I think I spoke before here of the Great Dismantling and reorienting taking place.

Okay, we’re also, barring some great misfortune, moving next month, which would necessitate great reordering. (Yes, there are reasons to move, though this one is hopefully to improve general living conditions, as well as family considerations.) But I actually started the great reordering last November, and would be done by now if it weren’t for those pesky kids my forever glitchy healthy which takes out every other month or so from useable time to move heavy stuff around and decide what to do with odds and sods.

I believe the Great Dismantling is not unusual for my time of life. Lots of women get to their mid sixties (not quite, but I can see it from here) and decide to get rid of stuff for hobbies, either because eyesight has deteriorated or because — sad realization, but then again, guys, my parents lived 30 years from where I am, so this isn’t certain — they won’t have time to do all the things they’d been planning to.

To an extent it is like that, except where it’s not, because I’m weird.

Let’s just say I’m not getting rid of my fabric, my crochet or my cross stitch. Also not my drawing implements and paper (though I’m thinning it a bit.)

Those are all things I will still do. Partly because crocheting is my fidget toy. I do it when I’m sitting, trying to pay attention to something else. This might be on long car trips, so I don’t fall asleep and can keep Dan awake, or in the evening, while Dan is watching TV. Same for cross stitching, which also allows me to make cute things for people I like. And fabric…. well, the new place will have a sewing room the cats can’t penetrate. (The cats have been the greatest impairment to my sewing. Reasons obvious.) As for the drawing, I don’t know, but I’m holding onto the implements for now.

The thing is that I realized about a year ago that I’d accumulated not only more hobby material than any reasonable person, twenty years old or so, could use in a lifetime of dedicated crafting, but also that a lot of it was acquired with an eye towards eventually making a small craft business.

Now, I don’t know about you — tovarish — but I never consciously planned to become a crafter-for-money. And yet, over the last twenty or so years, I’ve been, year by year, accruing materials and books on how to make various crafts whose sole purpose would be to sell. (Unlike crochet or cross stitch, which are things I can always use around the house.)

Why on Earth? You’ll ask. And you might as well do it, as I was very puzzled when I figured out what the back brain had been up to.

The thing, though, is that it makes perfect sense. It’s like me finding myself with a car full of groceries after 9/11, which amounted to the back brain going “Things are unstable. Let’s prepare.” For the last twenty years of my trad pub career — that is, really, all of it — I expected it to go away completely at any minute. And apparently the only way my back brain could cope with this uncertainty was to prepare for “what comes next.” And for something that was more instinctive than rational, the reasoning was impeccable: Crafting “pulls” from the same place was writing, and even though it’s not as effective at calming the natural insanity, it’s effective enough to stop me from just sitting in a corner hating the world and braiding my hair in increasingly thinner braids. Maybe. Well, it would be worth a try anyway.

But the thing is that I’m now living in post apocalypse times. As in, yes, the trad career finally crashed, utterly and completely, but on the other hand, like a gorgeous (dumpster) phoenix, it rose again from the flames, and currently the biggest limiter on how much I can make from my writing is how much time I can put into it.

Which kind of shortens the time I have available to do things like paint realistic cats on rocks. Or make flower bouquets from discarded books. Or– yeah.

And therefore, the Great Reordering is taking place. Honestly, the drawing might also go in the near future. Or I might decide I really don’t need all that fabric. (Honestly, that’s the least of my worries, as that’s something the DILs won’t mind inheriting in the slightest.)

For now I’m holding onto those things because…

Well, I’m putting all the time I can towards writing, but there’s a balance. Not of writing alone lives the writer, or if you prefer, it is possible to narrow the creative impulse too much.

Oh, there’s all sorts of things from walking, to just hiding in a corner of a coffee shop that feed my writing. Oh, chats with friends help too, as do chats with Dan (of course. I still miss our early morning walks in Denver’s botanic gardens, and the talks by the koi pond.) But there is also a certain balance in periodically doing something creative that doesn’t use my words.

I started taking art classes (which ended up going on for four years, though the last year was only half, and I quit because politics had invaded the art courses, and I couldn’t stand the cross chatter while I was working) because my life was too busy. Which sounds hilarious since art classes took four to six hours a week (depending) plus a lot of practice at home.

This was the year I was homeschooling the younger genius, (who did three years in one that year) and had six books due. Four of them historical, in different time periods and countries. I literally was at my wits end and so exhausted I was barely functioning.

Which is when I saw an add for classes just three blocks from my house and thought “yes, that’s what I need.” Weirdly, though the decision was made on a half-dead brain, it was exactly right. Both getting out of the house and among people, and just spending a few hours trying to use a completely different side of my brain for creation made the writing much easier. (And the sleeping at night too.)

This taught me that there must always be a balance and that sometimes doing things that don’t seem to advance your main goal, towards which you’re already working as hard as humanly possible (and a bit beyond), does paradoxically help you get more accomplished.

So I’m keeping the other stuff around, that’s stuff I’ve done before and am likely to do again, just in case it becomes needed.

But a drastic change in career — barring unforeseen catastrophe, (knocks on head) — doesn’t seem to be in the program.

What’s needed is balance, not a flying leap into the unknown.

And balance is harder, but also might help the writing. Because in the new freedom of indie, there are no guarantees, but also no one can end your career, unless you do it yourself.