My own thing

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. 

I have heard my inner voice before.  At first it spoke up in times of great distress, serving as a lighthouse to point the way through the dense fog of my Self before I truly knew I had a Self of my very own, let alone how to navigate it.  In the last few years as the fog has lifted and I’m becoming a more astute sailor, and now the voice seems more like a bossy big sister, providing clear instructions when I’ve needed them.

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. 

I have known for a while that I desperately want my own thing(s).  I want to reclaim my words and design my own patterns.  But I haven’t had the time—or the courage—to fully own that until now.