Crocheting a baby blanket for my cousin’s baby shower this past weekend taught me or more like REMINDED me of some concepts that I knew were great but didn’t mindfully apply to my own life.

Like most creatives, I’m quick to start projects and just as quick to abandon them midway to start another. This cycle goes round and round until my home is littered with unfinished projects. Part of this is excitement in starting a fresh and new project and all the possibilities of it; it’s like a high and eventually the “newness” wears off.

The largest part for me has been my impatience though; I want to speed to the end result and if it takes longer than I would like, I abandon it for another project. I often won’t even start projects sometimes because I tell myself that they will take forever to finish. I psych myself out, basically.

This year, as my responsibilities with my 9-5 job and part time businesses fell into more project management centered tasks, I really learned how to break down large and sometimes overwhelming seeming projects into sizable and doable tasks over a period of time to complete them. This revolutionized my personal and creative life for the better and increased my confidence in the belief that anything is doable with the mind frame that anything can be done. I always knew about this practice but really doing it deliberately rocked my entire world.

This blanket project, in so many ways, symbolized a lot of things in my life that I avoided, never started or procrastinated with because I told myself they were too hard, they couldn’t be done by me or would take too long.

I got the bright idea last month to crochet a baby blanket for my cousin’s baby shower that was held over Thanksgiving weekend. Now, I had had this bright idea before and never finished them for other intended recipients. I would get bored less than halfway through because I was too focused on the end result and not enough in the making part. This time I wrote myself a different narrative. Crocheting the baby blanket took me about 2-3 weeks to complete because in between hooking (crochet slang for crocheting), life was going on. I would hook a little each day for an hour or so while watching tv, talking on the phone or anything else that involved sitting. I actually wasn’t finished when I took the Megabus to Pittsburgh for Thanksgiving that Wednesday so I crocheted on the bus ride. I made it feel relaxing and about ease and so it didn’t feel daunting or boring this time around. I began to look forward to relaxing after work or on a lazy Sunday, working on the blanket. The process felt like ease and peace. It didn’t matter that it took me 2-3 weeks to finish it because the whole time making it felt good.

I am proud of myself for finishing this. This blanket project, in so many ways, symbolized a lot of things in my life that I avoided, never started or procrastinated with because I told myself they were too hard, they couldn’t be done by me or would take too long. Russell Simmons always said “the payment is in the process” and I genuinely feel these words now. I more than just agree with them, I am starting to embody them. This small project taught me to “enjoy the ride”; that there is fun in the doing too. If a dream I have feels big and overwhelming, as I like mine to feel, all I have to do is break that dream down into sizable chunks/tasks/projects until it feels like ease, fun and good. Whatever I want for myself, I will have so why not have as much fun possible getting it all?

I suppose you’d like to see the baby blanket I made but I totally forgot to take a picture of it! You’ll just have to trust me when I say that it came out great and most importantly, my cousin loved it. It was made with so much love in my heart and will be snuggled up with her soon to be born, baby boy.