All the gratifications

I was a child throughout the 80s. I can remember them. And one thing I can remember is the feeling I got when I obtained something shiny, new, and mass produced. It always felt perfect. Pristine. And that felt so special. Filled with potential. (I also kept stickers on their sheets. Undiagnosed ADHD? My friends would say yes…Anyway…)

Recently I have come to a realization. That I feel the opposite now. That I am unimpressed (and honestly a little repulsed) by anything that looks mass produced. I like things lived in, imperfect, filled with personality. And I don’t know when it started to flip. 

Perhaps it is from the way I changed my framing. 

One of the things that I changed my framing for, was my art. Because (even before fake AI images) so much of the kind of art I make – crochet toys especially- is only presented in public or on social media when perfect. Perfectly round, perfectly straight, perfectly placed. Cute and symmetrical. And my art is…not. It’s filled with uneven smiles and wonky eyes.

For a long time my style made me ashamed. Not polished enough to be considered “well made.”

But then I realized that that arm sewn on funny makes him look like he’s shrugging, or her nose over too far on one side looks like a sneer. So now I sometimes purposely leave the accidents  because they create personality. And I value personality. I value nuance and uniqueness. I value the story that can be told in a weird arm shrug or an expression of arrogance, its own kind of micro storytelling.

I also value craft and learning. I value the intent that I put out into the world when I take something from an idea to a tangible object, and let myself express all along the way. Let my hands do their job, without letting my imagination micromanage. I value the time I put into a long term piece that feels like it will never be done, so that I get to put the idea of “done” aside and just do. Things that take time REQUIRE that I make the time. The middle has to get done too. 

Back in the 80s, the other side of the joy over the pristine mass produced toy, was how quickly it scuffed, scratched, got broken or lost. And then I was let down. And so much more deeply than a 99c toy should warrant. (I was a VERY sensitive little kid.)

But ultimately, any and all change in my thinking started when I stopped eating my drug foods and I put boundaries around my eating. Because when I was eating sugar and eating compulsively, I didn’t have the capability or capacity to do things that required delayed gratification. I ate sugar, my brain went *ding ding ding.* So the thought of doing anything that didn’t end in *ding ding ding* was painful. Literally painful.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m a 49 year old woman in the US. I still love me some instant gratification. I just know that it’s not sustainable for the kind of life I want to live. So lately I’m working on many kinds of projects. Short term (crocheted Möbius strip fidget toys) long term (a queen sized knit blanket) and in between (my convertible toy.) And I get to love each in their own way. I guess this is me getting all the gratifications. 

Play

I finished my convertible toy this week and she is adorable! I am very proud of her. 

When I make, there is a lot of variation in completion. Some things get made. Some things get made several times over in different iterations. And some things get started, or even more than half way completed, and then sit. And sit. 

Some are still sitting. Some got thrown away. (How expensive was the yarn…)

It’s not about time, and it’s not about skill. 

I have a cable knit blanket that was so complicated that I couldn’t do anything simultaneously while I made it. No audiobooks or TV. Just me and the cable pattern and bamboo needles so the stitches didn’t fall off. And when the hard part was over, all there was (is) left was (is) the border. It has been almost a decade since I worked on that border. 

But I have completed huge projects. Hours of labor and hundreds of dollars of yarn. Complicated designs I had to make up on my own. 

I don’t know what it is that makes me finish and what makes me abandon a project. But I will tell you that it used to make me FEEL a certain way to look at all of my unfinished projects, like I wasn’t serious. Like I “never” followed through. 

And then I really looked at all of the things I have completed. I have dozens of little pieces as well as multiple blankets at home and that doesn’t include any of the gifts I have made. Or the trinkets I made so I could practice a technique and then give them away. Or the things that I made to use every day like my craft basket or my cat’s “grab and go” basket so I can throw her favorite things in and hit the road. But why does the finishing have to mean so much? 

The longer I have my eating under control the more I like myself, the more generous I can be with myself, the more I can listen to myself. The less I need to judge. After all, what is there to judge? 

I am proud of my many and varied pieces. But also, I don’t need to put a judgement on everything. Why does a completed project have to mean more than an unfinished one to me? I am learning. I am playing. I am thinking. Why isn’t that just enough? 

I heard an anecdote recently about a school that had two pottery classes. One was graded on the beauty of their final project. One was graded on the number of pieces they could make in the semester. They literally just put them on the scale and added up the weight. And then they had people (artists and non artists alike) view them in two rooms, and everyone said the best pieces were in the room where they prized quantity over quality. I bet the worst were there too. *shrug*

I want to play. I am almost 50 years old. I want to make and hate and throw away and love and be surprised, and push through the hating stage to the loving stage, to trust the process.

I only have this much time and awareness right now because I have twenty years of having my eating under control. In the food I exhibit all of the addict behavior. Because I have all of the addict thoughts. Two decades of not having constant food noise in my head gives me time and opportunity to examine my life, my choices, my body, my thinking, my morals and my priorities.

So anyway, I DID finish my toy. “Be home by midnight or you’ll turn into a Pumpkin.” 

All my castles on solid ground

With all of the things going on in my life over the past 6 months, I had not been making anything. No dolls, no toys, no blankets, no squares, no nothing. 

But finally, over the past 2 to 3 weeks I have started to make again! I am working on designing a little crochet convertible toy when I have the mental energy to do crochet math, and a seed stitch knit blanket when I don’t. 

One of the things that recovery from sugar addiction and compulsive eating has offered me is a firm foundation in the tangible. AKA “Doing the work.”

I am one of those girlies who straddles the line between woo woo and science. And one of the most important things I learned when I got abstinent from sugar and arrested my compulsive eating was that manifesting is not magic. It doesn’t mean “free.” And that if you do manage to “manifest” something without any work behind it, under it, there is nothing to hold it up. Building castles in the air, if you will.

When I was eating compulsively, I could absolutely lose weight. For periods of time, at least. But never ever once did I go on a diet or a program where I lost weight and thought, “this is the answer. I could sustain this!” 

Never once until I put my current boundaries around my food. Specific and measurable. Literally. Eating 3 times a day. Eliminating my drug foods. Weighing my food. With a community of people who do what I do. 

I had to change. I had to choose different foods. I had to choose different behaviors. I had to choose different thoughts. I had to give up whole ways of being. I had to have a crisis of self! (That sounds very dramatic but it was mostly a lot of me being in public in my pajamas and drinking gallons of coffee with a bajillion packets of sweet n low.)

And one of the ways that manifested for me was in honoring the cyclical nature of life. More specifically of MY life. That not every moment is a moment for creation. That not every purpose is one of productivity. That the moment is worthy. That I am worthy of rest and healing. That conversely, I am capable of digging deep and reaching so far beyond my comfort zone that I astonish even myself. 

The past 6 months has been a wonderful reminder how good I am at managing a project. How efficient I am. How dependable. It was fun. It was great to have so many new experiences, some of them a little scary. (In a grown up way, not a safety way.) 

And now I am ready to create again. In a new home with a new view and a new neighborhood with new people to meet. I am excited to be inspired and confounded and willing to try and fail. I can’t wait to spend hours making only to spend minutes unmaking and then giving it another go. No really. 

Getting control of my eating gives me peace enough to live my life as a process. I’m here for the experiences. And it’s all just experiences. 

Different free

There have been a handful of times in my life that I didn’t realize how I was feeling until the feelings stopped. Like not knowing I hated myself because I couldn’t stop eating, until I quit sugar and I stopped eating compulsively. Or not knowing how stressed I was about money and being poor, until I was no longer poor. And it turns out driving is one of those things.  

When I left New York City in my mid 30s, I did not know how to drive. And there were a lot of reasons for that. Most notably that I used to have nightmares as a little kid, from the time I was 4 or 5, about having to drive and not knowing how. And I had built driving up to be a very scary thing. (I’m sure there is plenty of it in these here archives. I was already writing this blog for years when I learned to drive.) so when I moved to New York City at 21, I was relieved I was never going to have to learn how to drive.

But about 11 years ago I did learn how to drive at 38. Since then I have driven all over the country alone. I can enjoy the time in the car with an audiobook. I don’t hate driving.

But I really do hate having to drive. I hate the experience of having to do anything that requires a car. I don’t really even know what it is that I don’t like. Because I am so grateful to both have a car and know how to drive. For my own sense of freedom. For my own ease of getting around. And to be able to live anywhere. Because the other side of not knowing how to drive in NYC also made me know I was “stuck” there.

Now I live in the city because I choose it. I could live in the suburbs. I have done it. 

It is so much easier for me to get out of the house if I don’t have to drive. It feels like so much less of an ordeal to do anything if I don’t have to take the car. I ran 2 errands in less than twenty minutes the other day. Just the driving would have taken me more than 20 minutes in our old house. 

I needed to learn how to drive. I am grateful I had over a decade to get comfortable. To stop being afraid of it, to have the basic skill most Americans need, and to have real freedom. I have no regrets about needing to learn and following through.

Anyway, I haven’t driven in over a week and I feel a different kind of free. 

New becomes normal quickly enough.

Bad news: There are so many personal changes coming at me from my move that I have to sit in a lot of really big emotions. Good news: Who I am becoming is kind of fascinating. Bad news: Fascinating is not boring or easy.

My nervous system is on high alert. None of this is known or safe or expected. 

But also I am very peaceful. I am very clearly where I am supposed to be. I love this home. My husband and my cat love this home. The future is now. 

But nothing changes if nothing changes. And I am already on the other side. I have stepped into something new. Which means that things have already changed. Past tense. In a bunch of ways I had not really noticed until the move was done. 

And in many ways I have not yet caught up. 

I need new protections for my peace. I am making new choices about my accessibility and availability. About what I am willing to be held accountable for and to whom. New choices about the energy I will take responsibility for. I already keep my phone on Do Not Disturb after 7:45 at night to keep my peace. I can choose something like that for my inner peace as well. 

I knew that this move would change me and that I couldn’t know how until it was done. And I am so grateful that I knew to have my panic attacks one little one at a time over the past six months so that I could get here and look square at my life, rather than having a crisis of change now, before I can get to enjoy this new view, literally and figuratively. 

But again, this isn’t exactly the road well traveled for me. It’s scary to consistently confront the changes to the way I see myself deserving to be treated. It takes something to say that my peace is more important than my making other people peaceful. 

So I remember that the fact that it’s uncomfortable just means it’s new. And that new becomes normal quickly enough.

Literal new view