"Waiting for My Real Life to Begin" - Colin Hay

I’ve never really been a crafty person. That is, I’ve never really been interested crafts: scrapbooking, sewing, quilting, that sort of thing. My short-lived artistic phase spanned the years when I still had most of my baby teeth. It’s not really that I have a conscious aversion to crafts, I’m just disinclined to start something that, a) I will not be able to finish, or b) I will not be able to finish perfectly. Therein lies the true dilemma: I am a perfectionist.

Despite this (significant) hurdle, I’ve recently committed myself to no fewer than five “crafty” projects, which range from building a dollhouse, to making a t-shirt quilt, to finally piecing together various scrapbooks, and beyond. Why, you ask? The answer: I have too much stuff. I think that may be the key to unlocking the mystery of why anyone does crafts who isn’t, by nature, a “crafty person”. There are those who do crafts because they love it, and that’s all well and good. But there are plenty of us who aren’t like that who mysteriously find ourselves browsing the scrapbooking aisle of Michael’s wondering why we will feel so out of our element. It’s because we really are out of our element, but we’ve been driven there out of necessity, namely the need to organize and minimize the mammoth collection of stuff hidden in our closets or under our beds. Or both, if you’re me. Most normal people don’t reach this point until they’re a fair bit older than my scanty (almost) 25 years, but then I’ve always been mature for my age.*

So, I’m a crafty person now. I have, however, adopted other hobbies that will hopefully keep me jumping off the crafty deep end. I’m teaching myself to play the guitar, and I’m taking a few courses at Princeton to help me prepare for graduate school. There’s really nothing like quantum mechanics or learning to build operational amplifiers to keep a girl normal.

< mary|normal >² = 0

Oh well, that’s too bad.



* Tongue-in-cheek.