Hello!

The first words I went to type on this post is ‘I love trying new things’, but I paused to allow myself to recognise that this is a lie I’ve told myself because I think it’s something I wish is true.

But it’s absolutely not.

What I love is finding new things I’m good at. If I’m not good at it, I find it really hard to be patient enough to put in the time and practice to become good at it and I’m becoming ever more aware of how impatient I am as a person and I really want to work on it.

Time management, on the other hand, is something I’ve become quite good at – over years of making to do lists, expecting too much from myself and beating myself up for not being ‘more productive’ I’ve found a much better balance of appreciating how long thing’s actually take and assigning tasks accordingly (especially around spending 10 hours a day in work or travelling there and back, there’s not a lot of time for much else!).

But what I want to do now is allow myself to spend time doing something that isn’t ‘productive’ and I’m not good at and being okay with it. I love the idea of doing some painting or drawing and just allowing myself to be creative with shapes and colours but I know I’ll very quickly get frustrated when I can’t produce the image that’s in my head.

And that’s what I need to work on – getting better at going with the flow and enjoying the process rather than worrying about the result. Or, on the other hand, giving myself the time to learn something – I see all these amazing crochet tiktoks of ‘basic’ crafts people make and I’m like how the heck did you do that because I just can’t wrap my head around it. But if I gave myself the time to go slow, practice and get better then soon I’ll be able to make all the adorable crochet animal projects I like! Or crochet clothes, I’ve seen so many cute cardigans and pretty outfits that people have crocheted for themselves.

Even with my Cricut machine – I find the learning process intimidating so I end up not using it at all, but I have lots of ideas of things I’d like to make and whether I need to find a course on YouTube or go to a workshop at Hobbycraft, I want to make the effort to use it! Because my partner very generously bought me one for my birthday and I’ve definitely not given it the time or attention it deserves.

And to be honest, I think giving myself this space to do things I’m ‘bad’ at, learning the patience to practice and conquering that overwhelming feeling will be skills that are beneficial to me outside of crafting hobbies.

Some things I’d like to start with are:

• art / painting
• crochet
• using my Cricut
• playing the piano
• sewing

Basically any material craft, but also music.

It’s a work in progress, but progress is all we can try to do.

Thank you for reading,

Sophie xx