Purpose and Meaning

My passion has always been in following creative arts. I have spent a good portion of my life chasing the next creative outlet. I have a tendency to get very excited about a craft in the moment and put everything I have into creating only to 12 quilt tops, 3 half completed scrapbooks or the parts for a dream catcher that sit in the drawer for a year. I never really understood the need to scour the internet putting all of these items on a Pinterest board or looking at items at the craft store and buying them because they had potential to be something in the end. It wasn’t until I started working on behavioural therapy that I really began to understand some things about myself.

I have always been a “shy” person. Quiet and a wallflower always on the periphery of life. Growing up in a rural area in the 90s and early 00s this was what every teacher said about me. That I was shy. I believed that being shy meant that you were terrified of social situations and that like everyone else said that I was just over reacting to the social situations that just didn’t go right. Could it be that everyone felt this way inside when confronted with going to a movie or a friend’s house? The one thing that I would do that always made me feel better was, “stress baking.” The ability to shut everything off and concentrate on making something delicious.

It wasn’t until after university that I was diagnosed with a social anxiety disorder. It turns out that all that shyness wasn’t just normal behaviour that I would grow out of. It turns out that it was an actual problem that needed to be dealt with. While dealing with it on a very surface level by getting medication for my anxiety disorder I continued to craft. I’d like to say that things changed overnight and that I was all better. In reality, however, it took years of work to get to a place where the thought of giving a speech in public didn’t make me wish for appendicitis. I decided to start taking classes in Quilting and scrapbooking which taught me some very valuable lessons far beyond basic craft instruction.

My quilting classes were taught by a sour faced retiree named Shelia. She had spent years of her life owning a fabric store and was a great sewer and quilter. I had just gotten a new sewing machine for Christmas and being employed at a museum was excited that I was going to learn an art that had been done by women for hundreds of years. What I really took away was that I had a very hard time keeping my lines straight so that everything met up perfectly and that Shelia’s pointing that out during class terrified me. I went at quilting and bought the equipment and sewed and sewed and sewed and when I brought the finished top to the store to have it sandwiched together with the batting and bottom layer with their very large and expensive machine Shelia took pains in explaining why it would never work and left me dejected. Looking back I know know that some minor alterations would have made it work well enough but at the time I was so focussed on the shortcomings and feeling like I had failed that I stopped quilting all together for two years.

I did try quilting again at that point only this time with a kit instead. This had been weighing on my self-worth for two years. That despite my best efforts I couldn’t manage this ‘hobby,’ meanwhile the friend that I was doing this with at the time was able to get hers done even though she had picked a much harder pattern. I was so hard on myself that I hadn’t been able to figure this out while she had excelled at it. I began to tie it in with my intelligence. I finally got sick of the feeling and decided that I was going to do everything I could to do this kit well. I worked so hard on this new kit. In the end I thought it looked beautiful and was so proud of the entire thing. Again I took it to the same quilting store to use the machine and get it sandwiched together. This time they took it and I felt elated here I had mastered this big hurdle in my life. Four months later they called and said that they weren’t able to put it on the new quilt top because of the faults. Here again I felt the sting of humiliation. I put the pieces away and tried not to think about it.

Another year or so later I was getting together with a different friend, Erica. Erica wanted to make her own quilt and enlisted my help to instruct her while we got together and had a sewing bee. To her it didn’t matter that I had never successfully gotten them to sandwich the quilt tops I had made with their computerized machine. Instead she saw someone who could walk her through the plethora of information out there on the internet to show her how to make a much more simple blanket than those I had been originally planning. When Erika finished her quilt she was so proud of it despite the fact that it wasn’t as technically perfect as the ones that Shelia had rejected. It was something that bewildered me. She had this absolute faith that I could help her with all of these things while I was still uncertain.

It was during this stage of my personal growth that I started realizing that medication only went so far in helping with my anxiety. I casted around for more cultural releases and with some limited resources I was looking on the internet for something that would bring the joy that I had felt creating as a kid. More than that I was looking for the absolute abandon and belief in myself that had been there as a kid. That belief that Erika had in me and looking for ways to get out of my head and beyond the fact that I was caught in the Millennial job rut. Trying to work two to three different jobs to make things work.

I stumbled across penpal art videos on YouTube. These ladies were using everyday items and making them into art and conversing with people across the world. This world was a rabbit hole in its own right. One YouTuber led to another and another until I was watching so many different craft tutorials that I don’t think that I could have finished them in a lifetime. What I really learned from these videos wasn’t necessarily actual craft techniques as the fairy house tutorials I followed using recycled materials looked like recycled materials with glitter on them. What I really learned is that the YouTube videos that I was drawn to were the creators who had been/ were in the same situation as me. These ladies had anxiety and spoke openly about it as they worked on these crafts. I would secretly cheer them on and felt comforted by the idea that I wasn’t alone when I read the comments to their videos.

Looking back on that time I realize I was looking for reassurance that it would get better and for information on how I could cope in the mean time. I had found it so completely in these videos that they made me feel empowered. Empowerment in turn made me want to share that feeling with the world. In the last 4 years I’ve had the very beginnings of many different courses and online blogs. I had followed all the coaching and advice and yet I never seemed to get beyond the beginning. I was feeling the sting that the quilting experience brought with each unrealized creative tutorial. I was moving backwards. It was this very difficult time that I broke down with my social worker about at my next appointment lamenting that I would never be ‘normal’ that things changed. She told me that normal is bad word in terms of one’s existence. It was absolutely freeing. Suddenly I didn’t have to live up social expectations that were portrayed in our culture. Suddenly I could be happy in myself and didn’t have to do a project with the promise of making a million dollars the way that everyone had said was so easy in the courses on building your own blog or online course. I returned to crafting a hundred different things and excelling at none.

Something no one ever confides in you when you start an arts degree is that well paying jobs are very few and far in between. You will love and care about your job but there is usually a sacrifice of money to do so. This being the case the crafts and baking that I was eagerly trying to complete all had to be done with thrift in mind. The high end craft stores were lovely but unattainable for a dabbler who was interested in learning a little bit of everything rather than specializing.

Recently, however, one very difficult work day propelled me back into figuring out how I could express myself to others. I had gotten frustrated that no matter how much I care, how much I do or who I help that my situation was always going to be the same. That my employment wont be able to sustain my existence and that I was going to have to rely on help from my parents. That I may never be able to afford to adopt a child like I wanted and that I may always using debt to bridge the gap. On that terribly difficult day I had some sudden clarity that I wasn’t alone. There is a whole generation of people like me who are frustrated by world events and that they want to use creative outlets as a means of escaping from societal frustrations for awhile. One thing that all the creative outlet tutorials I turned to online had in common was that they were using diy ‘art’ therapy in various forms and I kept being drawn to this. To these people that understood and to turning my nervous energy into something productive. Throughout my entire life I have self-soothed with arts and crafts with baking and reading. I used these things as a means to get some anxiety relief. Now that I am on the other side and have managed to get to a place where everything is stable and my meds work and I can function when called upon I am reflecting on my journey. What I am passionate about now is teaching others how to use home accessible arts and crafts as a tool in their anxiety busting toolbox.

My new goal is to run a membership site for Millennials to use crafts to sooth and live their best life. My passion is showing others how arts, crafts and culture can be achievable and that it doesn’t have to come at a high ticket price. I will charge members $10 a month and showcase a fun recipe, a book to get lost in, crafts that enhance your hygge and virtual guided trips to cultural institutions. In my world of Meaningful Millennial subscribers I will teach how to do things for the experience rather than the outcome. It will be an entire community of people who will learn that, ‘normal’ is the illusion and that enjoying the ride can be way better for some than having a destination. My hope is to show people that you don't have to have Instagram perfect product to have the experience. Helping others is my passion and if I can help others with the lessons arts and culture have taught me then I will count my life a success.