Despite the giggly sound of the opening paragraph on my About Me page, I’m serious about what I said. This time is a gift, received after nearly 8 years of asking, and I don’t want to waste it. After I stopped hurling myself at brick walls in a jobless panic, I tried to be still and listen.
Lately though, it hasn’t been a voice so much as a steady insistent pressure from behind and not so much clear directives as jarring shocks when I get it wrong. Occasionally I receive a giddiness treat when I push the right lever, just enough to keep me plodding through the maze.
At the moment, I am confronting the exploration of my artistic inclinations. These inclinations have always been present, just in a paint-by-numbers sort of way. Before anything else there was always writing and I have received compliments (and one award) for that. But except for a few cursory (and bad!) attempts at fiction in high school and my early 20’s, my writing has only served the purposes of others.
Also in high school I discovered cross-stitch from the countrified females in my family. So voracious was I in the craft that I couldn’t sit down or watch TV without a needle in my hand. The same thing happened when I first discovered quilting. But here’s the rub—the needle provided cover in uncomfortable situations and busy work to occupy the hive of bees in my head. It was a means of avoidance and coping rather than expression. And, more importantly, both cross-stitch and quilting involved following someone else’s established patterns. Granted, with the quilting I at least had the choice of material color and pattern, but I was not at all adventurous.
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