Before you proceed, I highly recommend you grab a drink or 5 and get comfy...this is a long one!
It's been shamefully long since I posted here and I know I owe you Part 2 of the Project Life post. And I will do it but I've had a few roadblocks and setbacks.
The biggest is trying to get Arthur* under control. Medicines have been chopped and changed and I'm inching towards functional. The fatigue that goes alongside most autoimmune diseases is the worst. My mind wants to make pretty stuff, but my body wont have anything to do with it.
This in turn chases away mojo...you know... that exhilarating flash of inspiration where you have to drop everything and either write down your ideas or start making stuff!
It comes in the oddest of places for me. In early August last year, I had one such flash. It started with the transition from July to August 2014 of the Scrap Stash Kit Club. I had the colours of those two kits in the back of my mind and at about the time I was re-organising my Raskog cart. I happened to pick up a 4x6 card from a kit club I got almost a year earlier.
I was (and still am) dreadfully behind in Project Life since 2013 and I knew how I wanted to use that card and which colours to use (a combination of the July and August scrap stash kits). I started pulling cards and papers like a mad woman and, as usual, pulled enough for several months of PL rather than a single week. I left the pile on the floor and took my son to the doctor since he has the flu.
I was only feeling a little under the weather but the doc noticed and started freaking out when he took my temp and it was about 40C was told to:
"Go To Jail Hospital. Go Directly To Jail Hospital. Do Not Pass Go. Do Not Collect $200. Pay Hospital $200."
I ended staying there for 4 days since flu and a cocktail of immunosuppressants isn't a happy combination.
I came home to find the papers exactly where I left them...and felt nothing. Mojo had left the building. At least I had that "kit" ready to come back to in the event it ever returned.
Fast forward a couple of weeks. I bought this paper rack and when I was sorting my papers into it, I saw this paper and has another flash.
I wanted to document my recent hospital stay (and one about 6 months prior) which had both traumatised me a little. I knew I needed to tell the story in my scrapbook but I didn't know exactly what I wanted to say...or rather how I wanted to tell the story. I just knew that it would be therapeutic to do so and this paper gave me an idea...or the beginnings of an idea which was really a bunch of rudimentary ideas all peppering my brain at once.
I started by pulling papers that I felt would help tell my story before I even considered which photos to use. I got further than my previous kit pulling spree and even started some layouts.
In the months that have passed I have completed the odd card which will eventually be blogged and started several projects which have remained unfinished.
Slowly slowly things are improving but the journey is filled with ups and downs.
I'm not yet at the stage where I can devote as much energy to my Stampin' Up! business as it deserves, but I am getting there and hope to offer classes and card kits and all kinds of stuff in the (not too distant) future.
Meanwhile I'm going to craft for fun without any pressure and slowly pick up the pace.
So what is the moral of this (long) story? Besides heralding my (hopeful) return to both crafting and blogging? It's that Mojo can strike in the most unexpected of places...in the most unusual forms but just go with it. If you stress about unfinished projects that you should finish first and ignore the Mojo, you might end up having achieved exactly NOTHING. At least if you embrace inspiration when it strikes, you will have done (or at least started) SOMETHING and hopefully had some fun along the way
* "Arthur" or "Arthurs" is a not-so-affectionate nickname some arthritis sufferers use to call their condition.
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