Threads woven together
I’ve never been a fan of any kind of needlework. It’s tedious to me and points out all of the conflicting aspects of my personality. I chafe against the idea of a pattern telling me what to do and I don’t feel comfortable or confident enough to make up my own patterns as I go. I may be the only female in my family who doesn’t knit, crochet, needle point, or sew.
For better or worse, life this year has reminded me of a giant needlework project; one where I have no pattern and am just finding different color threads that seem like an unconnected jumbled mess that couldn’t possibly turn into a whole. Suddenly, this week, I see the appeal; the excited recognition, the aha moment when you can finally get a sense of the whole and it’s completely different and somehow much cooler than what you thought you were making.
When I set out on this experiment I knew I wanted to do some things that didn’t really seem to fit together. I wanted to homeschool and homestead, I wanted to learn more about foraging and herbal medicine, I wanted to write more, I wanted to get better at research and genealogy, and I wanted to do something with my voice.
It seemed like just a hodge podge experiment year, I figured I would probably pick one or maybe a combination of two and try to parlay them into some sort of paycheck. I enrolled in an herbalism course and learned to forage for herbs and make salves and tinctures, I tried some new strategies with my garden and tried to work more with permaculture and our peculiar piece of land, I dove into genealogy work for a friend and found that I loved pulling the stories out of the dry facts, I started voice lessons with a different friend and built a sound studio in my walk in closet without being too sure what I wanted to use it fo. Oh, and I wrote, mostly for this blog. Nothing seemed related, but it was all fun and I was pretty good with the disconnectedness of it all.
I’ve been lucky in that I have had a ton of support for this exploration. In my wide and eclectic circle, I haven’t had one naysayer (at least not anyone who felt strongly enough about it to say it to my face). I have a close friend from college who can be pragmatic almost to a fault. He works in taxes and accounting so the bottom line has kind of been a focus for him. Even he was nothing but supportive of the idea and would always talk me down if I got into the “I need an answer NOW” mode. Recently, he ,of all people, floated an idea…what if we did a podcast, focused on Maine history and the Maine way of life, for kids.
And there it was! The ah-ha moment where I could see it all coming together. Every. Last. Piece. Within minutes I opened a Google spreadsheet and started compiling a list of topics, potential names, potential interviewees. I think I may have thoroughly overwhelmed him. It was just so incredible that my weird hodge podge of a year could have a focus that allowed all my passion projects to not only exist in the same sphere, but work toward a common goal. It’s completely liberating and intoxicating all at once. If I do not absolutely bowl him over with my enthusiasm, I hope we will have a title and first episode coming your way by the end of the year. Will this ever turn into a paycheck? No idea. Will it look exactly as I envision right now? Highly doubtful. And that’s ok.
It’s been brought to my attention that my rather overdrawn metaphor is pretty much describing the essence of quilting. That’s one I haven’t tried. Maybe I’ll discover that I like needlework after all.