A reprieve.

[wrongera]

The people that read my LiveJournal already know this, but for the next while, I have medical leave from work. I'm not deathly ill, or anything of the sort, but my health problems have been building to the point where I went to the doctor yesterday to get stress leave, so that I can take a step back from a lot of things and see if I can get my life back on track without one of the biggest causes of stress continuing to wear me down.

I was expecting a few weeks off, maybe a month on the outside. What I got was 12 weeks of stress leave, as well as instructions on how to draw on Unemployment Insurence during that time. With the paycheque I'll be getting at the very end of this month, that ought to hold me over for May, financially, but after that, if I don't have any other income, I'd have to go back to work whether I felt ready or not.

So once I get my Record of Employment at the beginning of next week, I'll file a claim and hopefully some of that money will be here when I need it.

So what does this really mean, aside from potentially haing almost a quarter of a year of free time? Well, for one thing, it means I have a lot of free time to work on various creative projects, which is the real focus of this journal. I won't have spare money to go out and buy new materials, so I'll be making the most of what I already have stashed (and believe me, I have plenty) and what I can scrounge up for free. Which, when I put it like that, may not sound like much, but believe me, there's a lot I can do right now with what I have put aside in my stash, or things that are just lying around on the street. I'm constantly amazed at the amount of garbage that litters the ground that makes me go, "Hey, I can do something with that!"

If I can get my hands on some screen, like a window screen (which shouldn't be too hard if I search around a few apartment buildings, since those things fall out a good deal), I can try my hand at making paper from the flyers that come in the mail that we never ask for and never use.

I've got a sweater or two that can be frogged for yarn that's of the perfect weight for a project of mine. Dye the yarn, knit some two or three colour designs from a few charts I've found or can make, then felt them down and sew a good backing to them, and make patches or badges. I can't think of an easier project to personalize, that's for sure!

Cheap candles aren't quite as cheap as I remember them, but I do have some candles that I bought from Value Village a while back that can easily be melted down so that I can work on the waxcraft projects I have in mind.

Tons of knitting. Can't forget about my knitting! Or my designing, since I still have a few patterns that I need to test knit and then release, either for free or for a small price, depending on the complexity.

I've got a lot of scrap cloth and remnants that can be turned into new clothes or accessories, and plenty of floss that I can use for embroidery on said accessories.

I've still got that set of coloured pencils at my disposal, and a camera, and a lot of pictures that I've taken that would be very good practice for drawing. Maybe I'll try my hand at some ATCs and ACEOs, see if I can create something I actually think might be worth passing along.

And of course, I can always write. I've been feeling the writing bug more and more lately, which isn't surprising since the weather's getting good and I always seem to enjoy writing more in the spring and summer than in the colder seasons. Maybe if I get lucky I can end up with some good short stories, ones I can be properly proud of.

I don't intend to waste this time I've been given. I've let too many opportunities pass me by in the past, and that's part of my predicament now. I could be doing something I enjoy more, instead of having to take stress leave because so much seems to be going wrong. Maybe this is my real chance to see what I can do, to see what I can make and what might come of it. After all, what I primarily need is time, time to organize and to get all these projects started, and I've certainly got that now!

I still need to find my camera so that I can show pictures of what I have been working on, at any rate. Journals like this tend to be much more interesting when there's an extra visual aspect to them, don't you think?

[Edit] There, a few new icons have been added so I can have a little more variety here. Happy happy! This one's my nice-and-amusing "different perspective" icon, since, you know, Lucard makes all kinds of funny faces if you leave him alone long enough. :p