New findings

It’s blog day! Which has actually shifted as it started out being written on a Friday, then subtly shifted to Saturday morning, and now its Sunday because on a Friday for no other reason than complete procrastination I’ve started thinking “nah ... it can wait til later in the weekend”.

I’m lucky because I type almost as fast as I think so it really takes no time at all to get something down on paper so to speak. The most time spent is quadruple checking for errors (and twice more for luck once I’ve posted it!).

So this week several things have happened. I was trending on Instagram for starters which was ‘An Amazing Thing’ and something I’ve not experienced before. This is down to the brilliant @WhatsNewRae who has been an amazing source of support and info as until quite recently, Instagram was still a bit of a mystery to me. Give her a follow on Twitter and you’ll meet some fantastic people in the process.

Second thing is I’ve been doing a bit of experimenting with brooches. I might have something that I’m happy with but they’re so fiddly, it’s probably not going to be something I’ll be doing too often. But I’d like to be able to offer wearable trees as a couple of people have mentioned to me that they’d be interested in that. So here's a photo of the one I'm happiest with

Next new thing was discovering a blog by the talented Joolzery this week and realising that the odd shaped beads that I’d discarded ages ago were actually blister pearl beads. I have hundreds of them in various bead bags over the house and can’t believe I thought they were some form of rejected bead experiment! I did see the funny side of my complete ignorance and will be considering them for future projects now that I know what they are.

This week’s theme is definitely on making discoveries. Sometimes I have ideas in advance and other times, something will jump out and give me instant inspiration. The secret is getting it all down in text before I forget what the point of it was. It wouldn’t be the first time one of the lads have come in to be greeted with a loud “SSSSSHHHHH – don’t talk to me!” because it doesn’t take much to ruin my concentration or attention from what I’m doing. It’s ok – they’re the same and we’re all pretty tolerant of each other’s quirks. Mostly.

I had an idea what to write for this blog post a few days ago when I observed that even though I’ve been officially diagnosed as Autistic, sometimes I feel like it’s probably not as noticeable to others as it is to me, mostly because I’ve had a lifetime of masking in order to not stand out. I’ve found subjects of interest in the past, but felt the need to hide this because a lot of the time, people see abundance as extreme and strive to put limits on it for whatever reason. This has caused me no end of frustration and disappointment because when I find a thing of interest, I’m all in.

This thought cropped up again when reading another blog by my lovely author friend Lynne who I’m sure won’t mind me mentioning part of her writing (you can read her entire article here) this week on the subject of quotes and how they’re everywhere online;

“Like mining for diamonds and finding nothing but diamonds, where the value depreciates due to the surplus”

I love this sentence. For me this sums up the negatives that people seem to focus on when faced with abundance. Things you might have heard or even said;

“You should save it

Don’t eat them all at once

If you had that every day you wouldn’t appreciate it anymore

Don’t you want to try something different?

Aren’t you bored of that yet?”

and (for me) the worst one “what a waste of time!”, all said with one goal in mind – I want you to stop doing that because [arbitrary reason here]

In simplistic terms, when you limit a thing it increases its perceived value, and yes abundance can reduce that value, but it can also create a huge scope for developing and fine tuning which for reasons unknown, some people completely miss! It’s a lot healthier to find your own limits by listening and knowing yourself, rather than let other people tell you what you should be doing. I’d give a stock response of “oh not much” when asked “What have you been up to?” instead of reeling off things like reading an entire book in one sitting, or playing guitar or piano for hours at a time in an attempt to learn some new song I couldn't get out of my head, or spending days on some artwork and forgetting to eat. I still feel very aware that a more detailed answer would be subject to scrutiny and judgement. I don’t always have the words straight away to advocate for myself so the safer path has always been to keep to the minimum amount of speech needed.

Imagine my utter relief to have found something that I can be completely immersed in and people DON'T think it's weird, I can talk about for hours AND because it’s my business, it’s acceptable to do so! I have never noticed so much until the past few months just how much I can focus on one thing and because it’s universally acceptable, I’m happy to dive in and stay submerged for as long as I want. What an incredible feeling that is. Liberating and conclusive; this is me and that’s ok! It’s taken me long enough to understand that. It’ll take longer yet to feel completely comfortable in sharing that but I’m working on it.

Big love

❤