Fiberrant

Many people have been posting their resolutions or intentions for the new year. Resolutions are not my style, though. Instead, I’m going to choose a one-word theme for 2011:

Less.

We have so much, it’s stupefying. Suffocating, even. I spend my days moving piles of stuff from one place to another, planning what to do with it, and then acquiring even more stuff because … well, isn’t that the American way? And the more I have, the more I want.  It’s what makes our economy go ’round.

It’s the same with my fibercrafts. (Which in fact is a lot of the “stuff” I push around … ) I find I don’t so much choose a project, as drift into whatever strikes my fancy at a given moment. This is fun, of course, in the same way that choosing dessert in a restaurant is.  Instant, decadent gratification.  And like a restaurant dessert, I tend to take a couple of bites and ask, “What’s next?”

Physically and metaphysically, I need to get back to the basic food groups, and cut way down on the desserts.  Learn to savor food that actually satisfies hunger, instead of filling an empty void. Knit  lovely objects that will warm someone, not languish in a chest drawing moths.  Live by using what I already have on hand, instead of spending my life searching for the secret ingredient that will make everything perfect.

Full disclosure: just now, I ordered more clothes. To be fair, I have recently put on enough weight that I have almost nothing that fits.  I gave away all the regular-me clothes last winter, when I’d lost a lot of weight, courtesy of the medications I was on. The drugs are gone this year, but most of the weight is back; so I’ll just pack up the mini-me clothes currently filling my closet, and give them away, too.

So for 2011, not a resolution but a goal: to make more with less.