on a journey…

Posted on by trish

 

I gave myself a hair­cut dur­ing the week. Look­ing pen­sive here in the pic­ture because I did­n’t exact­ly know whether it looked OK on the back. That’s right, I hacked (and hack is an accu­rate descrip­tion here) off about 3 inch­es of hair by myself in front of a mir­ror. And more than once I blind­ly hacked off the hair on the back of my head hop­ing that it would look OK…

Also pen­sive because I’m going back to school on Wednesday.

I like to mark a new begin­ning with a hair­cut and that’s main­ly why I decid­ed to cut my own hair rather than wait­ing to ask my mom to cut it (she’s always cut my hair. I’ve nev­er stepped foot in a hair salon in my life and I don’t ever plan to if I can help it). 

I’m kind of wor­ried about a full-time course load after a cou­ple of years of a part-time school or work sched­ule. But at the same time I’m excit­ed about the knowl­edge and train­ing I will gain.

Recent­ly in an inter­view I was asked how I take care of myself amidst the often emo­tion­al­ly drain­ing work of ther­a­py and social ser­vices. I gave some lame‑o answers that weren’t very con­vinc­ing because I did­n’t real­ly think about how to respond to such ques­tions. And I think sub­con­scious­ly I’m kind of shy about say­ing that “I take care of my emo­tion­al well-being by crafting”. 

But that’s what I do to take care of myself, real­ly. To keep myself sane. I craft.

And while I craft, I thank God for hand-mak­ing this world, one atom at a time, and that I’m alive today, and I’m rel­a­tive­ly healthy, and in a rel­a­tive­ly good emo­tion­al place. I craft.

I paint some­times as well. But I enjoy craft­ing more.

I nev­er thought about it that way until the inter­view. That craft­ing and hav­ing a place to share are actu­al­ly very impor­tant to me across all aspects of my life, that it affects my work/school life as well. It gives me the moti­va­tion to notice the mun­dane, every­day, hope­ful things. It gives me the moti­va­tion to think cre­ative­ly and fol­low through on ideas that I’m excit­ed about, to put them out there and make them alive in the world. 

So I will fierce­ly carve out time to craft, and to share too. Because I do believe I have made some blog friends here, and I’m so grate­ful for the con­nec­tions we’ve made, for the inspi­ra­tions and ideas and kind words you’ve shared with me. I will cher­ish these con­nec­tions always.

But inevitably as sea­sons and sched­ules change this blog will see some changes too. I don’t know exact­ly how the changes will look like yet. I sup­pose it will all unfold once I get into a new routine. 

But I can fore­see that:

  • “Reg­u­lar fea­tures”, i.e.  favourite things Fri­day and Sun­day video will be a bit more brief or may not hap­pen some weeks (though I’m work­ing on get­ting some guest posts for favourite things, we’ll see :D).
  • Today’s awe­some finds would make an inter­est­ing and flex­i­ble reg­u­lar fea­ture. So you may see more of that!
  • There would be more posts of point & shoot :D
  • There may be few­er tuto­r­i­al posts :( Though fun, tuto­ri­als do take a long time to make.
  • There my be less fre­quent posts of craft­ing :( Real­i­ty is, I will have to give school work priority…

 

This new jour­ney. It’s a chal­lenge, but it’s so full of possibilities.

Thank you for jour­ney­ing with me, friends!

 

 

 

 

10 thoughts on “on a journey…”

  1. I start­ed cro­chet­ing as a stress reliev­er. Was bet­ter than the med­ica­tion I had tak­en at one point. I craft so I don’t panic. :)

  2. I under­stand about your need to craft. It’s just part of who we are; we can’t “not” craft! Thank­ful­ly, I have lots of friends who seem to like what I make for them :-). I also do some cro­chet­ing for the Leif Erik­son Lodge Hol­i­day Bazaar every year as part of my vol­un­teer efforts. So, it’s craft­ing for myself and (hope­ful­ly) mak­ing oth­ers happy. 

    The won­der­ful thing about blogs is that they can be what­ev­er you want them to be. If it’s nec­es­sary to change direc­tion a bit, your faith­ful read­ers (and new friends) will always enjoy your journey.

    The best of luck to you, Trish, as you return to school. And craft when you can!

  3. Good luck in school! School always stress­es me out, but I set aside some time to craft dur­ing the week, and do a ton of craft­ing on the week­ends. I will miss your tuto­ri­als (they’re always awe­some!), but I under­stand the whole “school­work-pri­or­i­ty” thing very well :D. But even a cou­ple posts per month will be enough, because what you have to say is always inspir­ing. I don’t real­ly have any friends who craft (craft­ing is con­sid­ered “lame”, although they love the fin­ished prod­ucts), so it’s great to see anoth­er per­son­’s work. Keep up the good work, and try not to stress out!

  4. thank you for the encour­age­ment, Ali­son! i def­i­nite­ly want to keep up the craft­ing and blog­ging. and craft­ing is not lame! :D

  5. I have been fol­low­ing your blog for awhile now and nev­er knew you worked in social ser­vices. But I guess this blog is an escape from that. I total­ly agree with every­one that craft­ing is such a relax­ing out­let to your every day life. I am in an engi­neer­ing pro­gram right now (almost done!) and make sure not to fall vic­tim to the stereo­types that go along with that. Just because I do a lot of sci­ence and math does­n’t mean I can’t be visu­al­ly cre­ative as well! I love it! I need to exer­cise the oth­er half of my brain too :)

  8. a lot of my favourite cro­chet design­ers are engi­neers by train­ing! i think science/math and cre­ativ­i­ty def­i­nite­ly com­ple­ment each other.

  9. I once had a needle­work teacher tell me that we were made to craft…if we’re made in God’s image, and He cre­at­ed, we were made to “recreate”…and the best way to enjoy “recre­ation” time is re-cre­at­ing by craft­ing. =) Good luck with the school!!

  10. i agree whole­heart­ed­ly :) and now that i’ve had a week of class­es and clear­ly no time for craft­ing i find myself aching to paint, or cro­chet, or even knit (i don’t usu­al­ly knit).

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