Opportunities Don't Always Knock

Arm-Knitted Scarf

I started out trying to write a blog post entitled “Things I learnt in 2013” but I found that everything I wrote was coming out simultaneously too personal and too vague, too negative and too flippant, too preachy yet too much like I didn’t have a clue what I was talking about either. So I decided to change tack and just talk about one thing in particular.

Yesterday I held an arm-knitting lesson for some of my friends. This was a culmination of several opportunities I’d been given last year, which might have been very easy for me to miss or walk away from because I was too unsure of myself to follow up on them. Last year, I learnt how to arm knit after seeing a picture of somebody doing it. Initially I dismissed the idea of trying to learn, as I thought my hands would be too bung for it. But the idea stuck with me, and after a bit of persistence, I found I could adapt and improve on the original techniques, and had soon mastered this new skill. A couple of months later, I was interviewing to take over tutoring the Writing for Children class at the Wellington High School Community Education Centre, and the subject of knitting came up. I mentioned the arm knitting, and was offered the opportunity to create a class in that too. 

I’m not great at asking people for help. I mean, I am for the big things. Like the “I am on the floor and cannot get myself up without assistance” or the “I need you to take me to the hospital now” type things, but the day to day stuff, the things where it would be nice to have help but it’s not 100% necessary, I sometimes find harder to ask for. As I’m writing this, I realise probably the reason I find this harder is because of those big things. It feels like too much to ask for the other stuff, when the people in my life help me out so much already.

But last year I learnt that family, friends, and even complete strangers, are often very willing to help you out, but they don’t want to seem intrusive. Sometimes they’re just waiting to you to ask. To give them the opportunity to help. This was really driven home to me when I was shown incredible kindness by a complete stranger, who then thanked me for letting her help me, then again when I asked a family friend if she could give me a lift to a doctor's appointment and she responded “Thank goodness, finally you’re letting me do something for you!”

Anyway, when I told friends about the arm-knitting classes I was going to be teaching some of them were really interested in the idea, especially when they saw the scarf I’d made (pictured above.) I was a little nervous about the idea of teaching it for the first time though, and one of my friends suggested getting a group of people to come around for a practise lesson. 

For a while, I felt just as nervous about asking people to come and be my guinea-pig students. What if they didn’t want to come but felt obligated? This very much fell into the category of something that would be nice to have help with, but it wasn’t anywhere near 100% necessary. In the end I decided that if people didn’t want to come, they were perfectly capable of saying no, just as I’m quite capable of saying “no thanks” to things I’m not so keen on doing. Another thing I learned in 2013 was that being honest with people, even when you think it might be something they don’t want to hear, is an opportunity for both of you to communicate more effectively!



Arm Knitting in Progress

In the end, the lesson turned out to be heaps of fun. I came away feeling much more confident about teaching the classes, and my friends came away with a new scarf each, having learnt a new skill, and (I hope) having a fun afternoon doing it. By inviting people, I’d been giving them an opportunity to come learn something new and socialise, not forcing them to help me against their will. The ones who wanted to come came, and the ones who didn't didn't. Simple as that.

So the big things I learnt in 2013 were to explore opportunities when I notice them - they might turn out to be nothing, or they might turn into something really cool – and to not be afraid of asking people for help, or inviting them to things. Opportunities don’t always knock. Sometimes they’re just standing there quietly, waiting for you to notice them, and if you don’t, they’ll just let you walk away without saying anything. 

Thanks for reading,
Little Miss Autoimmune

Sometimes this Sucks!

Earlier today (or yesterday since it's 2.30am) I wrote a really positive blog post. But I hadn't published it yet, because I hadn't finished checking it and being obsessive, so it's still sitting in my drafts folder.

Then tonight was one of those nights. You know the ones where things keep going wrong until you don't know whether to laugh or cry, and you end up kind of doing both, and then give up on sleeping for a while and decide to write something instead.

Those kind of night suck. A couple of weeks ago, when I'd had an equally bad night I told my friend I'd had an epiphany. It came as I was struggling to get from my living room to my bed because my leg was shaking so much, and I realised I was going to have to sleep in my clothes because I was too unsteady to get changed into pyjamas, and I was going to have to leave the window open even though it was freezing, and I was out of breath because trying to do even the simplest tasks is exhausting when your body is fighting you that much. And what was the epiphany? That this really, really sucks.

It might not sound much like an epiphany or a revelation. I mean it's hardly like I haven't noticed it sucking it in the past. But the epiphany was that I could actually say that to myself without feeling like I had to talk myself into a Pollyanna-type spin of positivity, and without getting angry or feeling devastated, and without feeling like I'm having a pity party just because I'm not Pollyanna. It just sucks, and it's okay to say that.

So tonight's particular brand of suckyness? Tonight is one of those nights where I need to pee every 20 minutes, and it's also one of those night where my joints are particularly sore and my legs keep shaking. My knee buckled when I got to go to the loo earlier, and I crashed into the sink, munting my elbow, then on the way back from the bathroom, my tremors kicked off and I faceplanted onto my bedroom floor. And it's all okay. I'm not hurt, and I got up off the floor without having to press the medical alarm. But by God does this suck, especially as in about 20 minutes I'm going to need to pee again, and I'm going to have to risk falling again on the way to and from the bathroom.

I'll probably publish this post, sleep-deprived typos and all, and I'll publish the positive one too. Because that's what it comes down to chronic illness, doesn't it? The good times and the shite times, and just hoping that at some point the balance tips in your favour.

Thanks for reading,

Little Miss Autoimmune