Monkey-Mind

I wish that I were more focused these days. I keep being pulled in so many directions, creativity-wise, that the end result is paralysis. Or the desire to start a new project leads me to frantically rearrange my workspace. Or to tidy my sewing space by stitching all of the little snips of fabric on my sewing table into other crazy little bits of improvisationally-pieced, slightly larger, pieces. Or to re-categorize and re-shelve my paints, beads, or other supplies. Or to decide that I simply must unpack the random boxes of stuff that have been sitting in the middle of my studio since we had the new floor put in a year and a half ago; of course the reason they haven't been unpacked & put away before now is that they're down to the "stems & seeds" of the household items - long-expired sunscreens & itch creams, Ace bandages that have disintegrated from old age, old mattress pads that aren't ready to be chucked but are no longer needed for daily use, linoleum blocks I carved in high school, cat "toys" that send my funny little cats scrambling out of sight in fear, the old notebooks filled with the pitiful household accounting and somewhat-impressive Scrabble scores from life with my first husband 35 years ago...... Good grief!


When what I really want to do, of course, is Make Art. Not just the stuff I know I can do already, but the fantastic, make-me-drool-with-desire work I see on the blogs & websites of other art quilters, beaders, and surface designers. It's fear, of course, that keeps me always starting to play with new techniques & materials but never quite pulling it all together. Because what if what I finally do put together just makes me feel ashamed that it's not "better"? It's so much more comfortable to think that of course I could produce work like the rock stars of the art quilting world, if I would just get around to it, than to face my own limitations.


Of course, this is just a form of the dreaded Block, or Resistance. Hey, I read the books, I know what's what! I even know what to do about it: just Go Do It. But which "it" should I focus on? If I'm working on learning new dyeing & fabric painting techniques, I'm not sewing. If I'm sewing, I'm not working on developing complex cloth. And I haven't gone near most of my beads for a year or two, and.........Not even to mention that the time I'm spending on-line seeking inspiration & knowledge is LOTS of time not creating anything at all. I truly don't know how so many people seem to manage to do so much!