I have always been a creative, a maker, a crafter, whatever you want to call it, but for the first part of my story, I used my skills and talents for hobbies. In 1994, I had a moment of clarity in the midst of being a teary-eyed, homesick newlywed sitting in a laundramat. I sat paging through my very first Martha Stewart Living Magazine and was filled with all the good feels. It was right there in that laundramat that I wrote a letter to Martha Stewart about how I was feeling and how the magazine made me feel. I will totally dork out and be a weirdo in a good way right now when I tell you that the typed response letter with her hand signature from her is in safely tucked into our fire safe with our passports, birth certificates and Social Security Cards.
The leap of faith I made in my early 30's to use my skills and talents to support myself and my boys was based on a need and right in the middle of chaos, celebrations and hard situations.
I was/am/wanna be a scrapbooker. The term "scrapbooker" is referred to in different ways now than it was in the 80's and 90's but I have ALWAYS documented my life with words and photos in one way or another and I have boxes of memorabilia, containers of photos with the negatives and stacks and stacks of scrapbook pages and albums to show for it. As my hobby started to became my profession, everything personal got put on the back burner so that I could create the way manufactures and designers wanted me to create. (NOTE: remember that last sentence and let me just add, my heart just started to pound as I typed that out)
Early on in my scrapbooking days and for years following, I spent a whole lot of time and money trying to create that perfect 12 x 12 scrapbook layout. Mounting photos, moving them around the page multiple times, sticking them down, pulling them up and continuing to spend too much time on the way my page looked instead of the remembering the purpose and meaning behind the page. By the time I was done with one page, I had spent too much money, way too much time and I didn't even love the outcome. This was the norm for me and probably for many. It was more about the product, not the purpose.
What scrapbooking provided besides pages and albums of memories was connection and community. A time when friends and neighbors got together to create around dining room tables, crop tables at the local scrapbook store or even spending weekends together creating. At at one of those tables, everything shifted for me and I have this photo in my studio as a reminder.
In a handful of years I went from being a hobby scrapbooker to teaching scrapbook classes which lead to designing product for scrapbook companies which lead to being published in magazines which lead to me having my very own magazine contract for 4 special issues.
In the same year my "Homegrown Hospitality" magazine was being launched by CK Media, online content and the world of "Social Media" was starting to take over and unfortunately, the magazine world fell apart. Based on some really good advice, I cried about it for 15 minutes and then simply moved on. There was nothing I could have done to change that situation. What the publishing world did provide were amazing contacts and relationships so I continued to design projects, teach workshops and work for companies representing their products for several years.
Working for and being under contract with companies meant you did what they wanted with what they had. I understood that completely and didn't mind signing away my rights to create freely because I felt like I was living "my dream" in the creative arts world. I felt lucky to travel to Trade Shows, work in art rooms with every product and mingle with the people I admired on the pages of creative magazines. It is safe to say I had gold foiled star stickers in my eyes.
Here's the thing. When you feel that you are doing what you love for a living (in my case, working in the creative arts market) but are creating based solely on what other people want and for other peoples approval and sometimes disapproval, it is going to take some sort of toll. Without seeing it coming, I was hit, no let's say actually nailed, by a fast, big, hard, ugly creative curve ball and all at once, the love I had for creating was sucked out of my soul almost instantly. I tried to only cry about for 15 minutes, but man, it lasted longer.
Again, I learned some of the most influential and important lessons from hard,ugly, stupid, drama filled and just-plain-sucky situations that I did not not want to be a part of. I had to make a choice to make a choice. Another leap. Another lesson.
Here is what I learned JUST NOW from typing all of that out:
If you have a passion and desire for something, it is because God gave that to you and put it there for a reason. NOTHING nor NO ONE can take it away from you.
Man, I wished I would have known that back then.
Something else I learned while typing this part of my story out is that although I found creative happiness and a stirring in my heart from the pages of a magazine and years later "social media" caused my creative endeavors in the form of a magazine to be sidelined, what it did provide were life changing and amazing friendships with people across the globe. (NOTE: These are just some of the amazing and wonderful friends I have made along the way. PLEASE do not feel left out if you do not see your photo here)
and opportunities that I might have not otherwise have been given.
That is not social media or magazines, that is GOD. God is the one who gave me the goods and when you use them for His glory...no matter what happens, it always has a way of working out. It's a promise. For me being creative is not a hobby. It is a way of life.
For that, I am grateful regardless of however many years it has taken me to figure out. I am still on that path and that will be the next part of me and my story.