A Change in Pace

We all live busy lives and right now, things are looking a bit different than they have before. Some people have more time on their hands, others have … different times on their hands. In situations like this, how do you cope? What new things excite you that you didn’t know would before (ahem… getting everything on the grocery list)?

In “normal” life, I always made sure I found time to knit. Work was never stressful to me in the probably standard definition of work stress. I’m able to get my tasks done, I work with nice people and really don’t have a stressful job. It gets busy, sure, but stressful? Not really. Everything can and will get done. People can and will be dealt with and at the end of the day, I’m fortunate to go home and forget it all. This varies between people in my workplace, but I’ve always been able to separate work from home.

That doesn’t mean I’m not exhausted at the end of the day! My commute is about an hour each way, but there can be train delays and traffic accidents that slow it down. I typically go to the gym as well, which means I’m out of the house for about 12+ hours a day. When I do come home, dinner needs to be cooked, dishes need to be cleaned and general prep work for the next day needs to happen. Packing up clothes, packing breakfast, packing lunch… and on and on. I also end up exhausted just from being around coworkers all day. It sounds terrible, but it does take patience to remain professional all day long. I mean, even walking to the bathroom, you generally run into someone and small talk happens and really all you want to say is “HI MY BLADDER IS FULL, IT’S NICE TO SEE YOU TOO, BUT LET’S CHAT SOME OTHER TIME OK?” Exhausting.

I’m definitely an introvert, which adds to it. In any case, I found that at the end of the day, I needed to knit for some amount of time. It calmed me, relaxed me and allowed me to prepare for the next day.

So what now? While it might seem like I should have more knitting time, I’m finding I have less. For example, the table that I work at while being at home has had some things piling up on it that just needed to get put away. When you’re out of the house 5 days a week, it’s less important. When you’re staring at it all day long, all you can think about is putting all of that away. Sounds simple right? But then that leads to a “why did we leave this out in the first place? Oh that’s right, we were going to call these people about such and such project. Oh that’s right, I need to research blah blah blah before I call them” and before you know it, the weekends over and you’re back to working and staring at the stuff. Am I alone in this?

In the end, I’m finding I have less crafting time because … why? Maybe I have the same amount of time but because I’m overall less exhausted, I don’t make the time for it like I used to? I’ve been thinking about this a lot. Did I used to have more time or more need? As an introvert stuck at home, I’m emotionally more energetic, I have less headaches and that weird nausea I’d sometimes get on my way home from work. Maybe I’m relying on crafting less to get me through my day. When I used to go into the office, I’d take a lunch break in a quiet area of the building and knit. Now at home, I never take a knitting lunch break. I never even thought about it. I used to countdown to the minutes until I could. Now I don’t.

So I guess, is crafting something you like to do becuase you like to do it or is something you like to do because of some other reason? I always thought that I liked being crafty, but now I’m wondering if it really was a forced way to relax. Trust me, I still enjoy knitting, I still look forward to it and enjoy it but I also think that I look forward to it and enjoy it more when I’m at the end of a long to do list.

So maybe for you it isn’t crafting. Maybe you always do it, but is there something that usually goes first when something in life changes? Do you need to craft to keep your day in order? Do you only craft when you have free time? I honestly sat down to write this about how when I get busy, knitting seems to be the thing to fall off the list. I use it as a reward after finishing up everything else that has to get done. Now that I think about it though, I used to enforce having knitting time because it felt like the one time of day that was mine and I could do what I wanted to do. I think I’m actually enforcing it less because some of the things that exhausted me before are not here anymore. Interesting.

I appreciate the chat and I’d love to hear about how you’re all coping with the pandemic and how your crafts are incorporated into it. Do you find you have less time for it or more? Have the projects you are working on changed? How are doing overall?