A Whole New Year

Hi. How are you?  It's been awhile, hasn't it? Almost a full 365 days, in fact, since my last blog post. Oh, I've been around on facebook, instagram, and twitter (albeit less often), and I've tried keeping up with peeps on blogs, but man there's an acre of sewing folk now!  The Sewcialists' Firehose now has an impressive list of people, new ones joining often. Despite being one of the founders I've neglected our movement completely for some time now. I have to give mad props to Gillian of Crafting a Rainbow for tending the fires and keeping them going.

So why have I been not blogging? There are many reasons, the biggest being my mental and physical health. I know I have talked about chronic pain, depression, and anxiety a good bit on this blog. What I didn't want to blog about was how much time and money I've spent on specialist after specialist. I didn't want to fall into the "I'm sorry for being a bad blogger, I'll try to blog more" trap. I didn't want to whine publicly about how crappy I felt. To be honest, most of the time I tell people I'm fine when I'm not because I just want to be normal.  (I don't do this with people close to me though, they can see through the lie)

Now, however, I finally have a solid diagnosis, fibromyalgia (details here if you want to know more).  It's a contentious condition with many doctors still not believing it real, and then there's whole "It's all in your head" spiel we get, especially as a woman. The ironic part is that it IS a great deal all in my head, because that's how these illnesses work, it's the brain and nervous system malfunctioning and firing off constantly.  Sometimes it will subside for months at a time, though not for me as of yet.  It comes with a host of sub-illnesses, and it is usually set off by traumatic events, and there's been no shortage of those in my life. In short, I spent much of 2015 re-evaluating my limitations and finding my center.

I think I'm close to finding my center, or as close as i'm going to get for now.  I found that I do miss writing and sharing my creations and creative process. I like sharing the weird bits of my life, too. I think this year I am finally ready to come out of the cocoon, and spread my wings and understand it's OK if they can't range as far as they used to. I want to enjoy the now and look forward to new things in 2016. This should be an adventure.