Sustaining Feith

What's the last thing you crafted, constructed or created yourself?

Last week, I was all about my little sketch book.  I drew some and coloured some and even collaged a little bit.  It was comforting to depend on something other than words to express myself.  I started carrying the sketch book around with me, just in case inspiration struck while I was out of the house.  Sometimes work is slow, and I have time to sketch between calls.

I'm no artist, but I do enjoy creating abstracts - blocks and curves of colours - that seem to communicate my inner mind to me.  It seems I communicate from a mind I have limited access to when I'm sketching.  Everything I do, every line, ever colour selection, seems fraught with meaning. 

It's incredibly meditative for me, and if I'm in a funk, it never fails to make me feel better.  Even though it is a 'hobby' and results in no real benefit aside from a visual recording of my mindset, it feels like an act toward something, a fruitful act.

Sometimes I bead, and sometimes I knit a little, but drawing, colouring, some might call it, is the thing I do most often that feels 'crafty' to me.

I like starting new things.  I like it so much that I have history littered with new things I've started, but not finished, but I've come to accept this about myself.  I will feed off the joy of starting something new, get bored, and move on.  Lately, I'm noticing a return to some of the things I've started - this Vox account, for example.  Knitting.  Beading.  I don't completely abandon my interests in favour of new ones, it seems.  I place them in a box on a shelf so I can return to them when the desire arises.

It means I never have an excuse to be bored.

I already have a blog at feithline.com.  I love it there.  It's quiet and perfectly suited to whatever I want to do - rant, remember, dream.  It's a room of my own, in a way - something I'm definitely lacking in my non-cyber life.  But, a girl gets lonely.  She craves connections with others of like minds - lately, that means writers.  I have no writerly friends in my life, and I'm feeling the lack in a big way.  Which is not to say I won't explore connections with people who don't write.  I will not limit myself that way.  But my priority at the moment is to connect with writers. Especially women writers.  Especially those who are less about the finished product (publication) and more about the process (actually writing).

So...I'm off to explore.  To find writers.  To add them to my virtual neighbourhood.  To forge new ways of connecting, of thinking.  Writing is a lonely endeavour.  It requires hours alone.  I'm ready to fill some of those hours with something other than the blank page.