Photo by zharth, under a Creative Commons license

Several months ago, tired of the clutter that our CDs were making in our hobbit hole of a living room, I purchased a few cotton-and-polyester (read: not vinyl, to which I’m vehemently opposed) CD wallets from Ikea to corral and organize our music collection. The difference good media storage makes is astounding. Just one problem: We’re now left with stacks and stacks of jewel cases to contend with—many of them scratched or broken from careless handling over the years—as well as sampler and product promo discs we doubt anyone’s champing at the bit to lift from our hands.

CD and DVD jewel cases are made from molded polystyrene (or sometimes, PVC) and not easily recyclable, so tossing them into the recycling bin and crossing your fingers isn’t going to cut it. You have a few options, however. If you’re of the crafty persuasion, you can squeeze another 14 uses out of them before you give your jewel cases the kiss off. GreenDisk will also accept your castoff cases (for $6.95 for every 20 pounds, minus shipping), which it’ll then use as raw material for its own line of recycled jewel cases.

Disc recycling isn’t a pipe dream, either. The hub and I used to take scratched-up and damaged CDs and DVDs, along with their cases, to 3R Living in Brooklyn. Because we live in Jersey City, it was a bit of a schlep, so I was pretty excited when my pal Siel clued me into the fact that Best Buy now recycles used discs, if not their jewel cases. The CD Recycling Center of America is another place that will take your used CDs and DVDs at no charge.

I prefer listening to tunes on online music stations like Pandora these days; otherwise, I buy songs off iTunes and dispense with the packaging altogether—sometimes, technology does live up to its promise.

Note to Self: On Keeping a Journal and Other Dangerous Pursuits by Samara O’Shea

One way I’ve been keeping the beasts on my back from completely dragging me under has been to keep a journal. Paper is patient, paper is kind, paper does not judge, or worse, tell you to buck up.

Inspired by Samara O’Shea’s Note to Self: On Keeping a Journal and Other Dangerous Pursuits, which my friend Felicia kindly sent along, I’ve taken to putting pen to paper in an attempt to pluck the nebulous threads of dread, doubt, and anxiety that have been swirling in my mental belfry ever since I got pregnant—and coincidentally, stopped taking my medication. It’s better than stress eating, anyway. The waddle of shame, it isn’t pretty.

Several nights ago, I hauled out a small cache of ZIP disks from under my desk, one of which contained the on-and-off digital meanderings of my 19- and 20-year-old incarnations, back in the pre-blogging Pleistocene when we had “homepages” and my e-mail handle was “starbuck” because I was an X-Files-loving nerd. (Not that I don’t rock out my nerdtastic self on occasion today; as that old chestnut goes, the truth will always out.)

Rifling through my own past, I was startled at some of the wisdom I manifested almost 10 years ago. Here’s one passage, dated March 28, 1999, that gave me pause:

Sometimes I wonder what the big deal is all about but I always come up empty when I try to think of an answer. Causes, peope need causes. Reasons, points of being, compass needles, central foci. What if the universe just is and we should stop trying to fathom some deep, inexplicable answer that in all likelihood doesn’t exist, isn’t there; nada, zip, bust.

What if we’re all just running around in circles, chasing our own tails, drunk with ourselves, going nowhere. Everywhere. Anywhere. But always in the same place. Back where we’ve started. Because we’re all fooled into thinking that there’s a means of escaping, but how the hell do you run away from yourself?

I also found my mother’s no-bake-cheesecake recipe, so I declared the spelunking session a win.

Photo by n.askren, used with permission

Where have I been? And where am I going? Those are the questions that have writ large in my mind of late. These past few months have seen a considerable amount of change—I left the world of full-time, professional blogging, a little worse for the wear; I found myself unexpectedly pregnant despite our best precautions; and I’m trapped in a kind of career limbo, caught between editorial odd jobs and a desire for a vocational overhaul, except that my proverbial turkey thermometer will pop in December and I have few options until this strange, inexplicably foreign creature springs forth from my uterus.

When I first started The Worsted Witch, “green” was still a buzz word, not the ubiquitous force of nature (and let’s face it, marketing) it has become today. Few sites focused on living la vida eco; now, there are hundreds. It’s s murkier milieu, though, where it’s become increasingly difficult to tell if you’re being told to or sold to. I wonder if there’s still room for a voice like mine (my personal voice, that is, not my professional one, which is boisterous enough when it realizes there are bills to be paid). Looking through the archives of this site, I’m no longer sure what I set out to achieve: Was I trying to capture snapshots of my own life, aggregate green news and information, or just provide an outlet for my love of pretty things? The perfectionist side of me—a side that has gotten mouthier now that I’m living antidepressant-free for obvious reasons—is tempted to scrape the whole thing, start from scratch. I’m still waffling over what to do, however; depression clouds decision making, too.

But enough about me, gentle reader, what have you been up to all this time?