Here we go again….

Well after a couple of weeks and a couple of posts, I am back to WordPress for my blog. Yay. I think. The programming and technology that is available today is light years away from what it was when I started in the 90’s. Ok, truth be told, so am I, and we aren’t going to go back, but nothing will make me feel stupid like clicking on something and having my entire blog crash. Yea. That was last week. Yes, the appearance has changed because apparently the theme I was using doesn’t support PHP8.1 or PHP8.3 and that’s a security problem. I upgraded and POOF! It was all gone. As in all you got when you went to the URL was a single line that said something like “internal server error”. I am positive it took at least 8 months off my life trying to figure out how to recover from that and still have the most recent version of PHP, so here we are, with a theme that I barely tolerate, but I’m getting there. There’s also a new way to subscribe to blog posts so that you get an email when something new is posted. This one is significantly more secure than the free version of MailChimp was and I’m happy about that at least. If you entrust me with your email address, I want the data to be managed properly.

Last week a group of friends and I embarked on a “clean out your studio” spree. Twice a day, we posted a goal, ideally not a task that would take 3 days but a task that could be done in a couple of hours. So instead of saying “I need to clean my sewing room” or even “I need to clean up my cutting table and drawers”, it was down to which specific drawer was going to get cleaned out. The whole point of doing it that way was to actually manage to complete something, to score that dopamine hit and to hopefully keep at it. For me, this turned out to be shockingly effective. Since last Thursday, things have really turned around in my room. I can find all my notions. I have 5 1-gallon zip lock baggies of zippers. Yea I know, I really don’t need to buy zippers ever again; but that’s a discussion I will have another time. Right now, at least I know where all the zippers are in the studio.

I am going to hopefully keep this momentum going and each morning I am going to do something that is anywhere from 15-45 minutes in duration that moves me closer towards my goal of organization and functionality in my sewing space. I am hoping that I also end up establishing a habit that once everything has a designated space, it is easier to keep things there and also return them to their designated space when I am done sewing. I can remember both my mom and my sister saying, “everything has a place and everything in its place”. That is a lovely sentiment but when you have stuffed 15 lbs of mud in a 5 lb sack (I will never forget Dolly Parton using that turn of phrase and I love it) you are always going to have mud everywhere. That means that a large part of this clean out is also getting rid of duplicates and things that no longer sing to me. I know I have way too much fabric, but that’s a post for another day, and I am using a lot of my stash sewing for the guild community service efforts. All in good time. Another great saying is “all things in moderation, including moderation”. I will keep working at this, but I recognize I will NEVER be one of those people who has a studio with a desk and a chair and 2 pencils on the table and nothing else. There will always be too much fabric and too many patterns, but I can get a better setup for organization, and I can start using the fabric.

I guess when it comes down to it, the blog clean up and maintenance falls into the same category as the studio clean up. I can’t just let it sit for the next 15 years and expect that everything will work – I will have to keep my digital environment as maintained and organized as I keep my physical environment. It will be good for my brain to explode on a regular basis anyway as new things are introduced and for the next big upgrade on PHP, I fully expect that this theme will disappear on me and I’ll have to start all over again. Maybe I’ll even learn enough that I can set this up so that I don’t have to use a theme and I’m not dependent on that….. it could happen.