Passing the Torch

 

Today I am marking one more box of student work.  It's a bittersweet time, given how much I have enjoyed teaching the Olds program, and that I officially 'retired' after last year's class and am now marking the last student boxes that I will ever do.  So far the 'return' has been pretty good, given that usually not all of the students will submit homework to be marked.

But Life Happens, and sometimes things just don't align for some; some discover the program isn't really what they wanted or were looking for.  Some find that they learned far more than they expected - or even wanted, if they had thought about it beforehand.

That's the thing with weaving - it's a spectrum and it depends.

Out of the 6 beginning students I taught this year I am hoping that at least four of them will carry on.  Time will tell.

And that's the thing - weaving can be practiced on so many different levels, in so many different ways, it's hard to know if what you've given them in a class will resonate or if they will discover weaving really isn't what they thought it was and they move on to something else.

Or they sustain an injury that makes doing a very physical, hands-on activity difficult enough that they try something else.  I know that as I have aged I have had to change what I do and more importantly - how long I do it for.  Instead of about 5 hours of weaving a day, I try to do about 2 hours.  But even that is stretching it, some days.

I keep weaving in no small part because I still have pounds and pounds of yarn to use up, much of it on the finer end of the scale, so a little goes a long way.

And I keep writing about weaving in hopes of inspiring other weavers to keep going.  To keep learning, even when the lesson isn't what you thought it would be.

Tonight is the meeting with my editor and I'm on tenterhooks about it.  Is it 'done'?  Have *I* done enough?  Am I good enough, explaining things?  Will anyone be interested????

Writing a book is not unlike weaving.  I take the threads, order them, try to make something out of them that someone else will find appealing, attractive or at the very least, useful.  Writing a book I take a bunch of words, order them, try to arrange them so that they make some kind of sense that someone will find helpful, informative, potentially inspiring.  In both cases, I won't know if I've done a good enough job until I offer them for sale.

Ultimately I hope to leave enough of a 'legacy' so that others can find what I've done helpful, useful, potentially inspiring when they need it.

A pretty egotistical thing, truly.  Except that I know that one teacher is not THE teacher for every single person out...there.  I just hope to find the few that want to learn what I have observed, experienced and dare I say it, know.

When the student is ready the teacher will appear.  If I don't leave something behind for the student to find when they are ready?  Well, it's a long shot, not knowing if what I'm doing will ultimately be useful to someone, somewhere, someday.  

So I keep going, keep writing/weaving and let the powers that be (whatever power you might believe in) determine that when a student needs to know that I know, think, believe, they will be able to find me, even now that I am 'retired' and not stumping the workshop circuit.

Some of my students assure me that they value what they learned from me.  Some of them even say I have inspired them.  So I rest assured that I have made every effort to pass the torch.  And for as long as I can, I will keep trying to light more more torches, more candles.  Because more light is better than darkness.