Burnout Imminent - Or Entrepreneurial Genius?

Caspian saw my cute little sunglasses case and said something to the effect of "I guess I'll be seeing you on Etsy sometime soon?" I laughed and disparaged my feeble skill, but the spark was kindled nonetheless.

I wonder if there is a market for simple, elegant and stylish sewn items. Customers could choose from a pallet of colors and patterns (that I pick and stock) and design their own simple blocks to customize their items. Are there people out there who would appreciate pretty, reasonably-priced things that weren't mass-produced - that were instead lovingly created by hand? What about cloth diapers? I hear those are hard to find, often don't fit well and are sometimes really expensive.

I mentioned earlier that my sewing instructor told me that Western individuals who sew are becoming fewer and further between with each passing year, while demand for domestic, handmade items is rising. I love the idea of being a rarity, a hot commodity, the elegance of unlikely anachronism taking advantage of globalization to further the agenda of self-sufficiency.

Sewing is so different from my career. The value of the work I put into it is immediately made manifest in terms that I can immediately grasp [without using formulas and cost-benefit analyses], and the result is immediately ready for use and/or admiration (unlike pottery-throwing [I love and hate it!] which requires more patience than I can easily muster). It's numerically and spatially brainbending, like those math puzzles we used to do in AG during gradeschool. I'm also working at the very edge of my "skill," and can feel that edge being honed the more projects I attempt. Even the failures (and there have been many, and several feet of seams and hems carefully ripped out and resewn) serve an obvious purpose, and I'm never resentful when I finish something and have an aha! moment that causes me to realize that I could have done it better, faster and neater. Of course I have to try that new way, tonight, right now, who cares about dinner.

I need to find a career path that inspires in me the same creativity and drive toward excellence. There is no other feeling in the world like working hard not because you're obligated or coerced, but because the journey toward and the end result itself of your work is so precious, interesting and motivating to you that it's actually not "work" at all.

I wonder if I'll burn out on this whole little sewing thing. ;)

---

Caspian and I were sitting in the dark together last night. He asked me, "If I make it big as a successful opera singer... Would you want to travel around from place to place with me?"

I said YES, of course - and then I thought about it. It would honestly be my ideal lifestyle. Moving from city to city, country to country as his contracts dictate, studying languages, exploring... It would be extremely fulfilling. Perhaps I'd write.  Can't think about it too much.  My heart aches for it.