"Now, right off the bat, I screwed up."

"Now, right off the bat, I screwed up."

I have been trying to write up the post on yesterday's project for the past, well, 18 hours... and keeping in mind that I _did_ sleep a good eight hours, and I _did_ just attend a three hour staff meeting ...I feel like a failure.

Because the words aren't magically flying from my finger tips.

Because I see the imperfections in my craft, in my project. In me.

Damn the past.

Damn the present.

I've been off of my anti-depressants for 21 days. This is the longest I have gone without being medicated in the past seven years.

I feel this whelming sense of need.

I NEED TO CREATE. I NEED TO MAKE. I NEED TO GO GO GO DO DO DO. 

I wonder how much of this is at the core of who I actually am. I wonder how much of this has been suppressed by the drugs.

I seem to have access to the words within my brain again.

But yet, I can't seem to make these words dance.

Failure.

My creative spark seems to have returned.

But combined with the over-whelming need to produce, nothing looks "good;" everything looks mediocre. Home made, as opposed to hand made.

Failure.

Elizabeth (my co-worker) said the other day, "you are just a beginner," but in my head, I have been creating my entire life, sewing for nearly four months; I should be so much more than a beginner.

Failure.

And the more I repeat it, the worse I feel. The more I feel the sense of bleakness.

Focus on the positive.

Four months ago was March. I was medicated. I was floating through my days. I couldn't sew a straight line.

See! FLUBBY! The bias tape on the blue box is FLUBBY!

Today is July. I am unmedicated. I made two cute fabric boxes last night in less than two hours. I made a crib-sized quilt top two nights ago in three hours.

Forgive myself. The are not imperfections; they are character builders.

A flubby little piece of bias tape that was stitched wrong? Who else in the world who isn't an expert would even make a comment? Character. Not failure.

So what? I stitched two panels in the crib-sized rag quilt to the wrong (and therefore, to the correct on any other type of quilt in the world) side? Easy enough to pull the stitches and re-stitch. And the tiny rip of the fabric? That part is meant to fray ANYWAY ... it's a RAG QUILT. CHARACTER. NOT FAILURE.

Character.

Reminder to self: find a picture of Darth...

I have been toying around in my head with the Star Wars panel quilt for Marji for Christmas for ... a week or two. And today in the meeting I sketched out the pattern. And I showed it to Gus (another co-worker). And she thought it was BRILLIANT.

Even if my execution is off, is not perfect, in this moment, an idea of mine is BRILLIANT. I need to embrace that. I need to embrace the idea that I created something, even paper.