were 12 stencils. Small and thin, about 4 by 6
inches. They had all manor of callouts and banners and stylish bullet points
stamped into them. Inside was a note that said, Enjoy your gift!

I have off-and-on kept a *bullet journal* for a couple of years. The "on"
times are when I suddenly became busy enough to need some kind of a system for
tracking tasks, assignments, projects, notes, drawings, ideas. A kind of
omni/meta system. I had had success in the past using a tiddlywiki to
implement a kind of Getting Things Done system, but this became too rigid and
inflexible as the *kinds* of notes and writings I wanted to capture increased.
It was great for documentation and tasks, but less so for more organic,
creative capture. I couldn't draw or doodle in it and it wasn't very fun to
take class notes or lecture notes.

The "off" times, when I stopped using the journal, are more simple and quiet
times when I don't have that much going on and any kind of system at all seems
like a little bit too much, a little overkill, a little more that what I need.

But this is an "on" time. I'm busy. I have projects and work and I have
projects at home and there's a lot to do and I can't have things slipping
through the cracks.

This time I'm trying to prevent myself from abandoning it again by working in
a lot of things that are indepent of anything else, hooks that designed to get
me to use the journal daily, even if absolutely nothing is going on in my life
at all. Things like a daily habit tracker and a daily gratitude log. Things
that I can look at and meditate on for a couple minutes a day even if/when my
life once again becomes calm and still enough that any kind of task tracking
system becomes unneccessary and feels like a burdonsome obligation.

Off and on for over two years I've been keeping this form of Bullet Journal. I
just started using it again two months ago, and am just now really starting to
really enjoy it. It is becoming routine, comforting in a ritualistic kind of
way to see the pages fill up, meditative and theraputic to put pen to paper
and pour my head out into it. (Can you relate to that feeling, Feelsizens?)

I haven't really talked to anybody about it though, and so here I am with
twelve small stencils and the invoice reads "Bullet Journal Stencils" and
they're from a mysterious gift-giver and I'm quite confused about who has been
spying on my through my Amazon Alexa and what I might possibly have said aloud
to let the spy know that I've been journaling and that I enjoy it so, and what
kind of generous and altruistic Santa Spy would drop a thoughtful little gift
like this down my metaphorical chimney?

On the gift receipt there is a QR code and a note instructing me to Scan here!
to begin a thank you note. This is the only apparent connection I have to the
sender. I scan it and it pops up a pre-written little thank you note addressed
to my mother-in-law, a notorious "just because" gift giver who I really,
honestly should have suspected from the get go. Rather disappointed in myself
really for not thinking of her right off.

I do have my own amazon account although I forget about it from time to
time because of the shared prime account we share. and on my amazon account
that I forget about from time to time, I apparently have a wishlist that I
update once or twice a year, or whenever I happen to remember that I have the
thing.

And sure enough on this wishlist, this list which is at least two levels deep
into not existing in my waking thinking mind; this list I don't think about on
the amzn account I don't think about. On this list, added a year and a half
ago by a version of me who was obviously, yet again, getting excited about
getting back into their little journaling habit, was a twelve pack of
journaling stencils.

I'm not close to my mother-in-law. We don't speak often and when we do it is
usually because of requests from her of the technical help or website
administration variety. Most recently she has suffered a mishap where
Google/blogspot completely wiped out her website. It's been entirely purged
from blogspot with no trace. There's no warning or notice of deletion in her
email. She bought a domain for it but can't find a single trace of information
about that. There are no cached or archived versions of it. It hasn't been
posted to or commented on in the span of roughly ten years, so I wouldn't be
surprised if it became sentient out of sheer boredom and deleted itself, or
shuffled off to some other dark dusty corner of the web. Anyway, she texted me
earlier last week asking if I'd take a look at her blog, and after a cursory
glance, I told her I don't know, looks like you've got a mystery on your
hands, a missing persons case. You should contact support. And that was that.

And for the tiny bit of (unhelpful) attention I paid her, that kind human went
and found a little thing that I had picked out for a certain version of myself
that I had since forgotten about and which I'm only just now starting to
rediscover and enjoy, and she decided to invest in that particular version of
myself by purchasing that thing and shipping it to me in time for it to arrive
right at this particular moment, at the convergance, at the independent
co-arising of that self from two different sides.

How trivial and mundane that that version of myself is merely a me who
journals, but how fantastic and wonderful it is that that version of myself is
a me who ponders, reflects, measures and grows, thinks and learns.

Thank you for my stencils.