But all of our projecting has left me spinning my wheels a bit. Jess and I still have wool to be sorted, washed and spun, and I have so much I'd love to learn about knitting and weaving. I have several ceramic pieces waiting ever so patiently to be fired. But I'm struggling to pick up momentum. My projects are all cramped together, competing for my attention in the hours between sleep, work and chores, and I can't seem to take advantage of the time I have to give them. There's too much transition time, and not enough time to fully immerse myself in what I'm working on.
I've been thinking a lot about immersion, about what it means to fully surround yourself with whatever it is you want to absorb. Thinking how when you finally manage to put yourself in a place where you are immersed, it allows you to stop worrying about whether you'll get a chance to do all you want to do, or whether you'll actually learn all you want to learn. You finally relax because you know that now, immersed in whatever material it is (a language, a set of skills, a way of life), you will inevitably emerge with new knowledge and ability.
On weekends out at Camp Trackers, I have that sense of calm, of trusting that I will learn what the world has to teach me. But at home, at work, and on my daily bike pilgrimages between the two, how can I can achieve that same sense of purpose?
I have my constant rhythms of bread and kefir-making. They ground my daily life with a sense of contentment. If I can get into a similar rhythm with pottery and with fiber arts, then I could devote the time to those skills without struggling so much in the transitions. I have to remember that the things that have become ritual now were still new experiments a year or two ago. Trust in my own ability to learn things given time and immersion.
