I was in Limerick singing at a wedding, and afterwards I stayed overnight with my uncle and his family.

Some time after two in the morning, as I was about to step – or let’s be honest, lurch (wedding, remember?) – into my (absent!) cousin’s bed, I realised something disastrous: I hadn’t done my daily stitch (which is part of the promise I’m keeping). And I hadn’t brought anything stitchy with me from home.

Dun-dun-dunnnnnnn!

What could I do?

At stake was my unbroken streak – hundreds upon hundreds of days doing my Tiny Things faithfully, without fail. And now I was facing the prospect of breaking that streak, all because I’d forgotten to stick my stupid knitting in my stupid bag.

Consternation! Uproar! Waily waily waily!

I was sleeping in my cousin’s room, as I’ve said. I looked around.

Astonishingly, he appeared to be more into football and journalism than textiles (I know, right?), so there was nary a workbox nor a bit of unfinished cross-stitch lying around.

(Dear coz, if you’re reading this: I didn’t rummage, OK? I just had a quick look.)

If I had even a crochet hook and a bit of yarn, I could fulfil the requirement. I had neither.

But wait!

Wait just a minute!

Textiles are everywhere!

They are (and I’m proud of this one, so brace yourself) woven into the very fabric of our existence (warned you). Spinning – the twisting of fibres to make a continuous string – is without a doubt one of the foundational technologies of human civilisation.

I might not have yarn, but I had cord. Power cord, to be precise. My phone charger.

And I might not have a crochet hook, but what is a crochet hook but a tool to simplify and diversify an already existing concept: that of looping yarn to make a chain.

So as the music swelled to an heroic crescendo that would bring a tear to the coldest eye, I took my phone charger and used my index finger to made a crochet chain. Stitch of the day: done. Bam!

In fact, several stitches. Bonus!

Then I ripped it out so I could read my phone in bed. There’s nothing in the rules that says the stitch has to stay in, after all.

(Just ask Penelope.)

(That is a reference to Homer’s Odyssey, because I am down with the kids.)

And the moral of that is…

I’m telling you this because in this stressful and uncertain time, you might need to hear that when I say “do what you’ve promised every day”, I really do mean every day.

Even when you can’t.

You have total permission to adapt so that it works.

Do it your way. Do it a new way. Do it a silly way that can’t possibly be allowed to count. And then count it.

Because it’s yours, you know?

It’s all yours.

St Patrick’s Day means one thing to me

It’s a memory. Everything else I know about St Patrick’s Day is subordinate to this. I have no idea why this memory imprinted itself so strongly on Tiny Léan, but there we are.

I’m in my grandmother’s house, in what must be the late 1970s, because I really am very small.

We’re all getting ready to go out, and I know it’s a special day because I’m wearing my Sunday best although it’s not Sunday.

Remember those white cotton knee socks with the scalloped edges and the fancy lacy holes? Well, those. With buckled shoes. I’m a three-foot fashion icon.

We’re going to Mass, it turns out, and before we go, we all pin a handful of shamrock to our coats – actual cut bunches of the plant, a heap of tiny green leaves just beginning to wilt. My coat is blue wool.

Both the shamrock and the mid-week Mass mean that it’s St Patrick’s Day.

Bleak

Throughout my childhood, St Patrick’s Day was a bleak occasion. It’s in March, of course, so Dublin is usually cold and/or rainy.

And it’s in the middle of Lent, which in twentieth-century Ireland was a pretty big deal, especially for schoolchildren.

It’s also a holy day of obligation, which means Catholics must go to Mass. (I was brought up mildly Catholic; I got over it.)

In school they went on and on about snakes and bonfires and how St Patrick converted the pagans and became our first bishop. We sang “Christ on my right hand” and “Dóchas linn, Naomh Pádraig”, and drew crayon pictures of the man himself in his green robe and pointy episcopal hat, stamping on a sheepish-looking snake. His curly gold crozier was fun to draw (although possibly, now I think of it, a screaming anachronism).

The parade was just baffling. I couldn’t see the tiniest shred of purpose to it.

If memory serves I only attended in person two or three times, when I was small enough that it was mostly legs and bottoms and too much noise.

In other years we watched it on TV: a slow drizzly serpent of trudging musicians, interspersed with inexpertly decorated flat trucks, each prominently displaying the name of some uninspiring limited company, full of goosepimply people who hadn’t dressed for the weather, waving and dancing (to stave off hypothermia, perhaps?).

It’s all different now

Some time in the mid-1990s, as Ireland began to uncurl itself from under the merciless heel of the church, the holiday was transformed into a multi-day *!*!*!*FESTIVAL*!*!*!* (ah, you’d miss the blink tag all the same), full of creative energy and innovation and colour, with funfairs, lectures, walking tours, street theatre, storytelling, live music, dancing, eating and (yes, obviously) drinking.

The parade, from what I see on TV, is unimaginably better than it used to be.

Sadly, we haven’t been able to fix the weather, but the holiday has morphed into a celebration of much that is good about modern Ireland.

The green beer and the leprechaun hats and the “kiss me, I’m Irish” are irrelevant in all this, by the way. You do see them around, but they’re essentially Irish-American, reimported over here as the cultural hegemony solidified.

Then again, it’s fair to say that the popularity of St Patrick’s Day outside Ireland is what prompted the shift away from the grey, cheerless pomposities of my youth. (And you know what? If the price of that is an increase in drunk people wearing orange nylon wigs staggering around my home city every March, I’ll take it.)

Not this year, though

Not in 2020. Because in the face of the coronavirus pandemic, the government has cancelled the festival altogether. “The Irish have cancelled St Patrick’s Day” sounds like the punchline to some vaguely problematic joke, but it’s real. We’re doing this. (And the rest of it – school closures, working from home, etc.)

So stay safe, stay home, wash your hands – and despite everything, I hope you have a happy St Patrick’s Day.

Happy International Women’s Day!

[For the avoidance of any shred of doubt about where I stand on a question that keeps slithering across my social media timelines these days, trans women are women. Also, in answer to a common question, yes, there is an International Men’s Day. It’s on 19 November. Thank you. We now return you to your scheduled programme.]

Do you spend time in women-centred spaces?

I’m not talking here about women-only spaces, which are generally set up as a means to provide safety from patriarchal violence. Rather, I’m talking about cultural spaces, both physical and virtual, where people of all genders and none may be present, but women’s lives, concerns, and experiences are assumed to be the norm.

I’ve never been much of a woman, to be honest. Growing up, I was often more comfortable in male company, and I generally don’t feel I fit in very well with mainstream femininity.

(I need to state, on this day of all days, that no hierarchy of value is implied here: I’m simply describing my experience.)

So when I joined the Irish Patchwork Society, several years ago, it was by far the most feminine community I’d ever participated in.

From the start, it really struck me how women’s experience was being centred and celebrated at our meetings.

Well, obviously

Sure.

And yet, at the same time, not obviously.

I’ve been a member of a diverse range of communities over the years, and although my personal privilege-matrix means that I’ve (almost) never felt at a disadvantage because of my gender, that’s not what I’m talking about here.

Every mixed-sex community I’d been part of before had reflected the social assumption that the lived experience of a man (more specifically, let’s be honest, a white, cis, straight, ablebodied, neurotypical, financially stable man) is the norm from which anything else deviates.

When I joined the IPS it was both strange and refreshing to realise that here was a place where women’s lives, concerns, and experiences were being centred – casually, without apology, and without particular reference to men.

What do I mean by this?

I’m not even talking about the fact that nearly everyone in the room at these meetings presents as female, or that patchwork and quilting – like all textile crafts – are strongly coded as feminine activities in our culture.

I’m talking about something as simple as a shared understanding of the burden of housework – which, like it or not, is still a majorly gendered experience.

I notice the warm thanks given each month to the volunteers who make the tea, the way we’re encouraged to bring along our own mugs and not expect anyone to wash up after us. I notice the way people talk about tasks like laundry and ironing and how they relate to the beautiful textile pieces the branch members have made. I notice the gentle acceptance of the fact that for practically all of us, domestic responsibilities come first.

These are tiny details about the way the meetings are run, but they make a profound difference to my experience.

Not that I wish to suggest that the Irish Patchwork Society is some kind of feminist utopia.

It’s not perfect

Not at all. There’s plenty of the usual patriarchal shite in evidence there, too, from body-shame talk to gender-essentialist husband-bashing to normative remarks about parenting choices. I do wonder, as well, how comfortable a space it would be for a person more visibly queer than I am.

Overall, though, it’s an environment unique in my life because it is woman-centred, and I love it for that.

If you don’t habitually spend time in women-centred spaces, on this International Women’s Day I am suggesting you give it a try – no matter what your own current gender may be.

You might like it.

Do you know the pain of not doing your work? I used to experience it as a constant, nagging ache at the back of my mind, a metallic sense of wrongness in the pit of my stomach. Sometimes, it was barely noticeable. Sometimes, it was strong enough to stop me in my tracks, double me over, bring tears to my eyes.

Up to late 2011, I was fairly frequently not doing my work (see under: small children, among many other things). These days, by contrast, I am doing my work.

There’s no pain … and whoa, I just paused to acknowledge that, because it’s huge. Instead, there’s a sense of stability, of bite and groove. Even when I don’t make much progress for a little while, I never grind to a complete halt, and I trust that my momentum will return.

It’s all down to what I wrote about a couple of months ago: the tiny things I do every day in order to keep my promise to myself.

Until I began that process, I’d never done anything remotely similar. The shift is immense. In many ways, it has rewritten me.

“Ooh, now I can fly to the sun, just like I’ve always wanted!”

A little way into my promise-keeping experiment, I gave another of B.J. Fogg’s ideas a whirl – namely, his “Tiny Habits” exercise. I had high hopes, given that it was Fogg who had inspired my commitment to tiny things in the first place.

The way the Tiny Habits dealio works is that you sign up, for free, choosing three behaviours you want to develop over the course of a week, and then there’s an automated email series with a daily check-in.

A lot of people find this life-changing.

I … kind of flopped at it?

Although I’d followed the instructions to the letter and come up with three perfectly viable habits to try (or so it seemed to me), I kept forgetting all about them. I did at least two of them most days, but I don’t think I had a “perfect” day the whole week.

Fogg’s system is well developed: he describes clearly how to “anchor” your desired behaviour to an existing automatic behaviour, and he gives highly specific guidelines on what constitutes an effective Tiny Habit (hint: go tiny … tinier … no, tinier than that).

Furthermore, he’s clearly speaking from the solid theoretical standpoint of a Stanford University professor. But something about it – or me – or the relationship between it and me-at-the-time – just didn’t gel.

I was frustrated, because I really thought I’d nailed the “do tiny things consistently” lark.

(Can one nail a lark? Given a sufficiently sharp nail and a sufficiently compliant – possibly chloroformed – lark, I think one can.)

Turns out I hadn’t. The lark remained unnailed (much to its relief, one rather suspects). Something was missing.

See, I don’t forget about my tiny things.

What’s the difference? I believe it comes down to that ageing chestnut, extrinsic vs. intrinsic motivation.

Extrinsic vs. intrinsic motivation

You’ve probably heard of this distinction, but to summarise, broadly speaking, extrinsic motivation is a reason to do something that exists outside myself.

So, for instance, observing the rules of the road. Hauling out the glad rags for a friend’s wedding. Having that report on your desk by nine a.m.

It follows, then, that intrinsic motivation is a reason to do something that exists inside myself.

“You know what,” one might say, “today I’m going to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race. Because that sounds like a lark I’d like to nail.”

(James Joyce said that. More or less.)

Extrinsic motivation and I? Let’s just say we have a complicated history. We go way back, deep into the territory of Portrait of the Artist as a Young Approval Junkie.

As a child I jumped through ALL the hoops. My continued existence, in fact, was predicated on being able to wring favourable judgement from those in authority. I was really good at it, too.

These days, for an intricate web of reasons, extrinsic motivation and I are on a break.

(Er. I mean for certain things, such as creative work and personal development. I’m still following the rules of the road and dressing up for weddings. And I’d say, if you explained to me why your desk was the best place for that report, and nine a.m. the best time for it to arrive there, I’d get it done.)

Pats on the head, once the staple nourishment of my tender, twisted little soul, don’t do it for me any more. I need a better reason.

Trying to do my three Tiny Habits for B.J. Fogg that week just ran me into a series of rucks and pulled threads. Even though I’d chosen the habits myself, something about the structure of the thing apparently busted me right back to my teens. To be honest, it was tough going.

By contrast, my one-word-one-stitch regime is for me, pure and simple. My motivation could not possibly be more intrinsic. Happy days.

The story is not over

It’s fair to say that since extrinsic motivation loosened its grip on me, there’s been a kind of power vacuum. Saying that I’ll do something can feel quite risky these days, because I’ve done so much belated rebelling against the system (man). My experimental daily practice is – still – revolutionary, but it hasn’t solved everything.

After the Tiny Things Incident I did what any stable, balanced, self-respecting artist would do: I ran and hid. For several years. It was a setback, truly, to discover that I wasn’t Magically Cured, that I couldn’t now make myself do anything that took my fancy.

More recently, I’ve been experimenting with a bit more structure in my life – a greater level of explicit commitment to the things I want to do.

Living without a schedule, as I have been for all sorts of reasons, only gets you so far: other people’s agendas encroach from all sides, at all times, unless you set up palisades.

I’m not sure exactly what’s going to work best for me, or whether I’ll end up giving Tiny Habits another whirl, but I’m trying things on for size.

Watch this space, I guess.