And so we begin again. . .

I’m real tired, folks.  It’s super early in the morning, and I’m sitting here clacking away when I should be sleeping.  But for the last several days I’ve thought about nothing but getting this website up and running, and I’m almost there, so I’m going to power through and hope my wife won’t begrudge me the many naps I’m going to take this weekend.

As she can attest, I get obsessed with things.  Sometimes it’s an idea or a project, most times it’s acquiring things.  As a kid (and still to this day, who’re we kidding?), it was comic books and taping music off the radio.  As the years progressed, new obsessions would come and go.  Buying CDs.  Buying movies.  Collecting artwork.  Publishing comic books.  Reading books.  Writing blogs.  My brain couldn’t rest until the obsession du jour was sated.

And now it’s latch hooking.  I see the same patterns (see what I did there?  Because you use patterns to latch hook. . .okay then) as my previous obsessions.  As my latch hook guy (yeah, I have a latch hook guy) and my wife can attest, I’ve acquired a lot of yarn and canvas over the last year.  I have over a year’s worth of projects to complete, and I’m still ordering more.  Every time I get a thought about what would make a cool design, I can’t stop thinking about it until I have the kit for it stacked away with all the other ones in what has become, to my wife’s chagrin, our “craft corner”.  So it looks like I’m cycling up for another obsession.

And yet, this time it feels different.  Yes, all the same signs of obsessing are there, but this is the first hobby that’s not all about me.  I’m still doing something that satisfies some need in me, sure, but this time the ultimate goal is to use my hobby to help other people.  Instead of collecting more stuff, I want to collect goodwill.  Instead of seeing how many latch hook kits I can acquire, I want to see how many latch hook kits I can turn into gifts or donations.  And that brief hit of satisfaction I’d get from opening a new CD or unboxing the latest Funko toy, now I get a much more satisfying feeling from seeing my progress on a canvas or knowing that something I made with my own hands is out there in the world and made some kind of difference in someone’s life (as much as a decorative rug or pillow can make a difference).

Maybe this is all just my way of trying to justify why I’ve got stacks of boxes full of yarn spilling out into our living room, finished  canvasses tumbling out of our closet, and yarn fuzz everywhere else.  But nothing else I’ve ever done has made folks’ eyes light up.  No other hobby has made me proud of explaining it to others.  That’s gotta mean something, right?

I don’t know.  I do know I need to get some sleep.  Because I’ve got a canvas I need to finish this weekend that’s going to help raise money for college scholarships.  And that’s gotta be saying something.  So maybe I’ll stop wringing my hands and worrying about what it all means and if a year from now I’m blogging about a completely different hobby/obsession, then we can talk.