Yes, I am a quilter

It's easy to forget that I do make quilts. Yep, those of you who have seen my office/studio (I don't know about you but I always feel just a little pretentious calling my sewing dungeon a 'studio') would think this is a DUH based on the amount of fabric and quilting crap I have oozing out of every corner and crevice to be found in this space. I swear, there are days when I look around and think this is no longer a place for mere humans to inhabit, that the fabric must take over and irradicate the oxygen-reliant organic beings because we are, hey, inferior. (Picture Terminator for Quilters and that's my thought.)

Still, hope springs eternal and I know that given a week, month, (whoa, did I say a year?), I might actually make enough stuff with what's lying around that I would then be able to roll around on a bare spot of my office floor. (And really, I am NOT the size of my cats and they have their own trouble doing this in here!)

Long ago and far away when I was a fledgling writer, looking to actually finish something, much less submit and receive something resembling moolah from it, I read this: A writer writes. Well, my dear hubby also read it, (that would be the Man from Whom all Nagging Begins and Ends) and from that moment on I was reminded almost daily that a writer writes, so, hell, why wasn't I writing more?

Well, when this next thought comes to him, and it will, he will be all over me about how a quilter quilts. And, crap, he's right. (But if you dare tell him he is, his body and worldly possessions will be at once transferred to YOU--so don't do it!) Tonight he pops into this Land of Wishful Quilts and says that I really should clean it out. 'Cuse me? Last I checked, cleaning out required TIME on my part. I know, without a doubt, that time is the most precious commodity I have, and there's little of it these days. (Insert rant...now:) I am currently working way too much. And this time, I can honestly say that it's not my fault. I took back my old job but am still fielding all of those freelance assignments I begged for when I was laid off several months ago and that means I'm now juggling the equivalent of 60-80 hours of weekly work. I can't flake on the commitments I've made. It's not fair to anyone involved and makes me look like a flaky freelancer--something I abhor. But, I can't get to the other things during daylight hours, so that leaves me sitting here at 1 a.m. finishing up these last assignments and wondering if I will have a job for much longer and should I maintain the freelance stuff? I've lived in this badmitton game for 18 months now, and it gets old, fast.

I love my job. I really do. What I don't love is the constant worry about whether it will exist tomorrow. I know I'm not alone. But the current economic trends and the shifts in my little corner of the business universe show me that we really never are secure in our jobs. Never. Really. Some of us are blessed to know what goes on behind close VP doors. Some of us are not. But we are all expendable.

Years ago, when I still worked in the blazing hell called Real Estate (complete with fires and demons--ask anyone!) I lived a life outside of the office that allowed for a personality to come through. Indeed, it was during these years that I learned to sew and quilt and expand on my personal interests. While I would never, repeat never, walk through those firey halls of escrow again, I do often miss the time that was my own when I left my office, turning off the lights and shutting the file cabinets, and coming home, was cleansed of the day's trauma through the commute to my garage. Since my commute now ranges the length of my hallway with frequent pitstops made to the coffee maker in the kitchen, there's little cleansing going on. I LOVE working at home. I really do. It's what I always wanted. And like anything we get that we always wanted, there's another side to it we just couldn't see through our naivetee and fantasy. The truth is mostly laced with balance, like Star Wars. It's not about good overcoming evil; it's about those two forces living together because they will always just be.

I guess my bottom line thought, from the bottom of my stressed-out brain, is that I just want more time to make love to my Janome. I want to caress it's body, listen to its heartbeat. And, like a secret lover committed to the secret, everything else in life must come before it. So, hey, Mr. 6500. Hang in there. I'm right behind you and I haven't forgotten you. You are my well-oiled machine (since I finally took you in for servicing--hey, who's your mamma?). We will come together again, I promise. I've just got to finish this deadline piece and take care of this other stuff, and make sure my kid's flu doesn't become pneumonia, and then we'll talk. Or hum. Or do whatever it is that we do. And in the end, beautiful quilts will be made and Dear Hubby will see the floor again and life will be good. Amen.