Time to Create

I haven’t been able to blog much this year. With everything going on around us over the past year, I just couldn’t do it. I’d think about it. I’d even plan on doing it but I just felt frozen. I needed to hide away, keep to myself and process the realities of a global pandemic. Or sometimes just pretend they weren’t realities.

Instead I’ve been creating at a pace that I can’t remember ever maintaining as an adult. It’s kind of a nice metaphor to create in contrast to destruction. Often it was just keeping busy. Keeping busy while keeping quiet. This creating was all for me, my sanity and reminded me what I really love about making things. It can be so easy to get swept up in the presentation of the final products and perfection but the process is the most gratifying.

My partner has introduced me to loads of technical YouTube videos and channels over the past year (yay?) and they’ve also cemented this idea in my mind. Stuff Made Here demonstrates tons of failure and he doesn’t really even guarantee there will be a success in each video. I really enjoy going on the virtual adventure of his projects, including the failures and the resulting process of working through them. So much content around crafting and furniture making seems to only present the finished process and perfect product. Often with freshly manicured nails? I want to know what doesn’t work, learn about people’s creative processes which can be such a mystery and maybe just let everyone know that making things often destroys fingernails.

I’ve just back-posted as many of this year’s projects as possible but, in keeping quiet, I also really enjoyed not documenting my processes for once. Just allowing myself to fully be in the moment with my work and no thoughts of making it Instagram ready. So just a warning you may not see a clear story of each project and sometimes no final product.

All of this being said, I’m feeling ready to emerge from turtle shell. Create out loud. Be ready to keep hearing from me in 2021.