Crafting, Tedium, and the Dreaded Follow-Through, Or Why I’m Learning to Love the Slog
Crafting is an escape. It’s something that I can do in the evenings when my body is too sore to move. It replaces the monotonous joy of the repetitive thump-thump on the pavement during a two-hour run. I’ve surrounded myself with things I think worthwhile until I can get back to running. Books, blogs, and a whole corner devoted to buckets and buckets of crafting supplies. I’m pretty sure my husband thinks it’s taking over our house. I’m pretty sure I don’t have enough yarn. He has me on a buying ban until I use some of the fifty odd skeins up.
Like it or not, he’s probably right. I can’t look entirely like the crazy aunt with 17 cats whose house is littered with half-finished projects. So this year, or rather, this month in particular, I’ve devoted myself to finishing a variety of projects I’d had on my docket, or that I’d been avoiding finishing because crafting brings up a sort of tedium in me.
A drudge that I’m convinced will never end. It’s the slogging middle period. When I can see the vision I have, but no matter how fast I work, the process feels too slow, too painful, so I resign myself to putting the project “on the back burner” and flit myself to some other audacious project, thus leaving the perfectly good, half-finished masterpiece to maybe be touched again, in the future, when I’m “feeling like it.”
We all know, however, that’s a lie. And that I’ve convinced myself I will follow through knowing full well that I won’t.
The same feeling resurrects itself when I’m in the middle of a run, seven or so miles from home, and I desperately WANT to quit, but the only way back home is through my own body, and running seven miles is a lot faster than walking seven miles, so the feeling of tedium overwhelms my senses and turn it into a driving force that pushes me back home – and to a nice hot shower and recovery drink.
Crafting has no such impetus to finish. Nothing keeps me drudging to the finish line, except self imposed deadlines for gifts I’ve decided to make for people. And sometimes, that’s not enough of a push to get things going. It’s a different kind of internal wrestling. One that takes a lot more emphasis on taking pride in your work as an internal motivator, something that I never cultivated.
But, this year, I’m making time to cultivate that sense of personal coaching. And I’ve made progress on the follow through. It’s the dreaded favorite words of any coach ever. I’ve heard it more times than I can count. As a critique of my riding form: “Set up your pocket. Work on your follow through. You have to be committed.” As a praise of my running form: “Good follow through. Keep hustling.” Those two words encapsulate my journey as an athlete before my knee injury kicked me out of both sports, but they’re also encapsulating a new found cultivation of finishing what I started.
I’ve made several hats, an apron, a dog toy, Pooka, two baby blankets, and I’m working on a shawl. With only five rows left before it’s finished, I’m dead set on getting it there. On the docket after this project is a hat for Purple, a dog bed, and at least one of the thousand patterns I’ve accumulated at the thrift store.
I have all of the materials sitting on my crafting bench or in my portable crocheting bag, but not as much time. At the beginning of my journey, crafting needed me to devote large swaths of time to each project. A few hours in the evening wasn’t quite enough, so I’d push it off to my next free weekend. I felt the need to finish it in one go round. Otherwise, the temptation to backburner the project was almost too much.
With smaller projects, it worked. I created Pooka in only a few hours, and similar with the dog toy I made and one of the baby blankets. The larger projects have proved impossible to pick up and finish in a sitting. One of the baby blankets I made took a season and a half of 7th Heaven, seven thousand episodes of Little Bear while watching my god niece, and more screams of WHY WON’T THIS FINISH ITSELF than I can count. I almost stopped on multiple occasions because “IF I HAVE TO STITCH ANOTHER SQUARE TOGETHER, I AM GOING TO DIE”. But, I finished it, and the new mom I gifted it to adores it.
The shawl, an arguably longer, more intricate project, has still taken close to 20 hours, but the internal struggle of tedium hasn’t felt as deafening. The internal voices telling me to call it quits haven’t been as loud. And the project this time around has had less swear words and more thoughtful reflection on the beauty that my hands are making. If I’m overwhelmed by a sense of existential dread that I’m never going to finish, I take a break and center myself on something different, less exhausting. And return when the voices have quieted.
Art, then, has become an internal meditation. The tedium and voices in my head become an anthem that I learn to balance while completing projects with intense personal meaning. I can step out of reality and into something more transcendent, a reminder of a less hectic world, one which I have the privilege of striving for. Then it is also an anchoring point for financial independence.
The slog to financial independence is a long one. According to one calculator, we still have about 27 years left. More than my lifetime once over. And we are just beginning. Parts of it are fun. My job is engaging and my coworkers insightful. I work in journalism, so I’m engaging with something new every day. My husband works at a group home that rehabilitates drug dependent teenagers. It’s meaningful, all of it.
But it doesn’t feel fast enough, and I want to be there now. If I let it, the tedium of every day as we slowly squirrel away money and putz our way to an independent lifestyle could drive me mad. But as I’m learning with crafting, that same internal struggle, the lethargy that encourages me to give up can be quieted. And I can pace myself, use it as a thermometer to tell me how I’m feeling.
It’s a useful tool, if I recognize it as such. It tells me I’ve focused on one thing for too long, and it’s time to take a break, to come back with fresh eyes. This means that I’m slowly learning not to check balances everyday, that once a week check ins will do. (And probably should do). This means that slowing down the debt repayment to round out our emergency fund is the right decision. It means moving to a place where we can make new memories is an okay idea.
Learning to embrace tedium as a tool to recenter and refocus me is supremely important, especially when I have grand visions and plans floating around in my head all the time.
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I have at least 2 projects that will never get finished because the deadline for the gift has passed. And like you I get frustrated when things aren’t done so quickly. Also because I actually suck at crocheting which doesn’t help. So I stick to easy stuff like scarves (that still don’t come out quite right but oh well) and donate them once I’m done. It’s a way to keep my hands busy and me not snacking.
Anyway I’m glad the tedium is easing for you and that you’re creating beauty. Glad at least one of us manages both.
I have missed running during periods of injury and boy, it’s hard to replace that feeling! These are some valuable lessons, though. The pushing through tedious tasks, the perseverance through hard times, certainly serves well in a career path.
I miss riding ever so much.
I am the least crafty or creative person ever and with my chronic pain cutting out so many of my active hobbies, my hobbies have boiled down to things I am good at and can do sitting down: money stuff.
But I also intensely admire people who have crafting skills and this year am embracing the idea of creating on a very small level as a way to build character, relieve stress by learning something new, and enjoy the act of having made something I think is neat and hope others will like too.
There’s definitely a phase of tedium that’s hitting with each of those projects now, and like you, I’m going to do my best to embrace that as part of the process too.