A single one just doesn’t cut it

I have this problem (according to other people at least):

I find pretty much everything interesting!

That might not sound like a problem at first but maybe you will arrive at the same conclusion when I tell you a bit about me and the scissors in my life. There are four of them. Five if I count the kitchen scissors that I mostly use to cut open spice pouches (which is really not that thrilling) and six if I count the gardening shears that are mostly unused, because we sadly don’t have a garden (yet), so I will leave these scissors in the drawer for the moment.

Now, my mother always was a curious person and I sucked that up through the mother’s milk. That sounds a bit unsettling when I see it written out like that, but it’s a common German saying, look it up. So as a result I wanted to be just about everything when I was a kid. A zookeeper, a carpenter, a circus acrobat, an architect, a gardener, a writer, a race car driver, a hiking guide. Never truly an astronaut though, I wasn’t that delusional. But later I also thought about becoming a tattoo artist or a programmer for video games. This world has way too many options nowadays, how can you not be overwhelmed. And many options need many tools, to explore all these options. Or just one tool that can and will do it all, which brings me to my:

Important scissors nr. 1. They might be standard, but they are standard for a reason and that reason is their versatility. I love versatility. It’s something that I value in a tool but also something that I value in my own person. Scissors nr. 1 are full of adhesive residue and notches from varied projects. First and foremost I’m a fine artist by trade, so these scissors do a lot of art related stuff. I could talk for hours about painting and I know that this is actually somewhat the point of this challenge, but I can’t and won’t, because of that problem I mentioned at the beginning. Yes, painting is my holy grail, my life blood, but it’s not the only thing that makes my day. So these scissors I’m talking about have not just the function of cutting any variety of paper for drawings and watercolours, or picture wire to hang my oil paintings, or sometimes brushes when I mutilated them too much over time and they need a new haircut. That reminds me that I also have a seventh pair of scissors for cutting my own hair. Not because I’m passionate about cutting hair but because I’m passionate about NOT going to a professional haircutter. The last time I saw a hair salon from the inside I was 6 years old, but you really wouldn’t know, because I’m actually good at this by now. But back to the scissors at hand. They are not just cutting art supplies but also any type of tape and wire and veneer, for I love to work with wood and other hardware store materials whenever I need a break from the easel. You can easily tell that woodworking is a passion for me because I do it in my free-time, just for the fun of it, and not because I broke a chair or burned a whole into the coffee table. I love to make sketches about a wood project and to think about how to actualize it. My projects range from very small, like the glasses holder to pretty big and heavy, like the huge double litterbox chest to actually elegant, like the slender trinket shelf. I also really love to talk about woodworking, but then again, there is this problem. We don’t have time for this, so let’s get to the next pair of scissors.

Scissors nr. 2 are of the huge and heavy full metal variety. The screw in the middle is so tight, I can hardly open it with one hand. These scissors I bought about 10 years ago and they have just one purpose: to cut fabric. Okay okay, sometimes things should have just one purpose, I admit. My husband once used them to cut adhesive tape because he couldn’t find another pair. But he never did that again, the angry look in my eyes made sure of that. I have a long and happy relationship with these scissors, because they accompanied me through my exciting time as a live action roleplay gamer. For everyone who doesn’t know what so-called “LARP” is: it’s a bunch of people dressing up in fantasy costumes and running through the woods as thieves or orcs or damsels in distress, overcoming all matters of riddles and fights and drinking mead at the bonfire. And to do that properly you better have a personalized outfit that no one else has and that was something I was really passionate about at that time. I was an elven archer and my whole costume, except for the bow and arrows, was made by me. I wasn’t exactly good at that but I loved designing a costume on paper and then making it real with fancy fabrics. These scissors cut through a lot of cloth by now and even though I don’t make any costumes anymore at the moment (because life) they’re still being used regularly for smaller fabric jobs around the house.

Now, the term “small” brings me directly to scissors nr. 3. I found them by chance in a small family-owned knife shop in Tokyo in 2017. I instantly fell in love with them and they have helped me since with yet another passion of mine: macrame. I can honestly say that I’m never bored and so it surprises even me how I constantly come up with new hobbies. The devil knows where I find the time for all that. I see some new craft on YouTube and I just have to try it out. So I instantly bought a bunch of strings and got going on some big projects with thick rope and scissors nr. 2 and I cut dozens of strings for small jewelry pieces with scissors nr. 3. I would usually get inspiration online but when I found a general shape I liked I would totally freestyle it on the go. I could again tell you more about strings, knots and closures, but time is fleeting.

So, last but certainly not least we have scissors nr. 4. These are the scissors that help me maintain my fingernails. And now you will roll your eyes and think: come now, everyone does that, that’s not a passion. And no, trimming fingernails surely isn’t. I honestly hate it, but I’m happy I have this pair of nail scissors to get the job done (we actually have three; they seem to reproduce somehow), because short nails are really important for an actual passion of mine (and my dentist said biting off the nails is not an option). The passion I’m talking about is my violin. In an alternate reality in which I didn’t pick up fine art as a trade I definitely would have become a musician. Thinking about this missed opportunity fills me with grief to be honest. I can’t describe what I feel when playing my instrument of choice. I had three different rental violins before finally having the money to buy my own. And it’s a beautiful one, from Bavaria and about 100 years old. It has carved-in initials at the scroll from a stranger long ago and I named her Ciosa, because she was built after a baroque italien model. Music makes me happy just as much as painting and the fact that I started out way too late with that will probably haunt me for the rest of my life. But it’s of no use and I have to make the best of it, which I do. And soon I will add a cello to my passions as well, because one instrument is just not enough for me.

Which reminds me:

Are you beginning to see the problem now? Exactly, I’m all over the place. It’s hard for me to keep up with all these things and so it happens much more often than I would like that a passion gets kicked out of my schedule. But I made my peace with that, because I realized something: My passion is not tailoring, or drawing, or woodworking, or music, or macrame. My passion is to have many passions. Some of them go away, like bo-staff-fighting, rubik's-cube-solving and lock picking, but that doesn’t mean that I have wasted my time with them. I know that everything adds value to my person in one or the other way. And life has so much to offer, so why not trying it all out? Like at an all-you-can-eat buffet. Seriously, who would stick with just bread when he can put everything on his plate? To be versatile is my true passion and even though lots of people might say that it keeps me from becoming proficient in one discipline I wouldn’t change a thing. You never really know what the next day brings so I would say it’s best to be prepared for every possibility. And it might not be important by the time I’m writing this, but I do have to say it puts my mind at ease to know that I would be the last one to be kicked out of the base and left to die in a zombie apocalypse.