Those of you who know me, or have read this blog for a while, know that the last few years have been challenging. I have spent much of my time helping other people, friends and family alike, through one crisis after another. In November, one long-expected shoe dropped when my husband was laid off. In January, another long-expected shoe dropped when his mother passed away. At the same time, the other people I’d been helping came through their crises.
This confluence of events meant that for the first time in many years, I have been home regularly. Since returning from my mother-in-law’s funeral, I’ve only traveled once. For the first time in at least 8 years, I have no obligations to anyone who is currently in a crisis situation. This means I can make plans based only on my own schedule, needs, and abilities. It feels strange to me. So much has changed in my life over these years and I’ve felt like I was reacting to rather than shaping our circumstances. I need to relearn how to be proactive about evaluating what I need and want, to make sure I’m saying yes and no to the right things.
One consequence of the chaos of the last few years is that I am surrounded by the detritus of half-finished projects and ideas. At least 3 rooms in our house (dining room, family room, and my office) are not functional due to piles of one kind or another. Fleece, paperwork, and books are spread out rather willy-nilly. I have multiple looms to repair or refinish, one for me and 3 for others. I have goodness-only-knows how many abandoned knitting, crocheting, and spinning projects. Our main bathroom, the one guests would use if we let anyone visit us, has been at least partially demolished for 2 years as of next month. It’s long past time to start digging out, getting rid of the things that no longer serve us and creating spaces where we can be productive with whatever projects we want to take on at this point in our lives.
The good news is, that we’ve got a general idea of what we’re going to do next, and we’ve started taking steps to make things happen. We’ve started closing some of the open loops. The bathroom is on track to be finished by the end of July. The first loom is on track to be finished by the first weekend in July. The piles of books and a sewing workspace should also be in place by the first weekend in July, thanks in part to 4 bookcases I’m buying from a local used bookstore that’s going out of business.
One of the other major projects I’m undertaking right now is reconfiguring this website. I have a hosting agreement with one company. My husband has a hosting agreement with a different company, for a website he hasn’t been maintaining for a while. We are consolidating into one hosting agreement, at a third company, a move that will save us an estimated $5,000 over the next 3 years! This means I will be migrating this website sometime in the next week. The site will be down for some time (hopefully a short time) when the migration actually happens. The domain name isn’t changing and I’ll still be using WordPress as the structure, so you should be able to access the blog by the same means you do now.
During July and August, I will continue to focus on plowing through the accumulated clutter and projects. I hope to be back to regular blogging in September. If there’s anything you’d like to see on the blog when I get back, I’d love to hear from you! In the meantime, enjoy your fiber crafting. I’ll see you in September 🙂