I've been wanting to write about this for a while but am a bit unsure if I could articulate what I want to convey very well. But I still want to try. If anything to organize these swirling thoughts of mine.
At this point, anyone who has interacted with me for any amount of time will have noticed that I have a deep sense of curiosity. That I enjoy learning new things. In some ways the learning is a distraction and also a challenge. Every new endeavor has a measure of pain and doubt. Like... I remember learning to knit about 20 years ago. YouTube was either nascent or nonexistent at the time (I think it was the latter haha), but I remember there was a website with video tutorials. I remember trying the long-tail cast-on. Over and over and over again. Soft sighs of frustration as I fought the tangled yarn. I remember the ache in my fingers and wrists as I contorted my body to make the wonky stitches appear. I would joke that I did not understand how one can make a blanket when it hurt so! It hurts still sometimes. My fingers, my neck, my shoulder, and sometimes my head. But it's the pain of repetition, not of tension. I can now knit with my eyes closed, whilst reading or watching a movie or having a conversation. I knit, purl, twist stitches with no thought, my fingers obeying some ineffable something programmed deep in my brain after training my hands with hundreds of washcloths, blankets, socks, hats, scarves. I have through the years forged habits that make my knitting in tiny ways, wholly mine. Twisting my SSKs and the first row of my PU stitches after completing a heel. Choosing my favorite cuffs (currently obsessed with the 2.5-inch 2x2 ribbed variety), heels (heel flap using eye of partridge) and toe (wedge toe, sometimes in a contrasting color).
Sometimes when I start something, I become enamored with style. My style of drawing, knitting, writing, designing, coding, and even gaming or how I organize my house. But style is simply the output of a million factors. Which stitches I twist, how many tabs I add to my css, the variable rhythm of my words. The brushes and colors I adore. If my hand hurt, or if I had a headache, and the music I play as I work on things (k-pop when cleaning, lo-fi when knitting, chill pop and r&b when drawing, rock when thinking, classical when reading). Style is not how something looks, or feels, or sounds. Style is how we do. To have it, one must work, try, experiment. To push through achy fingers and to make peace that one will hate every single thing one makes. But the high while making it makes that hatred worth it somehow. The meaning of being a creator, instead of simply consuming brings calm and shows how we grow. I suck at a lot of things, but perhaps my strength is to not care how much I suck.
Don’t wait for inspiration. It comes while working.
– Henri Matisse