On NOT Being a Maker

This past weekend, my coworkers and I were given a surprise Friday off. As I left work on Thursday, my brain was abuzz with all the projects I could accomplish in those extra hours. I would finally be able to pull out some of the art supplies I haven’t touched in months!

What did I actually do on Friday? I lazed in bed watching some movies as it thunderstormed, talked to my mom on the phone, and feebly attempted to paint and to cut some stencils for screen printing. Not the grandly and creatively busy day I had dreamed of. Maybe it’s a copout excuse to say that I wasn’t inspired, but I just could not get my mind going in an innovative vein. Everything felt trite or forced. I sat here at my desk frustratingly trying to do SOMETHING of “merit”, I couldn’t help but wonder the definition of merit and if this is really what I want to be doing with my free time?

I spend my weekdays making. Sure it’s making something for someone else in a particular style that’s only sometimes in sync with my own, but it’s still making. Also, my work is often relatively solitary. While I talk and laugh with coworkers, majority of my work time is just me, some music/podcasts and Photoshop. I have been finding that when I come home at night, I don’t want to make. I don’t want to sit at a desk by myself some more. I don’t want to make more patterns. What I want to do is socialize with friends, explore the giant city at my fingertips and relax. As with most things I crave a balance, a little bit of everything. 

While that is fine and dandy, the problem comes in that I feel guilty or wasteful for wanting not to make? Almost like a traitor to my Fibers degree? In art school making is what you do. It is what everyone around you is doing, and it is very clearly defined. Having been through that, there is this pressure to keep having ideas and developing myself as an artist. Why am I not doing that? Am I doing that? Is developing myself as an artist different from developing myself as a person? I wonder sometimes if it’s not that I am not making but that I am making in different ways. Different, still valid ways. I tend to get ambitious with cooking, trying new recipes or even making up my own. I still am shooting on my film camera, even though I have not been prolific with that by any means (a whole roll of multiple exposures takes a long time to fill up). I sometimes keep this blog up to date with a curated selection my outfits and adventures. Maybe these aren’t traditional markers of making, and maybe they are more recording what’s in front of me than building something new. Or maybe it’s time to define what making means in adult life. In MY adult life.