A Very Full Plate

I am a busy person. I like to be busy. I think that being busy keeps me from doing things that are idle or wasting my time. For the last month or so I have been preparing for a very fun family adventure and I committed to doing a lot of things. On this adventure I'll have several birthdays to celebrate and a music camp to help teach at, two sisters married plus some new born babies to love. I'm lucky because I have all of that. I have the best family in the world and I wanted to make sure they knew I loved them. Being away from all of my family isn't fun and I miss out on a lot. I'm afraid I am going to be that aunt who you only get to see once or twice a year. I'll make a connection with them and then I will have to leave, only to start over on the next visit. So my plan: to make them tangible lovely things they can hold onto and remember me by for forever. Cozy, soft and pretty things that I created just for them.

Although this is my love and what I would choose to do with my time every day, I have a sweet family, a fairly large responsibility in church, a production I have been asked to help out with and last week, a birthday party to plan. These special projects just kept getting pushed aside and I was running out of time. Every night when the kids were in bed I would sew....sometimes until way too late. I began to wonder if I was crazy, if I needed some sort of intervention and somebody to teach me how to say NO to myself. And then I remembered the purpose and I began to love it again.

I'll admit I have no idea how to balance my time and I still don't know the secret to a productive organized life but I do know that making time for things you love, after everything else is done, is okay and fairly therapeutic. My stress levels have been high this last week but each time I sit to make something special I forget and then go to bed happy. Happy that I had made progress, happy that I had people to love, happy that I had taught myself how to put in an invisible zipper, happy that I got to see a vision in my head be produced, and mostly happy that I could hang in there and do things that were hard.

Don't ever feel bad or let people or yourslef into your head and tell you you're crazy for doing what you love. Make time for what is most important and then give yourself a chance to grow and to do hard things. If there is something you have always wanted to try but never have, then I encourage you to just do it! I made a skirt this week and from a pattern...and I don't do that. It was hard but I did it and I love that.

Do you have a late night hobby love?