Change.

 To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly.  ~Henri Bergson

You all know the year and a half that I have been through, because I have shared it with you, along the way.  Brain decompression, neck fusion 8/28/12 and revision 3/26/13  ......the whole naked, ugly saga.

This is me, just 10 weeks ago, on my way home after Surgery #2.
It still amazes me what abuse a body can put up with.

It is better now, much better.  I am here.  I am alive.  I am, for the most part, well.
  But it is different.  I am different. 
Brain reboot.  Call it what you want.
I'm different.
Somewhere along the way, I met myself face to face.  And I knew that change was coming.

I still love to weave, I still want it to be an integral part of my life.  I want to dream it, create it, love it.
What I don't want is to work endless days and do production weaving.
Funny actually.  
When I started out weaving, I bantered that phrase "production weaving" around in my head.  Asked myself if I wanted to do that.  And then, without exactly knowing how it came about, I found myself doing just that.  Many rugs a day, stacks of rugs in the shop.  
But even that wasn't the end of it.  Because I had access to thousands of pounds of sock waste, I felt that it was my "responsibility" to recycle all of it, in as many ways as I could.
So my brain shifted into overgear, a place where it's quite comfortable, thank you, and came up with more and more and more work.
Soon I had put together the Hip to Be Square looper loom, the Hip to Be Square Rag Rug kit, the Walking on Sunshine braided rug kit, the Chunky rug, the Walking on Sunshine rug, the Sweet Bottom chair pads............are you tired yet??
And then the Prime Mate sock monkey, and the 3 sizes of Socketbooks.  Whew.

All this in EXCESS of my regular weaving of rag rugs, blue jean rugs, placemats, tote bags, mug rugs................custom orders, weaving weekends.
Do you get the picture???
To be honest, the only reason I have been able to keep it going this last two years is because I have in "L", a friend and apprentice  that loves Crazy as a Loom.  She has worked hard, and picked up the huge slack that occurred when I was suddenly NOT myself.

Wake up call: you can become "someone other than yourself" at any moment.  It happens.

The thing is, I will never be that person I was before.  It is a hard truth to swallow, but I can't change it.   I can only learn to adapt to this new reality.
I will never want to weave many rugs a day.   And I don't want to spend my time at the studio doing NON WEAVING chores.
That doesn't work for me.

Like I said.  Change is coming.


All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another.  ~Anatole France