Hypercraftophobia

Hypercraftophobia.

It means "fear of having too many crafts."

I made that word up to describe what I am feeling.

Lately, I've been on a crazy craft buying binge. Why? I don't know. I clearly understand why I had a craft buying jag before my surgery last winter. I was looking at five to six weeks with no place to go and nothing to do. 

I don't have any surgeries coming up. Why now am I shopping for crafts like the world is coming to an end?

I don't know, but this week I bought two paint-by-number kits, two needlepoint kits--which are super cute and one is complicated, a fancy embroidery kit from England where I have to cut a bunch of little felt pieces out and sew them on the background for a Christmas decoration, iron-on embroidery sets, and a punch sewing thing that I don't even know what it is.

WFT? Why?!? I already have a large, unfinished stash of projects, many that are half done and more that aren't even started.

So, instead of being all excited and like "Wow! Look at all of these cool things!" I am freaking out like these crafts are just a million more things to add to my to do list. Because I bought all of these crafts, I feel like I am like behind, that these crafts magically inserted themselves on my To Do list.

Every now I then, I promise myself that I need to finish 

books

make-up 

shampoo

fancy lotions

fancy face creams

crafts

food in my freezer

before I go out and buy more.

Am I turning into a bear and getting ready to hunker down for winter when it is too miserable to be outside where I can sit and stitch by the fire? It is August! I can see having these feelings in October, but man, this is too early in the season to be planning my winter weekends.

When I was growing up and I was working on crafts, my mom would always tell my brother and I not to rush and finish things up, to save it for later. Then, the craft would get put back in the box, back on the shelf, forgotten, never completed.

It was odd, her frugality.

When my mom got Alzheimer's, my dad needed something to do for himself, so he bought drones. 

Lots and lots and lots of drones

plus a bunch of little toys and gizmos that he assembled out of wood.

Every time he felt low or down, he'd head over to the hobby shop and get something for himself. He read that somewhere in a self-care book for losing a partner to dementia. Feeling sad? Go buy something for yourself! To be clear, my father is the opposite of a shopaholic. His hobbies are well within his budget, as are mine.

What are these crafts, these too many crafts that I likely won't have time to do? I have friends who say you always need more crafts than you can do, more books than you can read: that is your stash, your bunker, where you can go to to refill when you are empty. How can you be creative if you don't have supplies on hand for when we are inspired?

Is that it? Am I looking for inspiration? Perhaps, but I think it is something else.

Maybe I am like my dad, buying his drones. His drones and his wooden projects were a way when his life was in transition to grab a hold of himself, and remind him who he is. Those drones were the branch he extended to himself to help him from getting swept away in the river of my mother's dementia. They were a small investment in himself, in his own interests, outside of his marriage to a woman who was gone but still here.

Before my mother died, my father bought a big and fancy drone. 

"This will be my last drone," he said. He loves this drone. I don't think he meant that as he was done flying drones, but he was done buying them. He doesn't buy wooden projects anymore.

He doesn't need to. He's doesn't need the branches to keep him out of the river anymore.

My crafts are my branches, helping me through the transition from the divorce. All of these activities are in part solitary activities. We do them alone, but we can also do them together. I have my sewing circle, women who get together to chat over dinner once a month, but we use sewing as an excuse and as a topic to gather..

But mostly, I do these crafts alone, which is fine. I need this time alone to ground myself, to remind myself who I am. 

"Mistakes"

I was talking to two different friends this week and they both mentioned mistakes that they have made in the past, and were ruing their decisions.

In the past few years given Pedro's treatment, my divorce and my own spiritual journey, I don't see things as "mistakes," or poor decisions. I see people doing the best they could do at the time with the skills they had. 

At this stage of my life, I have friends who are caring for elderly parents who can't fully care for themselves, and with that comes difficult choices. I see friends wanting to care for their relatives, but then they might discover the task is more than they can handle. They were optimistic, hoping for the best. Was the decision to care for their family a mistake?

I don't think so. In crisis management, we have to make decisions with incomplete information. What if we make a "mistake" or a wrong decision?

We make a new decision. We have the freedom to change our minds and change directions. It doesn't mean the past was a mistake. It means we didn't have complete information. Now we have more information, information that may tell us we need to change.

I have another friend who made some bad relationship choices. Actually, I have lots of friends who have been in relationships that needed to end. Does that mean those relationships were "mistakes?"

I recently read Group: How One Therapist and a Circle of Strangers Saved My Life by Christine Tate about her experience in group therapy. Her goal was to find a steady, stable, and fulfilling relationship. Her story was brilliant in how she dated loser and after loser, but each loser was a notch better than the one before. This was her learning. She learned from each miserable relationship what she wanted, what she liked, and how to relate. She didn't wave a magic wand and all of a sudden Prince Charming appeared. She had these painful experiences in order to grow.

Are there such things as mistakes? Sure. I think most mistakes arrive when we are self-centered instead of self-focused. (We are self-focused when we operate from our soul. We are self-centered when we operate from our ego.) Maybe we are afraid to end a relationship, so we misbehave, act out, and throw tantrums instead of ending things in a respectful and dignified manner. Our mistakes more lie in how we do things than what we do. It isn't wrong to break up with someone. I might be unkind and hurtful to ghost people or dump them and call them names.