Taking a Step Back

"Take a step back and think."

That's what my professor, Alex Juhasz, suggested I do to finish up the semester. It was during a class dinner for another course I am taking of hers (MCSI: Archive). She suggested I think about my DIY Learning course objectives, and what has changed. What have I done? What have I learned?

To start, I learned I don't need the online communities to be able to create, but they do help. In the end, I found I had to log off Pinterest and YouTube and just do it. I could pin as much as I wanted and watch the same videos or new ones and still I would not be in any better shape to finish the project. There is research and knowledge, and then there is creation.

Online communities are so powerful. Think about #BlackLivesMatter. Imagine the kind of impact a group of individuals was able to create simply by reaching out and starting an Internet movement.

Our lives have changed with the online environment, but the act of creating has not. We use online communities to feel less alone, but when I am knitting a scarf, it does not matter to me if 10 other people have knit this same scarf and taken photos of it and posted them on ravelry. None of that matters during the act of creation.

Before, when I am planning the project, and after, when I am showcasing the project, the online crafters are awesome. They post thoughtful comments and add a +1 to my google post. Which is all well and good, but the gratification has never come from others.

I create so that I feel proud of something I made with my own two hands. Whether other people think it's cool or if I find like-minded individuals-- that is a whole other playing field from the act of creating.

I love the online crafting communities, don't get me wrong. But I have realized that these communities are just that-- communities. They do not hold your individual potential and they cannot cultivate the sense of gratification you reach when you know you have made something all on your own. The act of creating is an individual experience. It can exist in a larger community. You can go out and brag. You can type out the pattern. You can give it away to a catfish you met online. I don't care.

But never forget that crafts are an act of creation. Whatever the book or website that helped you was only a stepping stone. Because YOU were the one who did this. You should be proud, online and offline, in real life and in digital spaces, alone and together.

As always, stay creative.

Much love,
Rebecca "Rivi"