PlazaJen: Passion Knit

I'm thinking of having a giant button made with "I CARE" on it, in as big a font as will fit on my imaginary giant button.
Because to wear it would be so funny! Because it just isn't true anymore. I find this to be a fascinating phenomena when I step outside myself. When I was a freshman in college, and blathering on about something at one of those "get to know each other before you sleep together" dorm functions, and yes, I'd been drinking, this guy just looked at me and said, "You are really a passionate person." He went on to say this in three different ways, but it boiled down to him saying (about me!) that I had a lot of passion. (No, we didn't sleep together, either.) But I was stunned, nay, STUNNED! Nobody'd ever described me like that before. Never ever ever. I was always on the outside looking in, stranger in a small town, exiled and reviled for being different, exiling & defiling myself on the inside from depression & self-hatred & so I adopted a pattern of deflecting and attracting attention with humor and being smart, neither of which have to be about emotion, which is what Passion means to me. So once that bottle got uncorked (and I'm not talking about the alcohol, which was consumed in dangerously copious amounts all through college), I found myself being VERY passionate about EVERYthing. We're protesting something? I was there at the rally, angrily asking questions and hearing my voice waver in indignation & feeling terrified because I was speaking emotionally, not thinking it out first. A cardinal sin under my father's watch, back in those days. But hey, that's sort of what college is supposed to be about, I think. A safe(r) haven to get all riled up in about stuff you still think you can impact.
Right now, I don't see myself having a snowball's chance in hell at impacting the infrastructure here at work. I can't fix it, I can't make it better, I can only make it a little more colorful and entertaining. Despite the inner beast in me railing at what I see is "right & wrong" and passionately shrieking about what is "fair". So that means, sit under a support beam & keep your head down, or get the hell out of the structure. Right now I'm under that beam, but I still have to find a way to laugh - and that takes the form of a giant button emblazoned with "I CARE". I'm disappointed that I have to stop caring (so much). I won't lie and say I don't care AT ALL. I just can't keep Fred-Flintstone peddling with my feet & charging at the salt mine, thinking my force of will, my great passion will bring about some form of impact. I just hurt my feet and head and pride, and make myself nutters.
So, in tiny type under "I CARE", I would list the things I do care about. I care about knitting. And Yarn. And my husband and our dogs and our families' lives, and my friends' lives, and I care about the external world and even people I work with, as individuals. I care about anyone going through misfortune, or depression, or great sadness, and I care about essential Life Necessities, like ethics and honesty and responsibility and respect and intelligence and humor. I feel anger, and sadness for the individuals who walk around with monkeys on their backs the size of baboons, but when they look at me and say "What monkey?" I have to run my fingers around the edge of my very large "I CARE" button and remind myself that I AM NOT A MONKEY TRAINER. And that the handle opens from the inside.
I will explain that tomorrow.