Words meme
Reply to this meme by yelling "Words!" and I will give you five words that remind me of you. Then post them in your LJ and explain what they mean to you.
Words courtesy of ashfae
patience
There are multiple sorts of patience; some of which come naturally to me and some of which I have had to learn. One sort that comes naturally to me is waiting out unavoidable delays e.g. if stuck on a train. My mind easily wanders, whether through observing my immediate surroundings, making future plans, or setting myself little challenges like "try to think of a sort of biscuit starting with each letter of the alphabet". Another sort that comes naturally is doing comparatively dull tasks; partly by the aforementioned mind wandering, but mostly by 'mindfulness' - just being able to be absorbed by the moment & appreciate what there is to be appreciated in it. I think this latter skill has been particularly useful in looking after babies/toddlers - I don't mind reading them a book for the nth time, because I can look for details I might have missed before in the illustrations or something.
One sort of patience which I have only acquired through conscious will is the self-restraint involved in reading through the instructions before trying to assemble a bit of furniture or waiting for one coat of paint to dry before applying the next. My preference is to leap into something straight away and work it out as I go and I'll still do that if I judge the risk of irreversible damage to be sufficiently small; but I've learned through experience that sometimes it really is worth measuring twice.
Any reputation I have for a further sort of patience, patience with irritating people, is probably partly due to being genuinely difficult to rile, and partly due to mostly preferring to keep my own counsel (and possibly rant a little to a third partly) rather than say anything to someone's face, partly through an intrinsic dislike of conflict, and partly through a belief that it's unlikely to be effective(just to reassure, if you're on my flist you aren't an irritating person in my eyes)
non-perfectionism
This was something I added to my interests list at a time when I was getting irritated by a series of occasions when I'd been referred to as a perfectionist (I don't now remember by whom, or in what context), as it is something I am emphatically not. It's not that I don't have standards or a desire for improvement; it's that I'm 100% about the 'good enough' rather than the 'perfect'. Partly because perfection is so rarely achievable, but mostly because I would much rather do five things fairly well than one thing perfectly.
motherhood
I had always wanted to become a mother when the time was right; and I was confident that the right time had arrived. I wanted to do it because I was too curious as to what it would be like to be willing to go through life without experiencing it, and also because I thought it was something I would enjoy and be good at. This seems to have proven true so far.
The shift involved in acquiring a child is massive; this absolute and 24/7 responsibility for another human life. Particularly so if you are exclusively breastfeeding because you really can't just up-sticks & take the rest of the day off. Becoming a mother has thrown new light for me on the maiden/mother/crone archetype: the shift from being childless to being a parent has affected my life so hugely that I can imagine the shift when the children do fly the nest being equally huge.
wisdom
I frequently get called 'wise'. I sometimes feel slightly odd about this because 'wisdom' carries to me an implication of something acquired through experience, particularly difficult experience; whereas I seem to have just been extremely fortunate in that my instinctive take on the world is one that (so far at least) has proven extremely successful (and, presumably, helpful to others - hence the 'you are wise' comments).
mystic pig
For those of you who weren't reading my journal then, or whose memories need a jog, the mystic pig was a little fortune-telling gizmo I wrote back in 2004, when I was teaching myself basic perl. It was a straight rip-off in concept from a similar (though apparently now defunct) meme called the magic magic cactus. It has that essential meme-propagation tool: the code to post into your livejournal, but otherwise it's just some very basic word-recognition (e.g. if you ask a question starting with "when" it'll give you an answer like "sooner than you expect" or "never if you carry on as you are now") combined with some specific answers for questions that came up a lot like "Why is the sky blue?" or "Am I pregnant?" (I log the questions asked in a text file, but it's completely anonymous - no IP addresses recorded or anything). I think the coolest thing resulting from me creating this was a complete stranger deciding to attend a fancy-dress party as the mystic pig's bodyguard (complete with their own mystic pig for answering questions)
Programming is something that's completely dropped off my radar since I had children, because it was something I used to do in long concentrated bursts and finding that sort of extended quality time is very difficult when there are babies and toddlers around; and what little I have got, I have tended to use for visual arts. I enjoyed the brief fame it and the interests meme generated for me, and it's something I might go back to at some point, but it's not a big priority for me.
Words courtesy of ashfae
patience
There are multiple sorts of patience; some of which come naturally to me and some of which I have had to learn. One sort that comes naturally to me is waiting out unavoidable delays e.g. if stuck on a train. My mind easily wanders, whether through observing my immediate surroundings, making future plans, or setting myself little challenges like "try to think of a sort of biscuit starting with each letter of the alphabet". Another sort that comes naturally is doing comparatively dull tasks; partly by the aforementioned mind wandering, but mostly by 'mindfulness' - just being able to be absorbed by the moment & appreciate what there is to be appreciated in it. I think this latter skill has been particularly useful in looking after babies/toddlers - I don't mind reading them a book for the nth time, because I can look for details I might have missed before in the illustrations or something.
One sort of patience which I have only acquired through conscious will is the self-restraint involved in reading through the instructions before trying to assemble a bit of furniture or waiting for one coat of paint to dry before applying the next. My preference is to leap into something straight away and work it out as I go and I'll still do that if I judge the risk of irreversible damage to be sufficiently small; but I've learned through experience that sometimes it really is worth measuring twice.
Any reputation I have for a further sort of patience, patience with irritating people, is probably partly due to being genuinely difficult to rile, and partly due to mostly preferring to keep my own counsel (and possibly rant a little to a third partly) rather than say anything to someone's face, partly through an intrinsic dislike of conflict, and partly through a belief that it's unlikely to be effective(just to reassure, if you're on my flist you aren't an irritating person in my eyes)
non-perfectionism
This was something I added to my interests list at a time when I was getting irritated by a series of occasions when I'd been referred to as a perfectionist (I don't now remember by whom, or in what context), as it is something I am emphatically not. It's not that I don't have standards or a desire for improvement; it's that I'm 100% about the 'good enough' rather than the 'perfect'. Partly because perfection is so rarely achievable, but mostly because I would much rather do five things fairly well than one thing perfectly.
motherhood
I had always wanted to become a mother when the time was right; and I was confident that the right time had arrived. I wanted to do it because I was too curious as to what it would be like to be willing to go through life without experiencing it, and also because I thought it was something I would enjoy and be good at. This seems to have proven true so far.
The shift involved in acquiring a child is massive; this absolute and 24/7 responsibility for another human life. Particularly so if you are exclusively breastfeeding because you really can't just up-sticks & take the rest of the day off. Becoming a mother has thrown new light for me on the maiden/mother/crone archetype: the shift from being childless to being a parent has affected my life so hugely that I can imagine the shift when the children do fly the nest being equally huge.
wisdom
I frequently get called 'wise'. I sometimes feel slightly odd about this because 'wisdom' carries to me an implication of something acquired through experience, particularly difficult experience; whereas I seem to have just been extremely fortunate in that my instinctive take on the world is one that (so far at least) has proven extremely successful (and, presumably, helpful to others - hence the 'you are wise' comments).
mystic pig
For those of you who weren't reading my journal then, or whose memories need a jog, the mystic pig was a little fortune-telling gizmo I wrote back in 2004, when I was teaching myself basic perl. It was a straight rip-off in concept from a similar (though apparently now defunct) meme called the magic magic cactus. It has that essential meme-propagation tool: the code to post into your livejournal, but otherwise it's just some very basic word-recognition (e.g. if you ask a question starting with "when" it'll give you an answer like "sooner than you expect" or "never if you carry on as you are now") combined with some specific answers for questions that came up a lot like "Why is the sky blue?" or "Am I pregnant?" (I log the questions asked in a text file, but it's completely anonymous - no IP addresses recorded or anything). I think the coolest thing resulting from me creating this was a complete stranger deciding to attend a fancy-dress party as the mystic pig's bodyguard (complete with their own mystic pig for answering questions)
Programming is something that's completely dropped off my radar since I had children, because it was something I used to do in long concentrated bursts and finding that sort of extended quality time is very difficult when there are babies and toddlers around; and what little I have got, I have tended to use for visual arts. I enjoyed the brief fame it and the interests meme generated for me, and it's something I might go back to at some point, but it's not a big priority for me.