I’ve had a couple of interesting discussions the past week about motivation in my crafty space. Some one online, one on a conference call, and they have all been swirling around in my head.

We all agree 2020 has been a dumpster fire of a year. I can get a Christmas ornament of a dumpster on fire to commemorate the year in just that manner. At the same time this has been the most prolific year of my quilting experience and that’s 30 years people.

On the face of it, I started by saying well I didn’t go anywhere so of course i stayed home and sewed but the more I thought about it, it was much deeper than that. There have been some days where I just sit and stare at the wall this year, so the fact that I’m at home hasn’t been the whole turn around, though it does make it more likely that I will work on something and finish it. When I finally get down to the nitty gritty, I have come to the conclusion that for me, completion is the fuel for this engine.

Early on in all of this, I got out a couple of projects that were 80-90% complete and got them done. I’m pretty sure I blogged about them here. The feeling I got from finishing those propelled me into the next project. As I kept finishing things, I kept getting propelled forward.

I’m an engineer, and I understand that perpetual motion (motion that continues without any input of energy) is one of the great myths of the world. People have been trying to get something for nothing for eons. For me it’s no different in crafting. I keep doing because I get a boost from finishing something, without a push I don’t keep moving

I want to be very clear. I have never been a finisher. I am more about process than project. I like the doing more than anything, but this year I have become a finisher and it has driven more finishing than I ever thought I could accomplish. I’ve cleared out a couple of really old projects and have finished 4 quilts that I started this year. I MEAN WHO IS THIS PERSON AND WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO MARTHA????? My mother would be absolutely gobsmacked by this.

I don’t know what 2021 is going to bring. I’m sure life will evolve and I will start traveling so I won’t be at home every weekend to sew, but I think I’ve learned not to schedule so much time away from home. I don’t think I have somehow made a switch from being a process person to a project person, I am still much more drawn to the doing than I am to finishing and I will NEVER be the person who works on one project at a time, finishing each before starting the next. What I do think, is that I’m learning how to keep my creative engine going using finishing as a fuel, and just like with perpetual motion, that fuel only lasts a finite amount of time so I have to keep putting fuel on the fire, I need to keep finishing to keep this thing going.