Hubris

 

sample for article #2 - edge treatments

"It isn't bragging if it's true" a friend once told me.

But I still have a hard time with putting myself, my knowledge, 'out there'.  It feels like 'tooting my own horn' - a no-no in my childhood home.

We weren't supposed to 'brag' about ourselves, all while being told that we weren't 'good enough'.  (Why wasn't that B an A?)

So I have 'impostor syndrome'.   On the one hand, part of me is confident that I actually know something about weaving after being a professional weaver for 40+ years.  On the other hand, a lot of people know a lot about weaving - what makes *me* special?

And face it, a lot of people have written about weaving, taught it, practiced it, won awards doing it.

I squirm a bit thinking about the fact that I, too, have written a lot about it, taught it, practiced it, even, yes, won awards for it.

And yet. 

And yet.

But I'm also tired.  I 'retired' from being a 'professional' weaver in 2019 for a lot of reasons, one of which was the chronic pain and fatigue I was living with.  Deadlines, always my 'friend', became an onerous burden.

And I was tired of writing to someone else's style guide, to their deadline.

I struggled to keep going, and eventually wound up writing again, after having produced two books that were mainly technical - textbooks, if you will.

Over the past 18 months or so, I wrote two more.

I could write when I felt like it, choose the words I wanted to use, take the photos I felt needed to be shown to illustrate what my words were describing.

When I finished the last book in February, there was a huge void in my daily schedule.  Instead of being productive (I would generally write in the mornings while I had my coffee), I doom scrolled and wasted the morning.

I thought about writing, but other than writing here, for my blog, I couldn't think of anything else to say that warranted being published.  And when emails came (I'm on a couple of publication email distribution lists) saying they were looking for articles, on X, Y or Z topics, none of them resonated with me.  Or the deadline was tight and I didn't feel like trying to squeeze the time to a) write the text and b) weave the samples.

So I declared (to myself and/or the universe, if there is anything out there that listens to mere mortals) that I would only write what I wanted to write, in my own style.  People could come here and read.  Or not.

I felt a bit like a petulant adolescent - I donwanna do what you want, I only wanna do what *I* want.

And so the past few months have passed, with me pretty much ignoring the weaving community as a whole, just answering a few questions here and there, usually because someone tags me to get my attention in a group, or emails directly.  And then I do my best to help, which I don't feel like I always do, but when I can't, I can usually point someone towards resources that may.

A few weeks ago someone approached me to write several articles for them.  Since they wanted articles on things that are near and dear to my heart, AND I hadn't actually written that particular viewpoint very much, I agreed.  I've sent the first off, and the 2nd is being alpha read (I don't always trust my brain to catch typos/grammar issues, and a friend has been invaluable in the role of alpha reader).

Yesterday another person contacted me and asked if I would write about a technique.  I felt the topic was too narrow, so I suggested expanding it and they agreed.  It's a tight deadline, but given I just finished (or nearly) the 2nd article for publication 1, I felt I could squeeze this other one in.

The thing is, both of these publications seem to want what I want to write.  When I asked about word counts, both said, essentially, as many as you need to explain the topic.

And here's the thing.  Because both publications are asking for things I feel are important, I already have photos or samples I can photograph - I don't need to weave anything.

Will anyone else but me be interested?  We'll see, I guess.

I try to never fall into the trap of thinking I know everything, because change one thing, and everything can change.

But that said, I do happen to know quite a lot about weaving.  And if there is a chance anyone else wants to know what I know, I feel an obligation to share that.

I sort of feel like Peter Collingwood, though, who got tired of teaching and decided to write a book about weaving rugs thinking he would never have to teach again.  Instead his invitations to teach essentially doubled.  Same thing happened after Magic in the Water.

Well, I am done with travelling to teach, but we now live in the age of the internet, and I can teach remotely.  And I can write.  So I guess I keep on, keeping on...