I don’t think you need to feel 100% great about what you make to show it to the world. If you’re hung up on that kind of stuff, you get caught up in the finishing instead of the process: when it’s the process that matters.
So today I’m here to rant about weaving, and social media, and what your purpose is in life.
Yes! Again!
I write about purpose a lot.
I really wish I hadn’t read fucking Nietzsche as a teenager. If you have kids that you want to be happy adults, don’t let his books into your house, I swear to God.
Anyway, I've started wanting to share more work about my weaving lately mostly because of
1. I haven't been weaving and
2. I think people forget but I weave …and by people I mean also me
This is all because I have some weavings up for sale, and I feel like if I shared more about my weaving work then people would remember that I do it (as would I) and maybe then they'd also buy my work!
Which would be great!
But is that why I’m doing this?
Did I learn to weave with the express goal of opening a weaving shop? No, of course not.
However, I do find, though, that my weavings do always sell.
Yes, they are a lot of work, more work than, for example, an 8-page minizine would be. More work than a memory box or even a small art journal.
But obviously I feel that weaving is worth the time and hours of learning and practice that I’ve already undergone and am continuing to undergo.
Unfortunately, though, I’m 100% never satisfied with my finished woven pieces. I always think “oh this looks bad” or “oh I can see that part; the structure isn't neat” or “my work is so sloppy.”
I feel I'm less comfortable with my weavings, less than I am with like art journal honestly, I’m just glad I made art in any form.
I’d love to be a laser focused person with a laser focused Instagram and blog but let’s face it, I will never be that person
So, it kind of comes to the idea of like “what are you doing.” It helps me, at least, to look at my Instagram account and wonder if there’s a purpose to all this or am I just flailing around wildly on the Internet.
You could say I use my Instagram sometimes as a signpost as to what I’m doing with my life and my, dare I say it, GRAND AND GLORIOUS PURPOSE.
I’d love to be one of those people who have one thing, and they go really deep with it, and that’s it, this is their thing.
I’d love more cohesive social media feeds like “these are the things I'm gonna share” you know like having an actual purpose for the account rather than like “this is my artwork/zines/kid/photos/memes/etc.”
Maybe it's because I work in marketing. I'm always fixing posts to perform better and that kind of thing, and I do tend to approach all social media in that way.
I started doing that jellyfish weaving project with a grand statement: ‘one jellyfish a week!’. It’s something I repeatedly do. I think a lot of crafter type people do. See: When Climate Activism Meets Art: Introducing ‘The Jellyfish Bloom’
You get caught up in the finishing instead of the process: when it’s the process that matters.
I feel for my weavings to get better I should focus more on the process and less on the finished item. The same goes for everything.
I was wondering to ask you all: how do you keep yourself on course?
I'm the kind of person who sees something shiny and immediately lunges towards it, making insane plans.
I can completely understand that people don't really want to listen to that kind of wild inattention.
People always want order, and things to make sense, and the story to wrap up and everything because, I mean, in real life that's rarely the case.
It's hard to really know what to focus on, especially when you have so many interests like me.
It’s hard to remember to step back and think OK, what is my point? How can I corral my interests into buckets so that I don’t forget or neglect any of them, all while keeping going in the right creative direction for my dreams in life?
So yeah, what do you guys do? Just out of interest? do you have any tips um lol.
So I was talking to my therapist about this recently in terms of I have a lot of projects coming to an end soon, some that I've been working on for a while and some that I have been planning for ages but not yet started but all of it will be finished soon... I find that I do need to give myself a deadline for stuff but the deadline needs to be further away than it needs to be, if that makes sense? so like, I need to allow myself the days of obsessively thinking about it and the hours of distraction from other things/needing to rest and the missed dates of "I could have done it by now but I haven't" and just focus on the idea that as long as I am working on *something* its all good. Then I get round to stuff by the deadline because I've had that slow run up to it. oh my god my vinyl floor is here!!!