When Things Go Sideways
I hate it when that happens! I spend hours, days, sometimes weeks preparing for a project. The pieces are all laid out, iron is hot, I’m buzzing along. Sew…press…sew…press…sew…why does it look like that? Yep, that’s wrong. So now what.
In quilting the stitch ripper is your friend. Not because anyone enjoys ripping out stitches, taking apart pieces to try again. Sometimes taking them apart more than once, if I’m honest. But it’s a necessity because, well, what’s the option?
Things go sideways for a lot of reason. We all make mistakes that have consequences. Last night I had to go to dinner plan B because I got distracted and burned the onions and celery. Minor adjustment needed. Major mistakes require major adjustments, like when you run your car engine without oil. That’s a biggie. No one is perfect, so when I sew a quilt block together incorrectly, I reach for the stitch ripper, learn, and endeavor to avoid mistakes, big or small.
There are also times when whatever has gone off the rails isn’t our fault and we’re left to figure it out anyway. Minor adjustment might be required when your usual route to work is under construction, or when the grocery store runs out of your favorite bread. Spectacular sideways events are life-changing and require spectacular major adjustment. Life turns sideways, or upside down, when a loved one dies. Or when you lose your job, twice in two years for me. How we move over, through, under, or past the offending event is influenced by many things…how we were raised, the resilience we’ve built up over the years, our own sheer stubbornness, but we simply have no choice but to get past it in order to achieve our goals, be successful, or frankly just to survive. I’ve decided that the minor sideways turns can be good practice for when I have to navigate the spectacular sideways turns. I figure there are essentially three ways for me to handle the sideways moments in life.
First, I could simply ignore the thing or make a super quick adjustment. Go about my day and forget the thing ever happened. I forgot to buy eggs so I have a bowl of cereal for breakfast instead. There is no point in getting huffy with myself for forgetting, and it’s just not a big deal and it’s not going to ruin my day. A semi driver ignored the signs at the end of my road and got stuck under the train trestle, so I turned around and went another direction. No yelling or blowing the horn or shaking my fist at the driver. Just go a different way. Ignoring the thing is pretty easy to do with minor sideways turns, not so easy for the bigger things.
The second way to cope is to try to fix the thing. This is what I do with the stitch ripper. I sewed the material together sideways and the fix will take a little time but once it’s done it’s done. We all get broken things dumped in our laps once in a while. We had nothing to do with making the mess but we end up cleaning it up. Again, I try very hard not to let it ruin my day. Maybe that’s because I am a helper by nature, I like to help in any way I can, even though I had nothing to do with whatever caused the sideways turn. I get satisfaction from figuring things out, making things better. It takes patience, often buckets of patience! Fortunately, patience comes easier with practice.
The third way is to get all charged up, righteously indignant, angry, ready to throw down, madder than a wet hen. You get the drift. This seems to be the default setting for people these day, regardless of the scale or scope of the issue. Someone behind me on the way to work today decided they didn’t like it when I actually stopped at a stop light. She honked her horn, threw up her arms, and screeched around me to turn left on a red light. She was clearly in a hurry and I was between her and whatever. Her reaction was not proportional to her perceived injury.
There are MANY reasons to be charged up right now with everything happening in the country and around the world these days, rightfully so. Proportional responses would be monumental! But I recently decided to prioritize my mental health. My physical health is important and I want to prioritize that, too. And being angry all the time was doing actual physical harm. It’s not that I’m not afraid or mad or upset. It’s that I just won’t let fear take over and dictate my responses anymore. I’ll lean on my second option, fixing things when I can, helping when possible, organizing, facilitating, connecting.
I’ll get my stitch ripper and my patience.