Just do it...

"Find something you love and do it"

I love this message from Amy Smart, a guest blogger on Design Mom this week.

So many parts of it resonated with me. First, that we need to use our hands and do hard things to keep us sane in the midst of the hard and mundane parts of life. I often feel antsy and restless until I have another project to think through, imagine, work out or plan for. It was validating to know that others feel the same way, and make their creations in the midst of their children's chaos, and not feel bad about it.

Second, I was thinking about how much variety there is in this quest- Knitting, Baking, Party planning, game making up, kid playing, marathon running, tower building, teaching lessons, music making, etc. That we should all admire and respect each other's creations, but not make it a race.

Amy says " [Be creative] Not because you want to get a bunch of new comments on your blog, or because you want to become the next Martha, or because you want to win a blue ribbon at the state fair. But because it feeds some part of you that needs feeding. "

When I first joined facebook I felt lame. Everyone I graduated with was getting their masters degree or going on exotic study abroad vacations and I had just had a baby and felt like I had nothing to brag about. I felt like I had to be the coolest in order to compete in some kind of sucess race via facebook.

I feel the sense of this race when it bugs me when others appear to excel beyond me. When someone expresses that someone has the best pizza, and I think in my head "I bet mine is better." Sometimes it's just hard to accept that your best is great, but someone else can do it differently, and to be content, and to not covet a little bit the admiration or creativity or ingenuity of another. I don't think our society's use of superlatives help in this..but that's a story for another day.

Ok tirade over.



Along this topic, I got some enlightenment yesterday.

Scene: Girls playing dressup, Sophia convincing Natalie to put on a dress.

Sophia: Ok Natalie, you're going to be the most prettiest princess today

Me: Well we're all pretty Sophia, in different ways.

Sophia: Uh, no Mom. We're not all pretty when we're naked. We have to put on Beautiful romantic dresses, then we're all beautiful.

So young, yet so wise.

{The picture above is Natalie and Sophia pretending to be snow white, and Sophia is in her "most beautifulest gown ever" which happens to be the "gown" I despise. I just think it's ugly. But I've never been super into polyester with silk screen on top. Just me I guess.}