The thing about knitting is it’s much harder to fear the existential futility of all your actions while you’re doing it.
Like ok, sure, sometimes it’s hard to believe you’ve made any positive impact on the world. But it’s pretty easy to believe you’ve made a sock. Look at it. There it is. Put it on, now your foot’s warm.
Checkmate, nihilism.
This is a powerful positive message..
I’m literally reading a book right now (Burnout by Emily and Amelia Nagoski) that says this is scientifically sound.
There have been studies done on rats and dogs where they develop learned helplessness in the animals by giving them impossible tasks. Eventually the animals stop trying, even when the task stops being impossible. (I.e. put a rat in a maze with cheese it can’t get to until it develops learned helplessness, then put the cheese somewhere it can get to it and it won’t even try.) But once they show the animals they CAN do something - i.e. physically moving the rat to the cheese - the learned helplessness goes away.
No one can move you to your cheese for you, but the book says DOING something - which they define as “anything that isn’t nothing” can help. Make a food. Work in the garden. Clean a thing. Do a favor for a friend. Call your elected officials.
Knit a sock.
If you feel overwhelmed by existential despair, do something. It doesn’t have to be big. It just has to be anything that isn’t nothing.
This is really good advice for ADHD people because when executive dysfunction gets bad it’s easy to fall into this pattern of thinking. Do just one thing. It doesn’t have to be your homework, or a chore. It can be something small, it can be something you enjoy. But do just one thing to remind yourself that you can.
This is what “humans want to be productive” really means
We want to make things. We want to do something and at the end of the process see that something has changed. We want physical proof that we did something. We want to be able to point at something and say “I made this”. We want to be creators
So I started doing this with some candles my sister gave me, and y'know what happened?
Because I used the candle, realised how much I liked my house smelling nice. So, i did more to fill my house with nice smelling stuff. I bought reed defusers, I bought flowers (which I stopped doing cause they smell quickly), I cared more about making sure my bins were empty and my sink was clear. I also developed more of a sense for what smells I did like. Like, I prefer woody smells. Incense and sandlewood.
And I realised how nice my house looked when it was clean. So I made more of an effort to clean my house. And cleaning never felt like a chore because I only cleaned when I wanted to.
And because I was cleaning my house more, I made decisions that helped to keep the house clean more often. I found homes for the loose things that never had a home before. I started remembering where things were because they were usually in their homes. I found or bought things to put things in.
It was hard because I’m not good at it, but slowly I developed those skills and got better at it. I realised how little pride I had had in my own home, and sought out new reasons to be proud. I bought things to put on my walls. I just bought myself a rug this week. I might even invite people over.
Anyway, just saying that maybe enjoying the small, fleeting things, is more important than we expect.
i’ll say it til the cows come home but as undeniably strange as the star wars prequels are, george lucas’ direction with anakin was downright fucking inspired. people were waiting for whatever badass backstory lucas was sure to give them, awaiting a naturally intimidating actor with rogueish charm to be cast, waiting for this masterpiece of badass villainy or whatever, and george lucas is like no, no, i’ve got you. and then he finds the one man on the planet who looked babier than baby mark hamill and says, “his main personality trait will be being weird and awkward, secondary personality trait loving his wife, tertiary personality trait being incredibly good at murder, and all of these traits will do battle on the silver screen for three movies until they all win in possibly the worst way.” that fucking rules. george lucas could’ve done anything with darth vader and he willingly, enthusiastically chose mentally unstable college student who is somehow married but his only friend is his kind-of dad. that fucking rules, top down, that’s fucking exquisite. if you don’t think that premise is inherently entertaining you’ve got no taste
