Product Making and That Guilty Feeling

Product Knitting, is a term that I have heard being used around the place, and only recently have I come to use it myself. It's being used as a term to describe when something is being made for the end product, not necessarily for the process of doing it. A bit like knitting a hat because you need one, rather than knitting a hat because you enjoy knitting. But as always, knitting is usually a little bit of both.

Pooping out a bookmark after pilates.

New projects can be started for a whole host of reasons, and very rarely is it only for one. But
recently I have been feeling the pressure to be knitting or making all the time, purely because I feel that I SHOULD be making something all the time. However that way of thinking, for me, is unhealthy. I should be making because I enjoy it and I want to, not because some little voice in the back of my head is shaming me into making something all the time.

Partially I feel I have social media to blame. But lets not turn this into a rant against it. Social media is a wonderful tool, which can be used to share our amazing ideas and creations, and ultimately bring a community together. The knitting and making community thrives off the connections we make through social media, and personally I think that should be used to everyone's advantage to bring us all closer.

Where social media falls down, is when people start to compare themselves to others. People can feel the need to be the same or similar to other people to fit in. Which certainly isn't the case. I will admit now, that was my problem.

I am a relatively new podcaster, I love podcasting, and I love to share what I have been doing and making with the people who care to watch and follow me. I follow a lot of other podcasters online, and that is what got me into podcasting myself. I find that when you are starting something new, you look to the other successful people around you, and you begin to find your way, taking inspiration from the others, as well as working out what works and what doesn't.

Chilled knitting and cuddles.

There will always be people around you who have more time, are more motivated and are more organised. Those combinations, especially when they are all together online, paint a picture that someone is always making or doing or busy and busy = success. My trouble, was that I tried to be the same. Now trying to be all those things is no bad thing. But trying to be something you are not, and getting almost burnt out in the process, is a bad thing. Busy doesn't always mean success. My mother told me: "There will always be people better and more successful than you, and there will always be people who are worse than you. Your success, can only be measured by you." - Right now these are words that I need to live by.

I went a bit overboard recently, always trying to poop out a project here and there so I had something
new to share on instagram, or the podcast. I always needed something new, something exciting and something people wanted to see - or what I thought they wanted to see.

I found myself one night making a bookmark. I'd worked a 12 hour shift, gone out to a pilates class, and just got home. I sat down on the sofa and immediately thought "I've got to be doing something" and I felt so guilty for just sitting down. That was when I realised my attitude needed to change, I needed to go easy on myself. So I slowed down.

Slowing down is nothing to be scared or ashamed of. It should be embraced when it is needed. I began to realise what my podcast meant to me, and that really, my instagram should be an extension of that. What I wanted was to be my genuine self on the internet.

Car knitting.

We always pick and choose what we post online. Rarely is it the true picture, and often we as people assume that it is the whole picture and we create images of the people around us by what they post. It is important to remember that. We need to be careful what we are projecting onto other people, and
look out for the people around us. We also need to make sure that we are not putting the unrealistic and high standards on ourselves, which we could ultimately fail at, because we as humans are complicated. We should give ourselves patience and love, and not judge the people around us, when they are going through things we could not know anything about. Practice understanding, compassion and honesty. - I'm writing this while sat in my pyjamas, and then I'm going to go knit something that I want to, because I'm allowed to be myself. So I'm going to go live by Mam's words, and maybe we all should too.

Thank you for reading this, and I hope the message you take away is a positive one. This has been my story of a slow realisation that I am being adversely affected by what is around me, and taking steps to fix that. I hope that we all realise what is good for us, and what we can do to make it better. Here's to my chilled PJ day.