This month, the theme for the IndieWeb Carnival is "Converging Interests." It might actually be easier to list which of my interests don't converge. My interests often overlap. I'll start with a description of my main interests and how they're linked.

Programming is generally useful. I'm particularly interested in automation and cognitive and physical aids like voice interfaces. I love Emacs. It's ostensibly a text editor, but I've tinkered with it to such an extent that I use it for almost everything: managing my notes and tasks, of course, but even recording and editing audio files and organizing my drawings.

Writing helps me think, remember, and share. Org Mode in Emacs allows me to use the technique of literate programming, which combines explaining and coding. Some ideas are easier to think about and express through drawing, which allows me to explore them non-linearly. My drawings apply to all my interests, such as parenting, technology, learning, and planning. Sketchnoting is a great way to learn many things, share my notes, and remember specific moments. For example, my daughter is eager to finish a visual summary we developed together, which was possible because I had written many notes in the web journal I developed and in my French journal.

I've been learning French for the past 4 months, and that also touches various aspects of my daily life. I help my daughter with school, I try to use AI, I tinker with my tools, I watch shows, and I look up words related to my interests. For instance, I updated my handwriting font to include accented letters. This combined drawing, programming, and naturally, learning French. I also modified my writing environment in Emacs to look up words in the dictionary and display AI feedback. I particularly enjoy exploring learning techniques with my daughter, such as flashcards and stories following the principle of comprehensible input. Which methods are effective against which challenges, and how can we make the most of available technology? What we learn will help us across all subjects.

Similarly, learning the piano helps me appreciate the challenge and pleasure of making progress. It's also a good way to help my daughter learn it as well.

Since my life is filled with intertwining interests, it is important to manage my attention despite many distracting temptations, such as programming new tools. I might start a task and then find myself doing something completely different after a series of small, totally logical steps. You know how it goes—one thing leads to another. So I have to write my notes as I go. There is no rush and few of my tasks are urgent, so when I lose my train of thought, I can laugh and look for it again. If I write and share these notes, someone might find them even years later and remind me of them. It is very difficult to choose a moment to stop exploring and to publish my notes. The temptation is always to keep following a new idea.

Fortunately, the cumulative effect of hobbies that complement each other encourages me to grow, and when I am blocked in one direction, one or two other paths usually open up. Speaking of directions, I find it difficult to write when I want to introduce two or more simultaneous streams of ideas because writing is so linear. Still, it's better to write even if it's a bit disjointed.

I think speech recognition helps me capture more ideas, and I'm looking forward to how advances in technology can help me make them happen. I can also get better by learning and linking new curiosities to my other curiosities. I look forward to seeing what kinds of things are possible.

Although I have several hours of freedom now that my daughter can do many things herself, there's always more that I want to learn. Intertwined hobbies thrive, while isolated hobbies are forgotten. For example, I no longer play Stardew Valley since my daughter doesn't play it anymore. It’s a fun game, but if I'm choosing what to spend my time on, I prefer activities that serve multiple goals goals simultaneously. The garden of my interests is not formal and orderly, but rather natural and tangled.

My daughter also has many interests. One year she was interested in Rubik's Cubes and other puzzles; this year she's learning everything about Pokémon. The transience of her interests doesn't bother me. It all combines in unexpected ways. It will be interesting to see how she grows, and to see how I'll grow too.

Thanks to Zachary Kai for hosting the IndieWeb Carnival this month!

You can e-mail me at sacha@sachachua.com.

I track my mistakes in my home-made web-based journal under the Oops category. It feels a little better, come to think of it, when I can recover at least some data from a mistake. It's part of life, just a signal that tells me my brain is getting overloaded.

I thought it would be interesting to analyse the frequency of my oops. For example, here are some recent oopses:

• I forgot to check the EmacsConf upload folder before e-mailing the speakers a nudge about videos. There were a few more videos in there, whew! It's all good, people are patient and wonderful. Impact: people's patience. (2025-11-21-01)
• I ate the last of the brown rice because I forgot to check if there was more. Good thing W- had more in the freezer. (2025-11-18-06)
• I fumbled the Apple Pencil as I took my iPad off the piano. It disengaged from the magnetic lock, slid down the piano cover, and fell on the floor, breaking the tip. I didn't want to rush to catch it because I was tired and I was also holding the iPad. Fortunately, I have a number of backup tips. Impact: maybe $3 to replace that tip eventually. Cause: tired. (2025-11-18-03)
• I washed the clothes on hot because I'm trying to avoid insect bites, but I accidentally shrank A+'s favourite purple shirt. Maybe next time I can just do a small load of my stuff. Impact: $10. I made up by buying new clothes for her, which I've been meaning to do anyway. #household (2025-11-15-16)
• I crossed the street against the lights because I wasn't looking at the pedestrian light. (2025-11-11-06)

Here's a yearly analysis:

(append '(("Year" "Count"))
(sort
 (mapcar (lambda (group)
           (list
            (car group)
            (length (cdr group))))
         (seq-group-by
          (lambda (o) (substring (my-journal-date o) 0 4))
          (seq-filter (lambda (o) (string= (my-journal-category o) "Oops")) (my-journal-get-entries))))
 :key 'car))

import pandas as pd
import seaborn as sns
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import numpy as np

df = pd.DataFrame(data[1:], columns=data[0])
df['Count'] = df['Count'].astype(int)
df['Year'] = df['Year'].astype(int)
df = df.sort_values('Year')
plt.figure(figsize=(12, 6))
ax = sns.barplot(x='Year', y='Count', data=df)
plt.title('Oops by Year (2017-2025)', fontsize=16, fontweight='bold')
plt.xlabel('Year')
plt.ylabel('Number of oops entries')
plt.xticks(rotation=45)
plt.grid(axis='y')
for i, v in enumerate(df['Count']):
    ax.text(i, v + 1, str(v), ha='center', fontsize=9)
plt.tight_layout()
plt.savefig('year_count_plot.svg')
return 'year_count_plot.svg'

2017 was not a full year of data, so that's probably why the number is so low. 2018 was when my dad died. I flew to the Philippines several times with my 2-year-old daughter so that we could spend time with my mom. It's a wonder that I managed to keep things mostly sorted out. Things were mostly manageable in between despite the ongoing pandemic. This year, though, a confluence of factors added a lot more strain on my brain. I wonder if part of it is because I'm concerned about health issues for people I care about. I also worry about the kiddo, school, change, and possibly adolescence. Who knows, maybe I'm starting to go through perimenopause, which apparently tends to include brain fog and mood swings. Fun. These are big things that I won't be able to resolve on my own, but I can get better at not overextending myself.

Might be fun to do a month-by-month analysis.

(append '(("Year" "Month" "Count"))
(sort
 (mapcar (lambda (group)
           (list
            (substring (car group) 0 4)
            (string-to-number (substring (car group) 5))
            (length (cdr group))))
         (seq-group-by
          (lambda (o) (substring (my-journal-date o) 0 7))
          (seq-filter (lambda (o) (string= (my-journal-category o) "Oops")) (my-journal-get-entries))))
 :key (lambda (row) (format "%s-%02d" (car row) (cadr row)))))

import pandas as pd
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import seaborn as sns

df = pd.DataFrame(data[1:], columns=data[0])
df = pd.pivot_table(df, columns=['Month'], index=['Year'], values='Count', aggfunc='sum', fill_value=0).iloc[::-1].sort_index(ascending=True)
plt.figure(figsize=(12, 8))
sns.heatmap(
    df,
    annot=True,
    fmt="d",  # Format as integer
    cmap="YlGnBu",  # Color map
    linewidths=.5,
    cbar_kws={'label': 'Count of "Oops" Entries'}
)
# Set the title and axis labels
plt.title('Heatmap of "Oops" Entries by Month and Year', fontsize=16)
plt.xlabel('Month', fontsize=12)
plt.ylabel('Year', fontsize=12)
plt.savefig('number-of-oops-by-month.png')
return df

Month  1   2   3   4   5   6   7   8   9   10  11  12
Year
2017    0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   7   2   0   3
2018    4   7   4  10  10   8   8   1   7   7   5   4
2019    4   4   2   4   4   1   3   5   1   1   2   5
2020    3   1   2   2   1   5   7   7   4   2   2   2
2021    2   2   1   1   2   4   6   4   2   2   1   6
2022    2   3   2   1   3   2   0   3   2   2   4   1
2023    3   1   1   1   5   2   4   5   0   0   3   3
2024    0   1   1   4   4   8   8   1   3   3   2   2
2025    7   1   7   2   6   4   9   8  10   4  15   0

Oooh, what's up with this month, yeah…

Most of my mistakes are small and easy to fix, just wasting time or patience. Others are a bit more annoying (dropping electronic devices, etc.). Some are potentially life-limiting (gotta make sure I look at the right lights before crossing the street). I tend to have a hard time with:

• transitions, like coming home after a bike ride: I might accidentally hang up my keys on the wrong hook if I'm not paying attention. I've started saying the steps out loud.
• tidying: If I have an attentional lapse, I put things in not-quite-the-right-place, so I probably can't listen to podcasts or think about complex thoughts.
• travel: If I'm biking or walking, I have to pay extra attention.
• task switching: interruptions, stacks, etc. I say things out loud and write them down if needed.

When I notice myself making more oopses than usual, I try to sleep more, take things more slowly, offload more of my thoughts to drawings and notes, ask for help, and do fewer things.

I'm working on single-tasking more instead of getting distracted by interesting thoughts. Maybe I used to be able to think about stuff, but now it's probably better to just let my mind be slightly bored if necessary instead of letting it get overloaded. I have to adapt to my capacity at the moment. I can either trust that those thoughts will come back if they're important, or take a moment to write them down on my phone. I can also give myself more focus time during the day to revisit those thoughts so that I don't get tempted to squeeze them in while, say, I'm putting away the dishes.

Maybe routines, songs, physical cues like checklists, or pointing and calling (physically pointing to something and saying it out loud for confirmation) can help me with some of my frequently-made mistakes.

Little by little. I might not be able to get rid of all the little mistakes, but if I can smoothen out some of the frequent ones, have an oops fund for the monetary costs of moderate mistakes, and keep myself from making the life-limiting ones, that might be enough.

You can comment on Mastodon or e-mail me at sacha@sachachua.com.

Part of handling times like these is touching base with what I know. I know that to be human is to have challenging times, so I don't find this surprising. I know that it is objectively difficult and that other people have a hard time with situations like this, so it's not a personal failure and there are no easy solutions. I know that it is temporary and that things will eventually settle into a new normal. I know there will be many such transitions ahead, and I'm getting used to the process of leaving old normals behind and focusing on the next step.

I know the way my brain tends to behave when it's overloaded. My attention hiccups. I hang up my keys on a coat hook instead of the one near the door. My fingers stutter on the piano. I can't multitask. When that starts to get in my way, it's a good reminder to get more sleep and do fewer things. There are very few firm commitments in my life, and I appreciate the flexibility that my past self planned. There's room to wobble¹ without bringing everything crashing down.

I still notice my anxiety spike from time to time. My anxiety spills out as trying to either control too much, or (knowing that control is counterproductive) stepping back, possibly too much. It tends to latch onto A+'s schoolwork as the main thing it could possibly try to do something about. I feel partially responsible for helping her develop study skills and navigate the school system, but these things are mostly outside my control. It's good that it's not in my control. Then there's space for her to learn and grow, and for me to learn along with her.

Instead of trying to push futilely, it's better to step back, simplify, focus on getting myself sorted out, and build up from a solid base. Better to focus on connecting with rather than correcting A+, especially as she takes her own steps towards autonomy. It's okay for now to focus on making simple food, washing dishes,² combing out the tangles in hair and in thoughts. Maintenance.

Here's the core I'm falling back to for now:

• Sleep
• A good walk outside, maybe 30-60 minutes
• Making an effort to eat a variety of healthy food, picking up ideas from DASH/Mediterranean³
• Piano, maybe 20 minutes: low stakes, not intense, just enough to notice when my mind wanders or my breathing stops, and the ever so gradual improvement from familiarity;
• A little bit of exercise: doesn't have to be much, just enough to begin the habit (15-25 minutes)
• Writing and drawing to untangle my thoughts
• A little bit of fun for myself. Might be tinkering with Emacs, might be drawing. Simple lines and colours are nice.
• Giving myself permission to tell other people "That's not one of my priorities for now." There's only so much I can focus on at a time.
• The reminder that other people have their experiments too. It's not about me; how freeing! It's good to not let my anxiety (just my ego's occasional fears of not doing enough, not being enough) engulf what properly belongs to other people. Learning is mostly A+'s experiment, and I can see this time as collecting data for a baseline. I'm happy to help her when she wants my help. Let's find out what can she do when I'm not pushing.

It's important to me to start from where I am and work with what I've got. Where else could I be, and what else could I use? Only here, only this, and it's enough.

I'm working on embracing my limits. It would be unproductively egotistic to think I have to do this all on my own. It helps to unload my brain into my Org Mode / Denote text files, my sketches, and my index cards so I can see beyond the single dimension of thought. Some days, even that is difficult. It's okay for my brain to not feel cooperative all the time. Some days are more blah than others, and it's hard to shape enough of the thought-fog⁴ into a post or a diary entry. There's no point in grumping at myself over it. It's okay for those days to be rest days, "take it easy" days, "there's room for this too" days. Goodness knows I've had slow months, slow years.⁵ (And if that's good for me, why not extend the same grace to A+? She'll figure things out when she's ready.)

I'm practising asking other people for help and letting them actually do so. I know A+ benefits from a wider world, and I'm glad she can chat with her aunts and cousins. I can slowly experiment with finding tutors and enrichment activities for A+, maybe even starting out with classes for me sometimes. She's been going to 1-on-1 gymnastics class for three weeks now. I love seeing how she's slowly learning to check in with her body and catch her breath so that she has more energy and can work on her flips safely. I love the way she gets up and tries again.

I wonder what other teachers and peers I can help A+ find. Next week, A+ will join a small-group art class so that she can have fun with art outside the requirements of school. A friend of hers is in the same extracurricular class, and maybe the fun will get her over the initial hump of practising fine motor skills and tolerating the frustrating gap between taste and skill.⁶ I want playfulness to be the core of her experience with art, not the pressure my anxiety feels about getting her art homework done. Knowing what my anxiety whispers, I can keep that from leaking out to her. The goal is not to get things done; the goal is simply to have the opportunity to find joy. Someday, when she reaches for a pencil or a brush, I want that feeling to come with warmth, a smile, curiosity: what will we encounter on the page today?

As she learns to read and write and think more deeply, I want the same for her: not the compliance of "have I checked the boxes,⁷" but "where can these thoughts take me?" Can I find her role models who can share that ineffable joy or opportunities where she can discover it for herself? Can it take root deep within her, something to touch as she goes through her own challenges, something that grows as she grows?

A wider world could help me, too. How wonderful it is to deal with something that so many people have gone through, are going through, even if there are no universal answers. I'm checking out workbooks from the library, and it might be interesting to experiment with seeing a therapist. I have mild anxiety according to the screening tools, but it might still be handy to pay for the accountability and structured exploration of my thoughts. Consulting an intern therapist might be a more affordable starting point that can help me figure out if I need more qualified care. We don't have medical benefits, so I want to be thoughtful about how I use resources, and I want to push myself to try out more help so that I know what that could be like instead of trying to handle everything on my own. Like the way A+'s gymnastics teacher thinks about the next skill that might be in her zone of proximal development⁸ (not too easy, not too hard), maybe someone else can help me map out what nearby betters could be and how I might get there.

I know what it feels like when I can handle tough situations well: when I'm ready with a Band-aid or a hug, when I keep our basic needs sorted out so that we have a solid foundation to experiment on, when I get the hang of spelling new terms and organizing my hasty research into coherent understanding and ideas for things to try, when I can be warm and affectionate and appreciative and supportive.

I know what I hope A+ will feel: believed in, excited about her growing capabilities, supported when she wants help, open to things she might not know to ask about, able to straddle both wanting to be cuddled and wanting to be on her own. I want her to feel like she's the one figuring things out, so I want to get better at being a supporting character instead of letting my ego get in the way. (It's not a power struggle, it's not a moral judgment of me or of her, it's just life.)

When my anxiety wrings her hands, frets, whispers, worries that I'm not enough, I can think: ah, she is just trying to keep all of us safe, figure out how to make things better. I can use this imperative, this desire to try to help A+ live her best life. I know I don't want A+ to be driven by anxiety or controlled by conditional esteem.⁹ There'll be hard times for A+, like for everyone. I want her to be able to check in with herself, figure out what she needs, and feel her strength grow as she stretches. So I can work on getting better at that myself.

It's good to practise these things now, in this time that seems hard compared to the recent past but will seem easy compared to the future. Embrace the stress test while the stakes are low, so that I can reflexively use the skills when the stakes get higher, and so that A+ can take what she likes (kids are always watching) and use them as she figures out her own way.

Step by step. It's manageable. I can manage it. Could be interesting to see how we can make it slightly better. I'm not looking for answers. No one has them, and things change all the time. But the figuring out, that's the work of being human, isn't it?

This blog post was nudged by the October IndieWeb Carnival theme of ego.

You can comment on Mastodon or e-mail me at sacha@sachachua.com.

[2025-09-17 Wed]: Added links to other people's posts.

• Physical limits
• Fragmented attention span
• Unpredictability
• Lack of momentum
• Things I learned
• Looking ahead
• Related posts

The door clicked shut. A+ had just shooed me out of her room, and she was already back at her desk waiting for her virtual grade 4 class to begin. She's got this. And all of a sudden, I had time for myself. I could have two focused-time chunks of a few hours each, straight, several days in a row. I've made it to the other side of the early parenting time crunch. I could start dusting off all those ideas that I've shoved into my notes for a long-imagined someday. That someday could be today.

Before I settle back into the world of being able to string two thoughts together, I wanted to reflect on this past almost-decade of voluntarily giving up my time autonomy. I don't know how much of my experience can translate to other people's lives. I've been so lucky in the choices we got to make. But I'd better write down my notes before I forget.

You can comment on Mastodon, view 1 comment, or e-mail me at sacha@sachachua.com.

The weather's getting cooler. I probably have a couple of weeks more before the cherry tomatoes get too cold. A+ hasn't been interested in harvesting them lately, so I get to do the tomato-picking now. We have a little over a month until the usual first frost in Toronto. I moved the strawberries to pots during spring/summer so that I could keep them in a cage away from squirrels, but now it's time to put them in the ground. I'll see if I can still pick up some compost from the garden store so that I can amend the soil before I replant the strawberries. It's a good time for me to get some more lettuce and radishes going, too.

You can e-mail me at sacha@sachachua.com.

9 PM on a schoolday, time for me to nudge A+ off to bed. A+ is clicking through the Stardew Valley wiki, slurping up all sorts of trivia that she'll probably trickle into our conversations. There are two pieces of homework left to do, one with quite a few slides to complete. And drawing. She's not a big fan of drawing assignments. "My hand is tired," she says.

I try to be calm and supportive. I wobble. Could've done this earlier, I think. I manage to keep myself from saying it. I teeter, noticing myself mentally fast-forwarding decades ahead. Oh no, she's not going to get the hang of doing things that she finds boring, she won't develop study skills or executive control, she'll cram through all the classes she can coast in, and all of it will come crashing down in university when she might actually need to buckle down and study.

She's 9! She's a long way from university.

I'm learning to embrace my anxiety and appreciate how it tries to keep us all safe. This feeling makes sense. I want to help her avoid mistakes, especially when the feedback cycle is long and the results of choices will only be seen much later.

But anxiety gets in the way of parenting. If I let the fearful part of my brain take over, I'll inadvertently teach her that mistakes are catastrophic rather than just ordinary Tuesdays. I want to hold her steady, but the wobbles are how we learn.

It's somewhat manageable now, when we can talk about these things openly. A+ can laugh off my worries ("Mom, you're fretting again,") and W- can remind me to slow down when it runs away with me. He's usually pretty chill about all this. It'll be harder when the cognitive rewiring of puberty or menopause turn ordinary conversations into minefields right when the stakes get higher. The more I tighten my grip, the more star systems will slip through my fingers. (There I go again with catastrophizing.)

Besides, I want to help A+ avoid the paralysis of perfectionism or self-recrimination. I want her to be able to experiment, and to pick herself up and try again if things don't work out the first time around. To do that, I need to learn to change my perspective from being anxious about mistakes to seeing the opportunities for re-takes.

There are many things I can't teach A+. Some things can't fully be taught, they can only be learned, like how to balance the clay on the pottery wheel. Sometimes I don't even know what the right answer would be, like what kinds of tips work for her particular brain. Some things change over time and she'll need to change with them, like how to adapt to life's situations. She'll need to learn how to learn instead of relying on one fixed answer.

Fortunately, life comes with so many opportunities to practise. The Toronto public school calendar has 187 instructional days, so she gets plenty of chances to manage her homework and get feedback. The repetitive nature of things used to frustrate me when it came to my tasks (always more dishes to wash, always more clothes to fold), but it's good for learning, especially while the stakes are low. It's her experiment, I remind myself. About half the time, she doesn't even want my help. ("I can do it, Mom.") She's sensible enough to try things out on small experiments instead of scary ones: shopping at the grocery store on her own, not skydiving.

There's plenty of stuff for me to learn while she learns. When I get the urge to correct her work ("How does that line up with the rubric?") or nag her to get her work done, I tell myself:

• Is it really a problem? The teacher isn't expecting her to completely master all the skills, and the teacher is in a good place to give developmentally-appropriate feedback. I can let her experiment with how much work she wants to put into things, and she can see what that results in. Despite all my twitchiness about how she puts off her daily homework until 9 PM, she still manages to get things done. Judging from the frequent reminders her teacher gives the virtual class, she's probably ahead of the curve. So maybe it's not a problem.
• Whose problem is it? Something might not be my problem. It might not even be her problem. She reads during class time, for instance. Sometimes she misses something that can't be figured out from just the homework slide deck. Maybe that's partly her experimenting to find the right balance between attention and stimulation. Maybe that's also partly a consequence of how school is designed to go at the group's pace. Not entirely her problem.

The more I let go of the small stuff, the more experience she'll be able to draw on for the big stuff. I hope she'll get the hang of thinking of life as mostly series of little experiments, and to notice when there's a bigger choice that needs more thinking because it's more long-term. The more she decides, the more confidence we both develop in her decisions.

This reminds me of how kids learn how to bike. The popular approach uses training wheels to prevent falls. The idea is to gradually raise them as the kid improves, but I usually see kids pedaling along (perhaps slightly leaning over to one side) to match the slowness of parents' walking. It's hard to balance when you're going slow. But pedaling isn't the hard part. Balancing is, and you develop balance by balancing. Maybe that's a little like how I get tempted to rescue A+ from the results of some of her choices, but letting her try things is how to help her learn.

A+ learned how to bike using a balance bike instead of using training wheels. When she was two, she toddled along on a Strider, which was light enough for her to manage. Eventually she figured out coasting. She was proud of being able to do it on her own. Then we upgraded her to a Cleary Gecko freewheel bike, with proper hand-brakes and everything. After a few attempts with us holding her under her armpits, she was ready for us to steady her with a hand on her back, and then for us to be close, and then she was off on her own. She fell and skinned her knee many times, developing an appreciation of pants for protection and ice cream for comfort. The more she biked, the more she learned how to notice that feeling of being slightly off-balance, and the better she got at correcting it. Now we can bike on the streets together.

You can't learn how to bike if the training wheels are always on, or if someone's always holding you steady. It's okay to wobble and fall and get up. You learn that you can survive a skinned knee, and so you keep going.

Sometimes, when A+'s in the middle of a meltdown, I have to remind myself not to try to fix it in the moment. That doesn't work, anyway. Just take the loss and try again next time. Sometimes, once we've both calmed down, I ask A+ to imagine rewinding back to a situation so we can play it out a little differently. Sorry, I meant to say this, not that. Would that work better? Next time.

Not mistakes. Data. Just another step in the journey.

Getting better at getting better helps me, too. I've been practising piano, making steady progress through the Simply Piano app. I've been playing for about four months now. I took piano lessons as a kid, but not to any serious extent. Back then, I got bored with the simple exercises I had to do. Now I feel slow, snail-slow, but I can savour the way my mind is beginning to get the hang of things, knowing that it will take me many tries to get the hang of it. I'm starting to be able to look at the notes and remember the phrases, imagine what the next sequence will sound like before I play it, and notice how my hands move to make it happen.

When my fingers wobble on the keys, I slow down and try again. There's no point in berating myself. If my mind keeps hiccuping or my fingers keep stumbling, I can think: ah, is this because I'm tired, or because I want to do something else, or just because I'm learning and it takes time to get the hang of things? I'm getting better at figuring out when I should probably call it a day so that I don't practise mistakes into my muscle memory and when I might benefit from just slowing down the segment.

I still stumble through pieces I've successfully played before. Remembering is hard. But I'm getting better at being patient with myself, accepting that it's because I'm still in the middle of the journey. It's not a mistake that I should grump at myself about. It's just part of a re-take. This is what learning looks (and sounds) like. Of course it doesn't start out perfectly smooth.

Here's me learning Mozart's "Rondo alla Turca", with the app providing accompaniment in the background. It's not perfect, but it's progress.

We were at the playground. I ate the remaining crackers in the snack box because I thought A+ was done. Turns out she was saving them for later. She was very upset. I apologized and promised to ask next time, but she was too far gone to hear.

That was a tough moment. A+ was already emotionally off-balance because the playdate hadn't gone as well as it usually does. Discovering I had eaten the crackers she was looking forward to was the last straw. She dissolved into tears. I snuggled her and settled in for a long wait. I think: Where's the line between comforting her and coddling her? Does my anxiety teach her this is too hard to handle? We're not quite at the point of being able to shrug off mistakes. I remind myself that she'll learn what she's ready to learn.

Looking around while A+ drenched my left shoulder, I noticed a skateboarder on the park road. Maybe a man in his thirties? He was trying to jump his skateboard over a low concrete lane divider. He had been at it for a while before I noticed. Most times, he was able to clear the divider, but the skateboard slowed down too much on the other side and he had to jump off. On the seventh try that I saw, he landed back on the skateboard and rolled on for a bit. Success! He tried again and failed. Four more failures before his next success. One more attempt–another failure–and then he called it a day. I'm sure he'll be back at it.

A+ continued to cry. My phone buzzed, reminding me that we probably wanted to get going before the rain in the forecast. I carried her as I picked up our bags and put them in my bike. Eventually I needed to gradually ease her off me. She curled up in the bucket of my front-loader cargo bike, still crying. I tucked the towel around her like a blanket, buckled her bike into the tow-bag, and walked the bikes home. She fell asleep.

A wobble, a fall. But I'm sure we'll be back at it too. (And we did; the next day, she was happily playing with her friends again.)

It's hard to be in the moment. Sometimes the moment sucks. It's hard to be far ahead in the future. It makes decisions feel too big. Do-overs make things just the right size. If we can get good at shrugging off the inevitable failures and treating them as data so that we can sketch out ideas for the next experiment, I think that'd be pretty cool. Instead of "Oh no!" or even "Are you sure about that?" (what kid likes to be doubted?), I can lean towards, "Hmm, let's find out."

As predicted, we had another late-night homework situation. This time she had a headache and wanted to go to bed, homework unfinished. I was able to let go and just focus on snuggling her in. The next day, after morning routines and without any nagging, she did the homework and submitted it. Late, but done.

There'll be another bedtime homework session, I'm sure. I have to trust that even though I want to shortcut the learning for her, she's got this. She's figuring things out. If we stumble, that just helps us practice for next time, and there are so many opportunities to try again. The wobble is not the obstacle, it's the way.¹

This post is yet another take on the June IndieWeb Carnival theme of Take Two. Here are two other ones: Making and re-making: fabric is tuition and Thinking about time travel with the Emacs text editor, Org Mode, and backups.

Related reflections:

• Productive procrastination and parenting
• IndieWeb April 2025: Renewal

You can e-mail me at sacha@sachachua.com.

I'm not good at saying yes. Sometimes it's because I have no idea how to make something happen, and I don't want to overcommit. Sometimes it's because I don't think something will be practical or worthwhile. Sometimes it's because I want to spend the time or money on other things instead. Sometimes I don't know how to make it something that she can help with. But A+ asks with shining eyes, and I'm learning, slowly, slowly, to say yes. I'm beginning to trust that the mistakes don't matter as much as the memories do.

A+ has always had ideas about what she wants to wear. At five, she was all about floor-length dresses. I sewed her A-line dresses in comfortable cotton Lycra, peasant-style dresses that matched my tops. I also made a knee-length swim skirt for her. She liked it and requested a floor-length version so that she could twirl and twirl and twirl at the splash pad. She wore it into the wading pool too, enjoying how it swirled around her, trapping air under the skirt and marvelling as it ballooned. The following year, she asked me to attach a bodice to it to make it a dress. I turned the knee-length skirt into the bodice for the floor-length dress, took out the stitches that had previously narrowed the then-too-large waist, and it was good for another year of twirling.

When she was 6 and in the throes of a Cinderella obsession (we read through 50+ variants of the story from the library), I made her a powder blue charmeuse ballgown with a full-circle skirt supported by the petticoats and tutus that she layered with abandon: 19 layers of tulle in total. She loved curtsying and twirling with that whole shebang at the pretend tea parties she hosted at the playground, and it survived the washing machine surprisingly well.

A+ is nine now and has long outgrown the ballgown, which has been stashed in the closet until I figure out if it's going to become a skirt for her or for me. But she still wears the A-line dresses from years ago, which now reach her knees instead of her ankles. She still likes fanciful clothes. I made a floor-length light blue dress so that she could wear it to her cousin's wedding. She picked out some ribbon for the waist, a lace trim to place near the hem, and some ribbon flowers as embellishments, and she asked me to sew a hooded cloak with a ribbon closure. After the wedding, I trimmed the dress to knee-length and re-sewed the lace close to the new hem so that she could wear it while biking to the playground.

Inevitably, she's beginning to grow up. Her fancy is tempered by a few nods to practicality:

• knee-length skirts because they don't get in the way of riding her bike
• she likes stretchy fabric more than woven fabric
• skorts are great for doing cartwheels or hanging upside down.

We prefer to buy fabric in person so that she can feel the fabric on her skin. At the store, A+ zeroed in on a sheer floral print organza that she had seen on a mannequin in the window display. "The organza doesn't have a border," she said. "We can make it a circle skort." She's learning to think about the characteristics of the fabric and what we can do with it. She matched the sheer floral organza fabric with a peach polyester-spandex from the swimwear section and the right colour of thread from the basement.

This will be the fourth warm-weather skirt this year. We make little tweaks each time, as she learns more about what she likes to wear. Here's the progression so far:

• For her first summer skirt this year, I made a lavender knee-length rectangle skirt with scallop-edged embroidered mesh over bridal satin, gathered at a 1:2 ratio. She liked the dressiness of it, but 1:2 turned out to not be enough ease for cartwheels, so she changes into something else when she wants to be more active.
• The second was a mermaid scale skort made from the swimwear fabric I ordered last year, based on one of the purchased skorts she liked. It'll be her new swim skirt.
• The third one was a purple skort. I changed it from side seams to a single back seam so that it's easier for A+ to tell the difference between front and back.

I love being able to change things based on her feedback. We've browsed nearby clothing stores and bought a few pieces, but she rarely finds things that she really likes. Her last pick from the store was a peach skort with a matching top. I removed the waist elastic from the top because she doesn't like elastics, and now it's good to go. It'll be the model for the new skort, I think: a non-stretchy skirt with a stretchy fabric used for the shorts. This time she wants a knee-length circle skirt instead of the mid-thigh length of the commercial skorts. Easy enough - just a matter of drawing a bigger circle.

I appreciate how all this experience re-making things makes it easier to say yes to A+'s ideas. For example, the hat I sewed for her last year is starting to feel a bit small. I cut pieces for a new bucket hat using the free AppleGreen Cottage pattern that I'd previously used to make two other hats for her and one for me. This time, I wanted to make the outer layer from the floral canvas left over from reupholstering long-gone dining room chairs and the inner layer from the linen tea toweling that we decided not to use in the kitchen. Midway through the process, A+ asked me if I could make the hat pointy instead, like a witch's hat. I put the brim pieces together, sketched out a quick quarter-circle, sewed the outer layer, and tested the fit on her head. Then I used the inner brim layer to cover up the seams, finished with some topstitching, and it was good to go. I figured that if she changed her mind and wanted a flat hat, I could easily make one from the scraps, or I could even modify this pointy hat to put a different crown on it.

Sewing is becoming more enjoyable and less stressful. I worry less about making mistakes because I've learned how to recover from many of them. Sometimes something's more of a loss, like that lavender floor-length cotton dress with a split organza overskirt that she wore a couple of times before it was declared too uncomfortable, or the scraps that she cuts up when trying to fashion a dress for her doll. That's fine, fabric is tuition for learning.

A+'s becoming more adept, too. She's no longer limited to standing still for measurements, fetching pieces of fabric, or other make-work I could think of to keep her busy while I sewed. Now she can get the sewing machine to wind the bobbin and she can thread the needle. She can sew straight seams and stop when the machine makes an unexpected sound. She can turn straps right side out and unpick seams when we make mistakes or change our minds. She knows it isn't just a matter of how a fabric looks, but also what it feels like and how it moves. She's gradually learning what she likes and what she doesn't like. And if I have the temerity to remind her how to do something ("Make a 'p' shape with the thread when you put it in the bobbin case"), I get a glimpse of the teenager she'll become ("I know how to do it, Mom.").

We're getting better at seeing the clothes as their component parts: patterns, fabric, pieces we can recombine. "Can you copy this, but without sleeves?" she asks, and I figure it out. Looking at the yardage left, I can start to think: ah, I can squeeze a matching training bra out of this part, and I think I have enough here to make a top, and this rectangle is large enough for a headband, and I can turn these scraps into flowers while I'm waiting for her at a playdate.

I'm learning from all her requests. By myself, I tend to settle into comfortable routines. In 2015, I made 18 tops based on the Colette Sorbetto woven tank top pattern, eventually taking advantage of Hacklab's laser cutter to precisely cut the fabric so that my notches lined up every time. When I find something I like, I make it again and again. A+'s still figuring out what she likes. We're learning so much.

Sewing for A+ is a time-limited opportunity, and I want to make the most of it. There are only so many clothes I can sew for her. Eventually she may want to wear the same things as everyone else, or eventually she might be comfortable doing all the sewing herself. Eventually she'll be off on her own life. Maybe the ballgowns will turn into skirts or camisoles, and from there into headbands or scrunchies.

Re-making echoes through our past. My mom tells me this story of how her mom sewed, and how their family was poor. My mom rarely got a new dress, so when her mom sewed a red dress for her, that was special. She wore it until the bodice couldn't fit any more. Her mom undid the seams, sewed a new bodice onto the skirt, and gave the dress back to her. She wore it until the skirt was all worn out. Her mom undid the seams and replaced the skirt. My mom said to her mom, "Does this mean I have a new dress now?" This was not the only dress my grandmother made for her. My mom also tells a story of how one time she hovered by her mom's sewing machine, impatiently waiting for her mom to finish sewing the dress that she was going to wear to a party that day. My grandmother must have also worked on re-making, on learning how to say yes. My mom didn't make clothes for me, but she passed on the stories.

All this reminds me a little of two picture books we borrowed from the library. My Forever Dress by Harriet Ziefurt and Liz Murphy (2009, video) shows how a grandmother extended and transformed a dress as her granddaughter grew. Something from Nothing by Phoebe Gilman (1992, video) retells the Yiddish folktale about Joseph's overcoat, this time with a special blanket that gets worn down and transformed into a jacket, a vest, a tie, a handkerchief, ending as a fabric-covered button. The button gets lost, but it turns into a story. Of the two, I liked Something from Nothing more. I liked the lighter touch it told the story with, and I liked the reminder that cherished things can be turned into stories.

A+ was in the kitchen, making a grocery list on an LCD writing tablet. She wanted to buy apple sauce, yogurt cups, and mac and cheese. She wanted to do it herself, with her own money. W- will walk her to the store, let her loose, and meet up with her in front of one of the aisles. "Mama, you can stay home," she said.

Challenge: She wanted her own bag for groceries. Her backpack was too small. I rummaged through the reusable bags hanging on the coat hooks. There's this cotton tote we got from an event, but the straps are too long. When she put it on her shoulder, it threatened to fall down. When she carried the bag by its straps, the bag dragged on the floor. I shortened one strap to see if she can hold it then. The body of the bag itself was too long. I sewed a seam across the bottom. Now it's the right height for her. I shortened the other strap and serged the bottom seam to make it neat. She wanted a pocket for her purse and the KN95 mask that she'll wear in the supermarket. W- was almost ready to head out. "Give me another five minutes and I can make her a pocketed bag," I said. He waited. I opened up the scrap from the bottom, sewed the edges together in the other direction, turned it into a pocket, and sewed it to the top hem of the bag. A+ pronounced it perfect. She tucked her purse, mask, and shopping list into the bag, looped the straps over her shoulder, snugged the bag under her elbow, and headed out into the world.

I still sweat my way through figuring out how to sew what she comes up with, but it's good for me. I make and re-make so she can have things that fit her ideas, and so that she can dream of more. She's learning that her ideas matter. It can take several tries, but we can make them happen together. Someday she'll make and re-make things all on her own.

This post was inspired by the June IndieWeb Carnival theme of Take Two.

You can comment on Mastodon or e-mail me at sacha@sachachua.com.