Darswords

Per Linda:

Your prompt for JusJoJan, January 22nd, 2024, is “mood.” Use it any way you’d like. Have fun!

This was my prompt. Yay! I wanted a good word that offered lots of ways to go. But nothing came to mind. So I went to a word generator. I dismissed at least a dozen words because I wasn’t in the mood. Then suddenly, MOOD came up. What are the chances?

I’ve wanted to get over here and write this jot all day, but I was in the middle of tinking a sock project and then restarting, messing up then re-tinking the project again. As much as my mood was grumpily redoing the same thing over and over, I found my need to make it look good overcame the grump.

When we were talking about despair the other day, I talked about a game that proved a lazy streak in that the grump shows up when I have to click out of the scene and many scenes back. I decided to play the game and see if I could overcome that tendency. I made myself click in and out of scenes just out of curiosity. It worked. By the time I got to the big clicky one, I was ready to do it without even the slightest feeling of grump. So mind over mood this time.

I know that happens with my knitting. I can remember long ago nearly feeling the need for suicide if I had to tear out my work. Maybe it is because I am retired, and I have all the time in the world to get it right, but I don’t go dark. In fact, I kind of love that flutter sound of frogging, tearing the whole project up, and starting over. I tell myself now I start new, and I have all this yarn to play with that was in the project before. Tinking (knitting backward) isn’t quite as much fun, especially the finer sock yarns on the thin needles, my eyes get crossed and feel like they might stay that way. But when I overcome the grump, I am always happy I spent the day figuring out the problem.

This may not seem such a revelation to some. But for me, it has been a lifelong issue. How do I motivate myself on the bigger projects? I am still looking at a box of stuff to go through. I know that I will be happier when that ‘real estate’ of the house is open for something other than the box of stuff. But I need a better psychological mood fix to get the job done. My inner child is causing so much grump. How do I find the right mood?

~~~

Thank you all for your many ways of using this word. There were several that were really fun. Did you see Ghostmmnc‘s take with the mood ring and the mood ears? I started my day reading that and laughing at the ears.

My friend, Yvensong, gave an idea of where the mood magic goes.

I would put more of them here but the clock tells me I need to post NOW!