There are two Heats. (I suspect there are two of you, too.)
There’s Ideal Heat, the one that does All The Things. The one that followed through on learning to crochet, or had the patience and attention span to sew. She makes some of her own clothes and when it’s cold and she needs an ear warmer, she just whips one up. She’s diligent about learning Spanish (I’d be fluent by now…), has regularly used the calligraphy kit she got for Christmas a couple of years ago. A project started is a project finished.
There’s Real Heat, the one who doesn’t have the attention span to get through the rough beginnings of fabric arts and who doesn’t do them often enough to remember much from one session to the next, making the learning curve even rougher. She has a lot of interests and not enough time to pursue them all, but also wants to have some skills without earning them.
Real Heat does do plenty. This is not disparaging her at all. But she can’t do it all. And some of the things she thinks she wants to do, she doesn’t really want to do—she wants to want to.
The reason this distinction is important is because it allows me to unload physical and metaphorical baggage.
All the fabric and patterns from projects I wanted to do but in real life was not actually going to complete? I gave them away to a friend who sews like crazy. Maybe she used them and maybe she paid them forward—don’t know and doesn’t matter. They’re not taking up space in my house any more.
And they’re not taking up space in the back of my mind any more. I am free from the Weight of Unfinished Projects. At least those unfinished projects.
Yarn and crochet hook? Crafting stuff? Art supplies? Gone gone gone.
Not everything needs to be used daily or even regularly. I go in fits and spurts playing my ukulele. It’s not an unfinished project. It’s something I like to do from time to time. The ukulele makes the cut.
Getting rid of the stuff that belongs to Ideal Heat lets Real Heat have less clutter in the house and in the brain, so there’s more room for what she’s actually going to dig into.
