Wednesday was the Redwood Guild of Fiber Arts, RGFA, meeting featuring Jennie Hawkey's experience in Italy. Thursday, was meant for working on my icon design for the impending drawloom class. Instead I was distracted by a free lecture hosted through the Craft Industry Alliance. The emotions that lecture brought up were surprisingly discouraging. However, I kept searching, eventually finding a podcast that brought back a sense of joy and new desire to engage more with social media.
On Thursday, after walking Ollie and cleaning up the yard, I sat down for a free Webinar through Craft Industry Alliance. It was a design workshop on Photoshop shortcuts presented by Sarah Watts. She seemed very knowledgeable and excited about Photoshop (and she provides a 10-week Photoshop class I would be very interested when it starts again next August). However, my brain did a negativity dump during her presentation. She was so sure of herself and excited. Then, when she listed her background and accomplishments, it deflated my sense of self worth. So, being ridiculous, I googled how to stop being jealous. And I got a very poignant response. Jealousy, more precisely envy, stems from a feeling of lack in your life. Well, right now, I have lost a lot. My fur babies have passed, my Husband left, I buried a family member, I don't have a secure income, I could go on, but I don't need a pity party. I stated all these because currently I am in a place with a lot of loss. Thus, envy is probably going to be around for a bit. The article also mentioned re-framing the jealousy as being able to share their joy. Understand everyone has their trials, and life is generally hard. When you see someone bursting with joy, look at it as though there is still joy in the world, and they happen to be sharing some with you. After that, I was still dinking around their website and found a podcast with the lady who created Crafty Chicka. It was about her path to becoming a successful craft designer and writer. After internalizing the thought of being happy for others, the podcast gave me hope and joy that there are people who can make a living doing what they love.
And that brings me to her second takeaway, community through social media. My generation took on MySpace, Facebook, and yadda yadda, a million other platforms, for sharing stories and socializing electronically. For some reason, I haven't immersed myself in these electronic communications, but I've always wished I could. Honestly, I barely do emails or telephones. My brain becomes absorbed with whatever is physically in front of me, and an electronic interface never captures my full attention. But Crafty Chicka brought up how it becomes a sense of community and place to share ideas on a global scale. Ha, Sheila has been encouraging me to join the larger community. She always encourages me to email or call the person, which in my mind is intimidating. But it's how you engage and become part of a community. I would have been a lot more social had the internet and social media not taken hold, but it has, and it has brought so many more people together. So when faced with something you cannot change, and it isn't hurting anyone, I suppose you join it. I wonder if I should create a challenge to be more engaged online. Alas, maybe in a few months when I've had more time to heal. To sum it up. There have been a lot of community-inspiring events the last few days, between sharing time with my local guild members and joining in on webinars and podcasts to further my craft. I believe I'm setting up for a more connected and joyful experience in my future. Life is tough. But that's why we lean on each other and, when possible, share in each other's joys. Cheers, -Val
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Author: Vader
Archives
January 2023
Categories
All
This website uses marketing and tracking technologies. Opting out of this will opt you out of all cookies, except for those needed to run the website. Note that some products may not work as well without tracking cookies. Opt Out of Cookies |