The middle ground

Rethinking what it means to have a creative practice.

Last week I wrote about how I found a way to start making again since the birth of my second child by bringing the goal posts closer and choosing a project that is more aligned with what my life actually looks like these days.

In the week since, my project has continued and I’ve found little pockets of time to stitch. It becomes easier with each stitch. Momentum is building.

Interestingly, nothing about my circumstances has changed. My baby still needs me. My days are still fragmented. The only thing that changed was my expectation of what counted. Once I stopped expecting hours of uninterrupted sewing, it became much easier to begin. And once I began, I wanted to keep going.

What this experiment has reminded me is that there can be a middle ground. I tend to have an “all or nothing“ approach in a lot of areas in my life and I constantly need to remind myself that there is another option. Having a relationship with making doesn’t need to mean making an entire outfit, but it also doesn’t mean I have to drop it until I have more time.

The middle ground often doesn’t look very impressive from the outside. It looks like ten stitches. It looks like mending instead of making. It looks like choosing a project that fits your life instead of waiting for life to fit your project. But over time, those small moments build a relationship with creativity that can survive even the busiest seasons.

In today’s post, I wanted to encourage you to tune into that grey area. You might be in a similar season to me, feeling like every waking moment is dedicated to little people. Or you might be struggling with health issues, caring for someone else, working too much or simply feeling disconnected from your creativity.

So many of us spend our time living at the extremes. We’re either making constantly or not at all. We’re either productive or we’re failing.

But what if there was another option? What if you could find your equivalent of the appliqué project that has got me slowly stitching again?

It probably won’t look like mine. And that’s the point. Enough isn’t something we all arrive at in the same way. It’s something each of us defines for ourselves, based on the season we’re in.

I encourage you to spend a few quiet minutes with the questions below. Write your answers in a journal if you’d like or simply sit with them and notice what comes up.