Thursday, August 03, 2006

A Familiar Tune

From my journal:

"The last couple days have been a struggle. For some reason I'm trying to find reasons to avoid starting this project. Maybe there are too many unknowns and I'm letting the impending decision-making process intimidate me. I catch myself back in the immobilizing thought process of fearing to "ruin" by trying some new stuff.

...(Now) I'm a little more able to address the choices & experiments. So while this is not moving at rapid speed with little hesitation in decision making,...I am moving forward at last. The backsliding into old habits, insecurities and avoidance behavior may be more due to outside factors also requiring a lot of decision making coupled with having more than one or two new things to try in the actual piece."

This sounds like it could have been written this week, or maybe a few months ago. But it is from longer ago than that. Last fall when I was struggling so to find my way, to motivate myself to work, to make up my mind where and when to move? No, it is actually from November of 2003, half-way through my year of doing monthly journal quilts. Now that's a bit of a wake-up call, and that is why I journal. I have a tendency to forget just how long I've complained about this or that without taking action for change.
On the other hand, had I continued with my monthly journal quilts, spent more time on my art quilting journey instead of the traditional teaching I was doing at the time, perhaps I'd not be intimidated and immobilized by non-traditional work at this point.

To be fair, I have made progress, I do have areas I feel more confident in. I'm less fearful of experimentation and more willing to "sacrifice" good fabric in the learning process. And just have to do more work more consistently, just like I did when I was learning the basics of traditional quilting. Practice makes perfect, or at least gets you comfortable with the process. Or as Michael James always says, "Just do the work!"

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