Growing Pains

2010 was a year of struggle. While the business did pretty well, I personally struggled - to grow as a metalsmith, to realize new and more complex designs, to learn to create differently.

The end of last year was crazy, and left little time for reflection. But in the small silences I found during the holiday season, there were moments of realizing that it *was* a growth year. I found myself more at peace with my skills, and with my own self, than I had in some time. It was a good feeling, to glance back and realize that there was some sort of measurable distance between where I began and where I ended.

Practice helps. Right now I'm at a place where I wish I  was just starting my business, so that I didn't have all the demands of an already-existing business to manage. I'd love to really sit down and play, play, play...my life needs more "playing" with the torch, the sheet, the saw, the hammer(s). I can't seem to find the time for that in the midst of all the other things that shriek for my attention. I've been trying to slow down and be more in the moment, but my moments right now are so fragmented. I'm thinking of other things while I'm doing other things and still feeling like too many other things are being neglected. There has to be a way to rectify that.

Fabrication is not easy. I doubt that it ever will be easy for me. But by the end of last year, a full year of soldering, fabricating, and learning, it HAS gotten somewhat easier. More time will help, of course. I feel stuck between my limited understanding of how to create through fabrication, and on the other side, a still-vast black hole of non-understanding. I look at jewelry and think, HOW did they do that? I want to soak up all the knowledge I can about how things are made...I never want to copy someone else's work, but I want to have the knowledge, the tools of creation, in my own toolbox as well, so I can forge my own path.

I'm not there yet.

But I am closer...