10,000 Hours

Another pair of Simplicity pants and a modded Lady Skater t-shirt.

I've had this thought in my head for some time now, the idea of becoming a master at something by spending thousands of hours doing it. Ten thousand hours, give or take a few. It was an amalgam of different thought threads, one was of a conversation I had with a dear friend about how, as we approach our fourth decade of life, things keep getting easier. Like, we really have a handle on it. Things like cooking or driving, writing, reading, running a household, games, and our chosen professions.

And those thoughts led to a phrase I hear all the time. You might have heard it yourself "Gosh, I wish I could sew like you do, I'm just no good at it". And I always want to tell these people that I didn't start off being good at it, I worked my way toward it. In fact, I'm still learning more as I go. Lately, however, I've found myself coasting just a bit by making more knit clothing than anything else. Granted I've hacked and slashed any number of patterns without much anxiety because hey, knits are very forgiving. But then I found myself putting off things I NEED because I didn't want to challenge myself anymore. So, I pushed myself by taking my serger in for badly needed repairs and facing the wedding sewing head on (which is not a complaint about sewing for a wedding).

I had forgotten how much I liked the challenge.It also made me realize just how much I have learned about fitting a garment to myself in the last year. The non-euclidean topography that is our bodies is making more sense to me. I think I even have started wrapping my brain around fitting trousers. And here's the funny thing, its not all from doing, a lot of it is from actively working the problems in my head. I suspect I am not the only one that uses idle brain capacity for solving the complex geometry problems that making a garment can create. In fact, I think it is a trait found in most creative people that gets applied to computer programming, science, math, engineering, and domesticity.

Which leads me back to the hours I've spent in my head thinking of creating. For a while now it feels like there was some sort of block between ideas and action upon those ideas. I want these things to materialize out of thin air but it doesn't work that way. Finding a way to make myself visit challenges head on and start DOING again has felt like a huge hurdle. I'd like to say that kids, husband, job are keeping me from doing it, but really its my own anxiety of feeling like I'm shirking everything else.

Which is totally crap because when I create I feel better. That's the whole reason my tagline is "Sewing to Stay Sane". I really should learn to take my own advise. I'm halfway to 10k, I just gotta keep going, learn to take the time for myself.

Because if Mama ain't happy, Ain't nobody happy.