korvidae's journal

Things have not been going so well. I've been quite down for some time now, and a growing pile of issues has made it hard for me to feel better for any length of time. But! I am nothing if not persistent, and I will do what I can to make myself feel better, dammit.

Yesterday, I spent 4 hours driving a relative to and from an appointment and some errands, and the entire time, they continuously berated me about my living situation, my partner, and the state of my car. I came home feeling sorry for myself and exhausted. As I made dinner, I decided to clean out and organize the refrigerator, which definitely gave me a boost at the end of the day.

I spent most of today (I'm on vacation from work atm) vegging out and feeling sad again. While watching YouTube I came across a video where a girl mentioned "junebugging" her bedroom, and it motivated me to get off the couch and do some cleaning.

The basic premise of junebugging is you pick one particular spot to clean, and then you get started cleaning. As you go, if you find yourself wandering away, you bring yourself back to that spot. I decided to clean the top of my dresser because I've been talking about taking the humidifier out of storage for weeks now and the dresser is the only place it will fit.
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In August, I will have lived in this apartment for a year, and I'm only just starting to make it feel like it is actually mine. Although I unpacked everything pretty much immediately and got everything where it belonged within a few days of moving in, there are still things that I put down in August 2022 that I still haven't opened or moved in the intervening months. (I should probably cut myself just a little slack because I've been teaching full-time for 10 of those 12 months, but whatevs). I still haven't generated enough executive function (or energy, or whatever) to tackle the boxes, but I have brought a small stack of artwork and posters from the house over and will be trying to find some inexpensive frames and 3M hooks to put them up in the next few weeks. Another small thing I've decided to do is dye some towels I bought when I moved in because they looked dingy and sad.

I've been having entirely too much fun dying these damn towels. I saw a video on Tumblr providing an in-depth tutorial on dying synthetic fabric with Rit dye and I became mildly obsessed. I was initially planning on just buying new towels to replace the dingy ones, but I always feel guilty about buying new things when I already have a functional version of that thing. The towels are ugly, but they still dry things; they're still perfect for my purposes. I couldn't justify buying more. But I could justify altering them. So I wandered over to the Rit website and found a formula for a really pretty pinkish-purple color, and broke out some unused gift cards to procure what I'd need. After nabbing a big, cheap pot, the dye, and some detergent for dyed fabric, I enthusiastically took my first stab at it.

It feels a little silly being this excited about dying towels. But I guess it's more the fact that I'm just trying a thing I'd have been too nervous to do before (processes involving chemicals, heat, and time have not always ended well for me in the past), I found myself able to make a change to my environment for the better, even if in a tiny, mundane way. I can't help but feel like if the things you do and use every day are irritating, you're going to be irritable. Likewise, if you can make those things more enjoyable, maybe you'll spend more time in your day in a good mood. That's what I'm attempting to do, at least. And doing it cheaply is even better.