Lose Yourself

I was asked in an interview recently about creativity, about making jewelry.    They wanted to know about my creative 'spark' - why I started making jewelry, where I get my inspiration.   I have always stumbled over this question, but because I had a week to think about my answers I finally gave it some thought.


Like with so many of the blessings I have in my life, the jewelry came about because of recovery.

Before getting sober, I didn't have any creative outlet at all.    I didn't have any hobbies, unless reading counts as a hobby, and hadn't felt any real creative urges.    I never thought of myself as creative - I still don't, to a large degree.   

When I was about four months sober I was full of a nervous, jittery energy.    I imagined it felt like having my fingers stuck in an electrical socket - kind of pleasurable and painful at the same time.    I found myself with all this excess mental capacity and nowhere to channel it.   I was no longer preoccupied with the obsession to drink, or nursing a hangover, or actively drinking.  Prior to getting sober these activities took up all my time.   

All that excess energy made me edgy, though.    I longed to be able to lose myself in something, anything.   One night I saw a woman knitting at a recovery meeting, and I thought:  I need a hobby.

I began stalking the aisles of hobby stores.   I dismissed knitting quickly (too much counting).    The next stop was drawing - I purchased a beautiful set of colored pencils, an artist's sketch pad, and a book entitled something like Drawing for Idiots.    It turns out that I had neither the talent nor the patience for drawing.   I wanted my creations to come out perfectly, and if they couldn't be perfect I wasn't interested.   

I took guitar lessons.   I played the piano as a child, and still dabbled in it on the upright we had in our living room, so I knew how to read music and always felt I had a musical ear.     The lessons were fun - the first time three bars of Smoke on the Water came out intelligibly I was thrilled.   Practicing was another matter, and the damn perfectionism came back to bite me once again.    I wanted to be able to pick up the guitar and jam.    It was taking too long to get there.

Needlepoint was next.   Not as complicated as knitting, because I found the pre-printed screens (kind of paint-by-numbers with thread) and all I had to do was find the right color and stitch.     Somewhere around here there is still a lumpy, rushed, needle pointed picture of a lighthouse in a frame.

Then one day, eight months sober, I was trudging the aisles of a hobby store once again, feeling dispirited, when a shiny little box caught my eye.   It had a clear top, and was full of little compartments.   Inside the compartments were little multi-colored stones, some wire and some basic tools.   A beading kit.    I grabbed it like a drowning man reaching for a life preserver, ran back home and spread everything out on my kitchen table.

I was in love.  

I loved the feel of the stones, the bright colors that came from nature- nature! - the endless possible combinations of patterns and textures.   And the best part?   If I didn't like the final product, I simply cut it apart and tried again.   Beading is a perfectionist's dream. 

The rest, as they say, is history.  I attacked making jewelry with a dogged determination I hadn't felt in years.   I didn't have the patience for classes.  I googled "wire wrapping", invested in some cheap wire in order to play around until I figured out how to make rings, pendants and earrings out of wire.   My brother mentioned Etsy, and I set up a little shop without much hope that anyone would ever buy anything, but it didn't matter.   I had found the thing I could lose myself in, happily.

As for what my creative process is - I don't have one.  I take stones or crystals and spread them out in front of me, and I let them speak to me.  That sounds like an artist-y kind of thing to say, and I don't think of myself as an artist, but I literally just start playing with colors and textures and I see where it takes me.   Some of my favorite pieces came about from mistakes.  

Not bad for a recovering perfectionist.

I draw inspiration from nature - I'm drawn to the deep blues, soft greens and sandy browns found on the seashore.   I can stare in awe at a bright red or deep purple stone, amazed at how nature produces such vibrant colors.   I studied the meta-physical meanings behind the stones:  rhodonite for self-love, amethyst for sobriety, agate for strength, and this inspired making recovery jewelry that didn't look like recovery jewelry.   I love creating pieces people could draw strength from without having to advertise to the world what it meant.

As I sat at my little jewelry booth at the craft fair on Saturday, I marveled at where jewelry making had taken me.   I looked out over the sea of people there and recognized most of the people I saw - I have made so many new friends through selling jewelry.   

Finding my creative spark helped take me from the dark, angry isolation of active alcoholism out into the bright, vibrant, connected world.