Practicing Kindness...

Treking along on the path towards Christmas, I have more to share with you....

9. Plan to not finish things you aren't inspired to finish.

10. Be kind to yourself.

While I wrote those two suggestions in this order, I think if you read them as "Be Kind to Yourself and Plan to not finish...", giving you the WHY before the action.   Forcing sincerity is rarely effective.  Life is just too short to waste time and energy being bored. It is true there are things in life we must do regardless of how inspiring they are.  And at times, the discipline of some practices afford us the chance to do more with our lives. I may not like to exercise but staying physically fit affords me better health and more contentment and happiness with myself and my ability to function. Being disciplined in finishing my assignments at work gives me peace and some sense of semblance and structure that I have more freedom in my life.

Forced responses in our creative and personal spheres are not respecting our personal inclination and our goals. 

Projects of obligation are a real creativity killer. I am not the same person I was ten years ago. When I pull out a project that is ten years old that is neither finished nor motivating, I need take a clue and move on with that project.

There likely is someone else out there who will find it much more motivating than I was able to maintain in my travels with that project. It may be that the project was just doomed to failure from the start. While I could detail projects that could fill a U-haul trailer (take your pick the size of the trailer) that I have passed on or recycled or just freed into the universe, I am taking this time to simply say, BE KIND TO YOURSELF. You need not justify these choices. You need to have enough respect to yourself to really appreciate your journey and to appreciate that you have the right to embrace pure joy in your creative travels.

Being kind to ourselves not only involves keeping down the clutter of an overly sensitive sense of obligation to our begun-projects but also to accept that we deserve the big crayon box. When I was a 1st grader, I realized that some of my peers had the BIG BOX of crayons. You know the ones with the sharpener embedded in the side of the box. The scent of the box fills my memory as much as the magic of the colors. Of course, I had to settle for my box of 24 because that is what the list said and since I was one of three children within four years in my family, it was good to get the 24 crayon box. I was as grateful as could be but was always tickled to sit near someone willing to share a fuschia crayon with me now and again. I read the names with as much joy as I envied the colors.

So this year for Christmas, I got myself the BIG BOX of Aurifil. I love to machine applique and am very prone to run low on the exact shade I need. I am a thread conniseur about shades of threads (when it comes to my own work). I can visually spot the difference in color to the point where I can scarcely substitute a color. When at Fall Quilt Market, I nearly fainted when shown the Aurifil box of 216 threads. I got my own box and have spent a good amount of time savoring my big box of crayons. I actually am planning applique projects just so I can use all the colors!!

Santa has been good to me. My favorite thing to remind my friends of is to think the best of everyone around you. I know my sweetheart would want to think of such a perfect gift. Santa will be wrapping up my BIG BOX OF AURIFIL and putting a card on it that says, "Love, Henry." He will be so proud of himself for thinking of this one. (We make this all too hard. How would he ever know I would want a big box of thread?!) Perhaps, you need to go online and get yourself a box. You have been a very good sewer and deserve your own big coloring box.

All the Best to You, jill