Another Domestic Thought

After reading this article (from the same source as that which inspired the last posting), I was thinking about my own creative pursuits, and what provokes me to them. While I do recognize myself to be extremely results-driven, I think I always learn something in the creative process of actually creating. There's just something about struggling through, messing up, scraping initial efforts to begin again. As much as I love having the end result, I often end up with a pile of things I don't love, but that I am proud to have made. It happened a lot at Penland that way. I would spend hours -- sometimes days--- with a project, and come out on the other end of it less-than-satisfied. But, I was glad the visible mistakes were my own. They were, they are tangible lessons learned.

I often feel the same way about writing. I trudge through the process of writing an article. I gather notes from interviews and highlight and circle. I wonder how on earth I will bring the information together to make sense of it, the way it makes sense in my own mind. I selfishly think I'd sometimes rather like to keep the treasures of my conversations to myself rather than packaging them to make sense for other people to read. But, then I remember the editor at Southern Living who gave me my first BIG break. He said he wrote to "introduce people to their neighbors." In sincerity, I'd like to do the same.

So, while I don't always love the act of writing, I love having written something. And I ALWAYS recognize what a didactic experience it is for me. Article finished, I emerge as a more (relatively speaking) polished interviewer, listener, note-taker, communicator...hopefully.

So, I suppose I'm saying I agree with the article in part. I think that there are a whole lot of Susie homemaker wannabees who would rather have the image and results than the actual identity. Am I one of them? I don't know.

Go figure, I've asked for a sewing machine for Christmas this year. Ask me next year to see if it has collected dust or been the means for the production of countless beautifully messy things occupying the electronic shelves of my own etsy shop. Here's hoping for the latter.