Today I hemmed a pair of jeans

note: I actually wrote this about ten days ago. On an actual piece of paper. With a pen. It was kind of a breakthrough moment for me, and I want to share it with you.

One of the reasons I started quilting again a year and a half ago was that I wanted something in my life that no one could take away from me. It's the same reason I started volunteering with GENaustin. Whatever might come my way, whether I lose my job, have a falling out with a friend or get dumped — those outside things didn't define me.

No one but me could take those things away. Today, I realized I had taken something away from myself. It had been more than two months since I turned on my sewing machine; my desk was covered in a fine layer of dust. Hemming those jeans, taking a step back and seeing tangible results of my time and effort, made me realize all I had been missing.

A lot has happened in my life over the past few months to make me rearrange my priorities. But in the rearranging, I lost balance. I lost part of myself. So I've started a new blog with the intent of finding balance. Balance between work and play, academics and creativity. It won't be just a quilting blog, but if you're solely interested in that, there will be a separate RSS feed and archives page.

I will be double-posting in this blog as well, at least for a while. And I'll still be posting updates to Flickr. (My next post will be about this project I've been working on.)