Sorry I’ve been away for so long, I’ve been way overwhelmed with work. I’m not enjoying my job at all, I mean I used to get frustrated at the way people in my line of work do things, but it was nothing compared with the way stuff is being run with our new owners. I’ve been trying my darndest to leave work at work, but it’s hard when you have a job where you’re on call 24 hours a day. In conjunction with the downward trend of my feelings toward my job, I’ve been trying to figure out what I want to do with my life, I mean I know I don’t want to be an office manager/property manager for the rest of my life, but what is it I want to do. I’ve been trying to figure out what makes me the happiest and what is it I feel most relaxed doing. And the answer came to me while making a wedding dress for a friend of mine, I love sewing. Not just sewing, but creating clothing.
In addition to all this reflection I’ve been trying to figure out how to make myself better at my craft. Enter Ms. Violet of the venerable Lime & Violet podcast, she’s been talking about her 10,000 hour project, so I went to her blog to find out more about it and the basic premise is that anyone who is considered an expert in their field has spent at least 10,000 hours practicing whatever their craft is. She’s made a resolution to spend 10,000 hours in pursuit of perfecting (as much as that is possible) her graphic design and perfume making. This got me to thinking. Wouldn’t this be the perfect way to figure out if this is indeed what I would like to do with my life? I know I’ve tried other things with a “do this everyday” theme and they haven’t worked out, but I think that if the end goal is to be self sustained in business and not have to work a full time office job that I can work on my craft for 10,000 hours. I realized that it doesn’t have to be sitting at my sewing machine for 10,000 hours, it would include learning new skills, designing, sketching, sewing muslins and wearable garments. I’m looking at taking some classes this fall at Santa Ana College in design and fabrication, I might go to OCC though instead. I’ve looked at design as a viable career before, right after Steve and I move in together in fact, but school was just too expensive. I’ve since figured out that by taking the classes at a community college instead of a private design school, not only can I afford it, but I can still work full time and support the fam and just take classes at night. I’m going to start my own personal 10,000 hour project on June 1, 2010. You may not hear about it here on the blog all that often, but you’ll see the fruits of my labor and I promise to update when I get to big milestones in my journey. I look forward to sharing this with you and as I’ve been typing this I am starting to feel an excitement about my life that I haven’t felt since Steve and I decided to get married. There are a few other projects in the works that I’ll let you in on as soon as they get underway, all I can say is that they are exciting.
Here's the wedding dress I made, I'll post some more pics when I get some of her in it:
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1 comment:
Lovely post! I read about the 10,000-hour rule in Gladwell's Outliers: Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, the Beatles, you name it! They all worked their way up to the 10,000 hours mark :) (At least, according to the very controversial Gladwell). It's wonderful to begin to think of what you really want, and what it's going to take to get there. Looking forward to seeing how your journey progresses, garment by garment. :)
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