A Question of Motivation
Here we are at the very end of August 2021, and I’m feeling like I’ve simultaneously gotten nothing and a bunch of things done over the course of the year so far.
When it comes to fiber arts related things, I feel like I’ve made really good progress. I’ve completed six challenges (some self-selected and some from outside sources, which is way more than my goal of three challenges), and I’m making a bit of a dent in my fiber stash without buying too much just because it’s pretty. I’ve gotten the newest antique wheel repaired (hopefully more on that later). I’m maintaining a fairly consistent “making” habit, though I don’t post to Instagram about it quite as frequently as earlier in the year. I’ve had a number of sales in my Etsy shop lately, and have a few commissioned spinning projects that I need to get moving on. In December 2021 and March 2022, I should be teaching my drop spindle class again. All while being pretty good at changing things up so that I don’t give myself too many repetitive stress injuries.
The garden is coming along steadily – I’ve been working on improvements to the space, weather permitting. It’s been oppressively hot most of the summer, and there are relatively few “cooler” hours to work right now, so parts of it are a little wild looking. I’m putting mulch from a tree we had taken out around the raised beds to make mowing easier, and am planning to add other beds for bulbs and flowering plants and ponder the dye garden development this fall. I’ve also started transitioning to the fall garden – it’s about time for the cool weather vegetables to go in.
But when it comes to living history, I’m feeling really stuck. I’ve only finished 2 of 6 living history kit related projects that I wanted to have done by the end of 2021. I’ve still got time, but I really need to get moving. I’m sure a lot of it is a mostly subconscious feeling of “what’s the point?” – I had one event in May, and one in June. Hypothetically, I have one at the end of September, but Covid may derail that as well. Plus I’m pretty pessimistic about events that should happen at the end of October and just before the holidays. Which is a far cry from my (pre-pandemic) goal of “really cutting back” to two events a month in 2020. There’s a lot of time that goes into hand sewn or hand embroidered items for events, which feels pointless when I don’t know when they’ll get used. I also think they’re in a different category in my brain than general spinning or embroidery projects, even though they are all fiber arts related. So I need to figure out how to move them out of the “pointless item” category and into the “process, not product” category that most of my making falls into.
I’ve also definitely had a time of it getting two blog posts done per month for most of the year as well. Yes, two different entries posted on the same day still count, but I really should be doing them before the very last minute. And maybe spacing them out more. I’ll admit that part of it is that time is very slippery these days – it goes by both fast and slow, and it’s the end of the month before I know it. But it also feels weird putting my ideas out there for other people to read. I don’t feel like much of an expert, and wonder why others would be concerned about my opinions on a given topic. Things to work on, I guess.
No photos in this one, because I’m not quite sure how to represent a lack of motivation in a photograph right now.