What You Might Need to Hear About Self-Care

Trends aren't necessarily a good or bad thing. Yet when the call fires up for self-empowerment, the steps you take still need careful planning before the courageous charge. Keep some things in mind before you set off.

Don't do it alone.

The 'self' part tends to come with the mistake of isolating yourself or even driving off every temptation or piece of advice that seems like an obstacle. Not every addict benefits from outright rehab either. A support system is just as necessary as the resolve to change. Even when someone seems like an obstacle (that friend that always ask if you want cheesecake when they know you're on a diet), it's likely that you might benefit from a cheat day (some do) and they may be the perfect guilt-free companion when that day comes. Yes, some people may sabotage you intentionally. Cutting out toxic people can be a good thing, but don't be in such a hurry to tighten up your circle that you go full Game of Thrones on your social life and end up with no one to vent to. Instead, work on pulling people in who strengthen your goals, people who boost your confidence enough to see who is actually toxic. Either way, don't shuffle people like cards. Finding a great support system is done slowly and organically and people should still earn your trust and respect, not just share your goals.

Check your ego.

One of the pitfalls of self-care is overconfidence. Rather than humbling yourself to change, you start developing blind spots about how well you're doing and how much you deserve. Yet because you've hastily packed up all your vulnerability, it crumbles out at the first sign of resistance. Self-care is just as much about knowing where you trip up, where you fail, and correcting them, fortifying yourself probably for the event it's just not as rosy as you think. If one ravenous binge or one bad review can topple you so badly that you wallow well beyond it, then you're letting your ego have too much weight in your world. If you don't deserve anything at all, what then do you need to keep doing what you do? 

There's more than one way to be selfish.

I won't tell you what's right or wrong here because your conscience is the guide here. Is it okay to hurt others with your goals? Are you really hurting them or are they just afraid of the possibility that you or them might get hurt? Does the risk make the resulting reward or failure worthwhile? People might accuse you of being selfish or assume they can tell you what is best for you. They may be right, they may be wrong. When someone opposes your goals, it might not be any of their business, but it might be worthwhile to find out what they're afraid of. While it may be selfishness on their part, talking about it could further prepare you for the possibilities to come. I've found over time that the right kind of selfish for me is when I stop being so defensive of my choices and adjust to my failures. While giving up is not an option, the amount of time or energy I devote to an idea may take on some changes. Just like how my writing and drawing sometimes takes a back seat to making money. That goes more than one way. Dreams aren't free and I need equipment to make things go smoother. 

Shame is part of the game.

It doesn't matter how 'enlightened' society is. A certain amount of doubt and difficulty exists that motivates us. While constantly being attacked for weight or choices or non-choices can paralyze anyone, some of us are also motivated by those who are a little too blunt. Now, I'm not saying that the person we're crushing on calling us fat and ugly is motivation to get surgery and change for them. Sometimes you just see one too many strangers eyeing your muffin top and you just as silently make a vow to change. Sometimes people pull faces without meaning to, judging us prematurely and jabbing us a little too painfully. Shame digs old wounds and creates new ones, but attitude is what decides what we do about it. You might not be able to bring yourself to change for anyone or anything, and you don't have to, but we can't stake all of our happiness and hope on wanting everyone to school their shit. However, if the shame you feel is something you want to change, turn it into something that will push you. Like a rubber band on the wrist to punish urges you don't want, train yourself to manage shame.

There will be consequences.

Some of them will set you back while other times you'll be skyrocketed ahead. It probably sounds tedious but checking your progress, and learning when to adjust, will help you put perspective on choices and consequences. The world is also not going to revolve around you nor halt at your feet. People might smother you or abandon you, so there must always be a part of you independent, even detached, from expectation. Reach out when you need to. You might feel too vulnerable to risk bringing someone in (or tell them to fuck off) but not all parts of self-care mean you can listen to yourself. Nothing grows in a vacuum, though you may need to hear your own thoughts before letting someone in.

Fake it 'til you make it.

Despite the devil's advocate memes shitting on this, it's only because it's being deliberately misinterpreted. It doesn't mean to smile while people feed you shit. It means it's okay to take jobs that don't give you absolute joy to save money. It's okay if your hard work doesn't propel you into fame. It certainly doesn't imply that you should wait around for people to realize how awesome you are. It means that, even when you feel demoralized or frustrated, you shouldn't shut people out with your melancholy and woe-is-me, that you're being the person you want to be NOW rather than shining only when everything is well. It opens you to attracting opportunity and energy and people who see what you're about, shedding expectation to show YOUR inner light. You aren't just doing this to please others, but to be true to yourself. I've said before that creating is damn near impossible for me in low moods, so if I can trigger a state of happiness through smiling and laughing and talking, then it doesn't matter how 'real' it is; it only matters that I send out what I want to bring in.

Location matters.

You don't have to go to a gym to motivate yourself to work out. You don't have to type at your writing desk. You don't always get the best rest on your comfy bed. Home isn't always where you pay the bills. I can't stress enough that environments of comfort are not always what is best for us. In fact, when something is off and we can't figure it out, sometimes the answer is a change of scenery. Even if it's just a long walk you haven't taken before or sleeping on your friend's couch, while it may not be your first choice, you might find that inspiration and bliss comes most often from depriving yourself of familiarity and comfort. Sometimes that gym membership or monthly subscription can enforce the pressure of time limits that will stifle ambitions, in the same way that it can be motivation for another. Don't commit to comfortable habits. The things that you desire most can be taken for granted and it may take distance to appreciate them... or you may discover a new preference.

No one can tell you how to do it best.

From the outside, people might gauge what is failure and success differently, but ultimately you must weigh your own feelings and perceptions. Let others weigh in if you feel like you're spinning in circles, but have patience in the discovery of who you want or need to be. Be willing to give up a process that isn't working or take a risk. What you definitely don't want is to pine for something but never do anything about it. There is not much in life that I truly regret that doesn't involve inaction. Some moments pass and become what-ifs forever. You'll need the good, the bad, and the ugly to move towards your goals. Remember that you cannot control how you are received, only how you respond and keep going.

Because I want you to keep going. I want to see who you can be when you believe you can give both to yourself and to the world. I want to see a world where everyone believes in their own self-worth enough to boost each other.

Get Rid of the Entitlement: Your Unique Opportunity for Growth

As I've said before, crocheting happens to be something I excel at, but it was a hard won path that took years of patient dedication, like any craft. Sometimes, there are points where crafts cross over with philosophies that boost another of your outlets.

Comments I see time and again in crochet groups. "How do I make this? There's no pattern!" It is then followed by more increasingly entitled lamenting "I found a pattern in Russian. Can I have it in English?" "I've only found a diagram and can't read that kind of pattern?" "Ugh, I hate when there's no pattern, but I REALLY want to make it!"

People tend to get passionate only as far as the comments go, but most of them give up when the conditions aren't completely ideal. There's rarely any spirited chirps of 'well, guess it's a good time to learn Russian/read diagrams' or 'maybe I could look at the stitches and attempt to make it from the picture!' but damn it, there should be! Age or patience or sheer laziness and entitlement shouldn't ever be an excuse to cut yourself off from attempting a new learning experience.

And yes, this absolutely applies to writing.

I get it. One thing crochet has over writing is that the mistakes can often become a part of the design, unknown to all but the proficient crafter themselves and even another master would have difficult spotting it without being told. However, writing also has an edge over crochet in that the mistakes are easier to correct, that a story doesn't have to be unraveled to be fixed. However, it does require you to shed entitlement, to welcome humility in the process and take the bad with the good (and realize bad and good are subjective).

See the failings of a perfect scenario as your place to make it better. Take the time to write the non-existent pattern and you can turn around and charge for that coveted design. Take the time to write that non-existent book! Or shrink it down-- novella, short story, poem. A lot of short pieces grow with inspiration into something much bigger than you imagined. Even a proficient crafter can float as run-of-the-mill, always passing up challenges beyond the comfort level for any number of excuses.

We're modern creatures, often spoiled by its conveniences, so many of us resorting to whining, looking for the bleeding hearts to do the hard work for us. It's one of the reasons I started plugging up the holes on my own bleeding heart tendencies. There's only so much you can do, only so much you can let yourself be sidetracked by the monumental amount of pleas begging you to their cause. I can't say I never cave. Sometimes I'll translate patterns or make my own when I see the whining, not because of some genuine urge to please the masses, but because the challenge DOES appeal to me and I DO see the sense in appealing to a profitable demand. Yet sometimes I withhold that urge, wondering how desperate or passionate that 'need' will be, whether it will encourage just one of those entitled commenters to take matters into their own hands.

It's okay to be an enabler sometimes, to be selfless in your work or selfish too. I don't push back and try to shame those commenters because who really cares about the opinion of some internet stranger? It's not going to reduce their number and could even do quite the opposite. I do want to see people reach their full potential, but coddling is NOT the same as nurturing. When someone feels the edges of confidence, you have to push them ahead of that sense of instant gratification, to let them know that it's just going to get scary sometimes. Ultimately, that's where the greatest sense of accomplishment always seems to reside. Not in who you can look to for help every time, but where you can go inside yourself to try and help yourself first.

No shame in looking for some help sometimes, but the temptation to treat it like a crutch is where people fall astray so much. Don't be 'too old' or 'too impatient' or have 'too many other easier options' to reach for goals that might require both some help or some scary alone time.

Think of it like learning a language. You can either trust the interpreter to speak for you or you can speak for yourself. Even the most well-meaning interpreter can fall short of what you mean to convey. There's a lot of benefit to shedding ignorance in your craft, even if it's just a little at a time. Can you spot a misspelled word? Can you proofread your own work? Can you shed more excuses and say exactly what you're trying to say? Sure, you can pay someone to do it and that's a great way to encourage people to develop such skills. But don't always shuck a learning experience to take the easy way out either. You might surprise yourself and spread that proficiency across the board.

I became a better artist over a 5-year dry spell with drawing. This doesn't mean you can piss away the importance of practice because, honestly, it was torture and the longer I went, the more I thought I'd lose it altogether. It doesn't quite work like that-- you do lose some things but some things are innate, locked into you. Writing was the same way. I can't say for certain it was confidence or 'the right time' but I do know that much had changed and I saw too much entitlement in myself with nothing MORE to back it up. Why can't people see what I've done and snatch me up? You'll notice that no matter how wonderful it feels to get a big response, people will just as quickly forget if you're not DOING, producing and working on something else. People will hesitate to invest in you if you tuck it all in after a victory. What makes writers like King so successful is he keeps popping another title in his library. It doesn't have to be solid gold-- people can hate it, but it keeps his name reappearing on those New Books lists before it ever fades out. Of course, there's no lack of talent and hard work in his case, but one thing that keeps creatives afloat is visibility. Stay relevant and it's not just your new work that flies off the shelves, it's the curiosity for the old work too.

I say this time and again, but you ultimately decide how far is far enough. But you're totally a dick if you're whining about something out of reach and have no intention of contributing towards getting it. "Oh, the pattern exists, but it's soooo expensive. Can I get it for free?"

Get out. Just... get out with that. It's just as nauseous when you're an 'idea person' wanting other people to write your damn book for you, but 'you'll pay them with royalties'. Or worse. Exposure. *shudders* If you want to gamble with your time and money to see your vision, fine and dandy. Don't undercut or undervalue the skills of others with entitlement. Entitlement never looks cute or even acceptable. Even if people are too polite to say it, they're disgusted with you.

Go ahead and pass it up if it's not that appealing to pursue. A parting shot is not a mic drop-- ride off into the sunset, quietly, and take your highest horse with you.