It’s difficult to tell whether altruistic behavior is a difficult behavior for me personally, or whether it’s a characteristic that everyone needs to work hard to be.

Unnatural

Deep down, my inner voice is very selfish and wants no part in sharing anything I have.  Old voices in my head are constantly terrified that I can NEVER gather enough to be certain I won’t be left wanting at some future point.

More rational, but equally self-interested parts of my brain say that self-care is important and that I can’t help anyone if I don’t take care of myself first

But it also hurts a very different part of me when I see suffering or need and there is a push for me to relieve that in any way I can.

Lately, I’ve been doing a lot of work registering guys for the 2018 Men’s Spring Knitting Retreat coming up this May.  The event, by design, is a not-for-profit/not-for-loss event.  So while I want to make sure the event is financially viable each year, I also don’t want to profit in any way from my efforts to produce this event.

It’s amazing to me how easily my mind goes to ways I can maximize profits for this event.  I was definitely raised and educated to think this way, and I’m starting to think it’s inherently a part of who I am.

Fortunately, I like structure and rules in my life and we built altruistic tenets into the regional men’s knitting retreats.  So we have scholarships, we never profit from coordinating a retreat, we have volunteers present all workshops.

Overall these tenets have created an atmosphere of amazing generosity in the guys.

It takes a lot more work to be altruistic, but when it comes down to it, I’ve found nothing more satisfying when I am.

Does selflessness come easy for anyone?

Current Knitting/Spinning

Slowly growing, the Read Between the Lines Shawl is moving along at a slower and slower pace as it grows wider.

I am determined to get this shawl finished by this weekend…we’ll see how it goes.

I’m also taking great delight in being back to spinning after a time away from it.

Tommy’s roving is just fantastic and I have lots of time to dream of how I will use the resulting yarn when it’s finished.