For a long time I didn’t travel but during the past few years we’ve been partaking in hotel lodgings at least twice a year, not always as a vacation per se, and nothing too expensive or extravagant. We aim, instead, for a place with local color and personality when choosing the basecamp to our adventures; places that support great efforts of exploration because we walk. A lot. Nearly 100 miles, for example, during our last week in New Orleans, a particular favorite. This walking may not seem relaxing to most but true to the hyperactive part of our nature, excessive movement, not employed in “work” but wandering, is very relaxing.
Another aspect I find relaxing are the accommodations themselves. Home is a maximalist collage of our diverse aesthetics. It is the visual support of our lives because when you suffer from every manner of impermanence, you need visual anchors or the moments of your life become fainter and fainted until they float away.
Compared to some, our ADHD household does pretty well. We keep the unfinished projects and doom piling to a remarkable minimum. We resist what seems like 1,000 estate sales, emporiums of the second hand, discount home décor, and Facebook marketplace listing temptations on a weekly basis. However, there are two areas in which I have overindulged; books and sewing/needlework accoutrements.
Granted, if we had a bigger house, I would have commandeered a bedroom for my own particular use. Alas, without such a refuge, my materials and supplies have found themselves in just about every room, something my obliging husband pointed out as we put away the holiday décor for its post-season pilgrimage to the storage unit, adding that my sewing takes up more room than any other past time.
Perhaps I haven’t been as vigilant regarding the “one-in one-out” and the “do not buy new fabric until you’ve made up your existing fabric” rules. And, his request to put some of the aforementioned materials into storage, hardly a permanent separation, seems very reasonable.
The problem is that all the materials represent potential and true to physics in general, the further I get away from my materials, the further I get away from their potential, the less likely anything will actually materialize. So when he asks me what I plan to do in the next six months and to just keep those materials on hand, I panic because sewing is one the few things I don’t actually plan, for the most part. Projects and fabric come to me in a laissez-faire sort of manner. If I don’t have the materials for any number of potential projects surrounding me, I can’t actually land on any project because I have to trick myself into making a decision in a sideways covert way. The fabric and pattern have to align, like stars, to begin.
So I resisted… at first.
Then I figured it was time to make an inventory of my fabric in Evernote, which I had been meaning to do for some time. And, in doing so, gathered everything sewing related together and piled it on my bed. And, I could see that things have really gotten out of hand.
Once I realize that organizing must be done, I usually attack the project with vigor. Organizing things usually provides a nice dose of dopamine. However, something about this really bothered me. Seeing everything there, taunting me about incomplete projects, prompted several questions. Is it time to say goodbye to my feeble attempts at costume? Do any of my dresses ever look acceptable and well fit? Shouldn’t I just buy something well made because I only need one? Do I still need my collection of DMC floss that I know I’m never going to use and is likely out of date? Is it all just another excuse to not exercise, which I need to do desperately? Working from home, what’s the point? I need maybe five dresses at the most and even then not really. Are we really wearing 18th century clothes as much as we could? If I never wore them again, would it matter? Is it time to stop this childish nonsense?
As long as the materials are nearby, I can still touch that part of me that wants to design my own world. But the farther away they are, the more likely I’ll fall into a world I poorly fit into to. If not for our creative endeavors, then what? Work, media, watching the days go by, melting into each other, beige and gray, and homogenous.
storm under still water 