Enlightenment

I've been struggling with being creative lately. Making even a small consistent effort seems difficult and  I've been completely lacking in the motivation department.  I've been experiencing a backlash against my self imposed "I must produce a crap load of  things in order to be interesting in Blogland " rule. It seems that being idle  is somehow linked in my psyche to being a slob. And nobody likes a slob. And I want to be liked. I'm just full of insecurity aren't I?

With  other parts of my life  moving at  the  speed of light and my head in constant thought about all manner of things  it seems I just don't have room to be creative. It's like "being crafty" is just another thing on my list of things to get done which means it's more of a chore than a pleasure. I'm even having trouble stringing together blog posts. I have ideas but my words refuse to bend themselves into cohesive writing to match the dialogue in my head.What I do know is that I run around like a hairy goat Monday to Friday and I'm starting to feel some self imposed pressure to achieve when I'm not at work as well.

During my current phase of I cant be bothered-itis I've read some interesting posts that resonated with my current predicament. It seems I'm not the only one suffering from crafters block and questioning the thought that I have to  "produce produce produce" and finish something every five minutes  in order to feel like I'm a fully fledged member of the crafting community.

I've been running a race against myself trying to get more quilts done this year than I got done last year. I'm not sure why. What I do know is ,  I'm there - and it doesn't feel half as triumphant as I thought it would.

I've realised over the last few weeks that making things isn't a means to an end for me. When my great great grandmother made something she did it for practicality . It wasn't about filling her spare time  or just to see if she  could.  A quilt for my great great grandmother  probably meant the difference between being warm or freezing in winter.  In modern creativity, progress has somehow become a less valid part of the process  because we aren't making things for the sake of function. 

Kris started my thoughts churning by talking about the process of making things and getting them to a finish.  She postulated that we don't celebrate the "getting there " part enough.  Guilty as charged here at Maison Pyjamas. I'm almost always thinking about the end product and the next project or all the other things I "should" be doing and so I don't enjoy the journey as much as I could. In reading Kris's thoughts on the subject I realised that I'm limiting my experience by not celebrating and enjoying more steps along the way.

Like Shell, I've been paralysed and felt the pressure of too many ideas or too many irons in the crafting fire.   I can't count the number of blog posts I see about the amount of WIP's people are struggling with or all the things they want to get done.  I think we should refuse to feel guilt about WIP's. Guilt just creates more pressure to finish.  We're not in competition with each other to win "awesome crafter of the year".   And again there's that recurring theme about having something to show every week or two  that's "finished". Shell has vowed to get back to slow crafting and enjoying the journey. That's something I need to think about doing too.


And Lisa wrote a post recently about difficult vs time consuming which made me change my head space a little around some future projects.  I've been thinking "I cant do that - it's too hard - my quilting /sewing skills aren't that good-it'll take forever ". Then I got to thinking it's all about changing and growing and developing and I'm not going to do that if I don't challenge myself every now and then. Quilting is just maths with fabric. If I join Point A and Point B in a consistent way it'll turn out. The only person I'm answerable to  is me. If it takes me a year to finish something or it's not perfect the quilting police aren't going to come and lock me in quilting prison. So again, I've been  limiting myself by thinking "too hard" when in fact it's just time consuming. And isn't time all any of us have when you really get down to it?

So I'm going to remember while I'm running  this race  that you always win a race against yourself no matter how long it takes. Even when  you stop and  smell the roses along the way.