The Joys of "Making it"
“‘The Lie of progress. The lie of unlimited expansion. The Lie of ‘grow or perish’. Listen. We built ourselves a fine commercial bonfire, but then instead of basking in its warmth, toasting marshmallows over it, and reading the classics by its light, we became obsessed with making it bigger and hotter, bigger and hotter, until the flames didn’t leap higher from one quarter to the next, it was cause for great worry and dissatisfaction… Nature has always set limits on growth; limits on the physical size of individual species, limits on the size of populations. Did he really believe capitalism was exempt from the laws of nature?’“
Tom Robbins, Half Asleep in Frog's Pajamas
Volcano at Punalu'u Hawaii Volcano National Park
I read this book on a plane back from Hawaii in the spring of 2013. I was working a full time job at a corporate-lite company, and I knew my time there was limited. Something inside told me it would be a long, long time before the concept of a 'paid vacation' would be available to me, and that I should milk it for all it was worth (also, I had broken up with my boyfriend months earlier, who I lived with at the time, and he was still sleeping on my couch so any chance I had to not be at home I jumped on). And then I jumped in.
It was in this job that I discovered that dreams and goals such as "I will sell to stores like Barney's, and have my clothes gracing the pages in glossy magazines, and make six figures and then I will have made it" were ultimately unfulfilling, as I saw the higher ups in my company nailing these milestones and still left with the same problems - Not getting sufficient sleep. Not finding the 'right' partner. Not being able to own their dream home in Los Angeles, where even half a million dollars gets you a tiny apartment or studio bungalow with no outdoor space on a busy street (that you can't park on Wednesdays from 6am-8am or Fridays from 1pm to 3 pm and good luck not waking up in a cold sweat every other day worrying whether or not you did it right). It seemed like "making it" was not all it was cracked up to be, and the more successful I became in this industry, the less I was actually, literally, making anything.
The idea that I could get 'all the things' and still not be content was a giant red flag waving from the top of the mountain of success in fashion, so I took the first chance I could to jump off the fast train there, and review what it was that would really make me happy. It was in NYC I discovered what I cherished most, because nothing will tell you what makes you happy like spending a year and a half in a city that has almost none of those things.
The community, culture, and collectives of artists there was like a thick warm blanket I wrapped around me as I waited for the J train above ground on freezing cold nights, the people and their resilience and their honesty and their love the only thing that kept me there for even that short amount of time. Yet still there it was bigger than I'd ever seen, the push to grow, grow more, expand, get bigger, make bigger, make more, earn more. I just wanted a place where I could just be, watch the grass grow and the flowers bloom and the fruit ripen and the leaves change colors and the snow fall and cover it all for months while nothing happened besides the occasional snow plow rolling by, and that city was not that place.
I am finally starting to feel comfortable with my small dreams. Not giving a damn about what next quarter's sales are, not having to concern myself with the "scalability" of my company (which is not scalable at all), the ability to go long periods of time without checking my email and knowing that everything will still be just fine. No need to "fake it till you make it" here, just making it and enjoying the whole process along the way. Because that dress in my shop you're thinking of buying? I made it. The denim quilt that would look fucking fabulous on your couch if I do say so myself? I made it.
In the most literal sense of the word, I made it, and I'm going to keep making it, and quite honestly it would be my dream come true if YOU made it too. So I open the door to ask you, as a step on your path to creative freedom, and through it, freedom in all other areas of your life, what is it that you want to make? I want to know, literally, what it is that you want to make for yourself. I'm feeling a strong pull towards providing people with the skills and tools to make things themselves, and what better place to start than requesting you fine folks send me an email or comment on this blog post with exactly what it is you want to make, fiber-wise.
Because you too my friend, can make it in this mad world.
(A brief tangent saved for the end - photos in this journal entry are from the previously mentioned trip to Hawaii, where I stayed in a hobbit house that was built from scratch by a man who made his riches in the 70's because according to him the smoking pipe he invented ended up in Playboy magazine, so he sold the patent and used the money to ship a bunch of building materials to the lower point of the Big Island, on a property in Naalehu overlooking Mark Twain's Waiohinu, and create an off the grid oasis for him and his wife and all the local boars. Ok maybe the boars were not in his dream but they were most def all over the property. As far as "making it" goes, this man takes the cake. I drank to his honor, and the honor of all natural born Hawaiians who inhabited this land before him, with hibiscus in my hair and a coconut in my face. )
