The start of a blog, or it could be a project journal, or maybe it’s a portfolio…

When I look back over a period of time, I have a tendency to forget how many projects I have worked on. Things slip from my mind and are filed into a nebulous ‘completed in the past’ drawer in my brain with no real sense of time or detail attached to them. I often feel guilty that I haven’t accomplished ‘more’, even though I rarely have an amount in mind that would satisfy that nagging voice.

I want to be more productive and organised, but also kinder, gentler, and more patient with myself moving forward, and one way that I think helps my own brain to acknowledge that I haven’t, in fact, been sitting around for years doing absolutely nothing of value is to reflect on completed projects. In college, my mentor pushed me (kicking and screaming) to keep comprehensive notes, photos of my process and completed works, and portfolio pages of each costume design I made. Looking back at those years, the projects are firmly in my mind. I have a sense of closure with each of those designs and a feeling of what I did well and how I wanted to improve for the next one. I am proud of those projects.

And then I graduated, continued doing similar work in costume design for a few years and had no one to threaten my grades when I neglected to write up reports after each show. Naturally, I immediately stopped doing those reviews and all of the projects from those years now live in that sloppy mental drawer that I mentioned above. They were, and continue to be, important designs to me from a time when my life was quickly changing, and yet their details have been lost to time and I have no real, tangible proof that I did them without flipping back through old, unorganised photos.

While I have several personal reasons for wanting keep better track of my projects, including trying to drown out that negative self talk and get a better handle on my mental health, and having the ability to actually find my notes from a project if I ever want to recreate that design, I also want to do this for my professional life. My lack of a portfolio or artistic journal has come up time and time again in the nearly 14 years (how?!) since I left my undergraduate program. I talk about things I’ve made, people want to see pictures of them and I’m unable to show them any kind of organised proof.

This, let’s call it a charming, chaotic, and artistic temperament, is mostly fine when you’re chatting with a friend over coffee about your hobbies. But, it’s less fine when you’re trying to secure a commission, inspire confidence in someone hiring you for contract work, or hoping to rent a retail booth at a craft fair or convention. I have big, big goals for the next chapter of my life, and for those to happen, I need to have a kind of portfolio. I need to keep all of my notes from working on projects in a more organised, and searchable place. I need to feel confident in my ability to complete projects in a timely manner.

The thing is, I do finish a lot of projects; I do take notes on them; I very, very rarely miss a deadline; I am constantly working to improve my knowledge and skills in my craft; I am proud of the projects I complete. I just give priority in my head to the feeling of ‘not enough’, and that has allowed me to continue stuffing things, sloppily, into that mental drawer instead of giving them the space they deserve to shine.

My friend Órlaith has given me the immense honour of taking me on as her student in the SCA, and one of her first enthusiastic challenges has been to get me to document arts and sciences projects I work on for the club. Órlaith, if you’re reading this, I am listening. I’m just moving at my own, sometimes, glacial pace.

This blog is a start to trying to sort out that cluttered mental space and leave something tangible for myself to come back to. It’s a place for thoughts, goals, ideas, book reviews, recipes, outfits I felt great in, craft tutorials, progress photos of yarn dyeing, my struggles as I learn to knit and spin and weave, and yes, even reflections on completed projects. It’s an upgrade from my scribbles on scrap pieces of paper that get left lying around the house. It’s also going to become a portfolio as I work to gather photographs of past designs.

This will be a hodgepodge* of my daily pursuits and a love letter to this life I am trying to craft for myself. Even writing my intentions here has reminded me that my goals and my achievements deserve to be acknowledged. So, here I am, attempting to acknowledge them.

*Don’t worry, Daniel, who is far more technically savvy than myself, has agreed to help me sort out a search function and categories and tags for posts. I have been assured that I can write in the most chaotic way possible and still end up with a semblance of order that makes me looks terribly professional.