I deleted the Facebook app from my phone and iPad today. I started the day working at my younger son’s school in the sewing class that I have either lead or helped lead for since 2008. I often check my phone while our lead is talking to the kids, if I don’t have anything else to do and I got wrapped up in Facebook and all the (very understandable) hurt and anger that people are feeling and found myself arguing with a friend of a friend in her comments. In that moment, I felt like I needed someone to take Facebook away from me and not let me back on. This afternoon, I decided to be that someone. Obviously, I can still get back on but not having the app reminds me not to check it. Not to get sucked in. Instead, I donated money this evening to the ACLU and to Planned Parenthood and I will participate in other productive ways in the coming months but for now, I needed to step back and breathe.
Instead, I want to focus on the work I am doing to make my small part of the world better: my volunteering for the school. As I said, I have been working in the sewing class since my older son’s kindergarten year. This is my 18th session of the class. I know I am resistant to change but I’m still amazed that i have been doing it so long. One of my younger son’s classmates is in the class this time and he decided to draw his own design for the embroidery. He drew this cute cat face.
M’s cat
I love to see the kids enjoy embroidery. Some of them struggle with it, some do intricate stitches and some, like this kid, have a vision of what they want to make and just go for it. He almost completed it today.
One of the kids said to me that embroidery takes a lot of time, and old people must do it because they have a lot of time on their hands. I told her that I embroider even though I don’t always have a lot of time because it just feels good to make things. It really does, it feels good to make things. So that is what I am going to do: make things and breathe and work on helping the kids at my child’s school appreciate the enjoyment of handwork and making things. Just because.
For those of you who came to this from Facebook, you can always comment here, or email me, or follow me on Instagram, or text me. I’m not hiding.
the sheep free knitter 
Awesome! It does feel good to
Make things.
It really does. I might make bread tomorrow. I haven’t done that in a while.
Nice, Abigail. I love to see the creativity of the kids and am glad to hear that your textile projects are helping you to process all the stress of what is going on.
One of the benefits of handwork, don’t you think, mom?
Yes, definitely 🙂
I really need to start creating things with textile again. I have an embroidery going for a new table cloth for Christmas. Usually I don’t work on it that much, I use the lack of light as an excuse. It would take me 2 minutes to fix the problem. And now is the day for that! Thank you all for doing so much for Arts Focus. It was so nice to sit and listen to the kids talking about their session at the dinner table tonight. Not a word regarding the election!
Erik bought an OttLite at JoAnn for an electronics project. It solves the lack of light problem very nicely!
I am glad your kids are still enjoying Arts Focus. I think it is a wonderful program and feel very lucky to have had it for both my kids!
You and I are thinking along similar lines. I had already deleted the Facebook app in the run-up to the election, but I went through and deleted the saved passwords on my browser so I have to type in the password every time I log in.
We’re reviewing the president-elect’s first 100 days plan and prioritizing things we can do to counteract (or at least balance out) some of those earliest plans. It helps to feel like we’re doing something.
And as for creating, we have our wool class this afternoon, and I get to help children learn how to comb and card wool (and I’m glad that none of us is allergic to wool/lanolin).
Breathing is also good.
I find repetitive tasks incredibly soothing so I imagine combing and carding (and spinning) must fall firmly in that category. Enjoy!
Good move Abigail – I deleted the app from my phone to and you can be so productive with your time instead of getting sucked in.
Yes! Productivity over stress is my goal.