{*~In A Rut~*}

Do you know my favorite movie the Royal Tenenbaums?

Margot says "I'm in a rut" at one point in the beginning of the movie and for some reason that really hits me this morning. That combined with this post from Rachel about being honest about feelings.

I just need to get something off my chest I think. I've been debating posting this for the past few weeks and I think now I need too.

I haven't been a happy camper for the past few weeks and I barely have felt like blogging. or sewing. or really getting out of bed. The truth is, I feel guilty being personal and upfront about negative feelings here on my blog. I feel like a lot of people come here to read about quilting and sewing and I don't want to add any negativity to that.

But you know what? It's my blog. And I'm pretty gosh darn unhappy lately. For a ton of reasons. I just am REALLY unhappy. And I need to make some changes to make myself happy and panic free.

Some of it is no fault of my own. Some of it is me being tender skinned. Some of it is my own doing. And someone of it is just from passive aggressive jerks.

I love flickr, I truly dearly do, but nothing annoys me more than lately someone will favorite a photo, I'll get curious and look at their photostream because I freaking love looking at "new to me" people and a week later I'll find they've copied something of mine and put it on etsy. That's so not cool. At first I thought I was being over sensitive, but now I'm waking up to emails from friends who are like "omg amanda have you seen this?!" and it's heart breaking. And unethical. And incredibly stupid because if you favorite something of mine and your flickr name is soandsosetsy and then I click your name and see stuff identical to what I've made...um...your not even trying to hide it!!!! Sheesh.

Or I'll put my heart and soul into a project and someone will "borrow" an idea from it, make it their own and make a pattern from it with the words suggesting it was their original pattern and you can't make and sell stuff from it. Without mentioning me. Even when we've exchanged emails back and forth. And I've helped with the technical knowledge to create something when the person has known nothing. It makes it so I can't do a darn thing with something that was my original idea to begin with! That really really REALLY is upsetting. At least say thank you!

That kind of stuff gets me down. So down, I've not wanted to sew. At all.

I've fallen behind on my 12 squared group blocks and I've debating dropping out. I feel so so so mentally blocked (no pun intended!) and the idea of accidentally ruining someone elses fabric ( did I mention that when I do sew things lately, I spend more time seam ripping than I did sewing in the first place?!) sends shivers up my spine. But it's also not fair to expect the ladies to wait around while I get my act together either.

The truth is, I need some tougher, thicker skin in order to be a crafty girl online these days. That's a big part of it. Another part of it is I need to stop being so nice and helpful. I pay someone to teach me to quilt so why do I think its ok to give basically private quilting lessons free via email to someone who's just going to turn around and sell something made from the help I give them? Because I'm genuinely nice and helpful. But I can't be anymore. No siree!

Now, I'm not talking about when I get an email and the person is like "hey I love such and such that you made, can you explain to me this one part?" because thats totally ok and I've emailed people doing the same thing, what I mean is "hey I love such and such that you made, can you show me where you got the fabric, how you learned x-method, where to order the supplies, can you take a few photos so I know what your talking about, what kind of thread to use and I'm going to learn all this from you and then blog/magazine/sell it". :( I don't mind helping people AT ALL. Because people are generally very kind and have helped me, but theres a difference between asking for help and just mooching ideas/knowledge off someone. I think on twitter at LEAST once a day I see a fellow crafter tweet something along the lines of "I'M NOT GOOGLE!!!!!" "GOOGLE IT!!" "GOOGLE IS YOUR FRIEND". Everything I've learned about sewing I've either paid for with classes or taught myself by using research and trial and error. I don't think I'd have the balls to email someone and ask them for step by step hand holding because I'm too lazy to research it myself. And maybe people don't see that there's something wrong with that?

Last night I made my twitter, flickr, google reader, etc all private. It pained me to do it because I love being able to share cool things and meet new people all the time but I also need to realize that not everyone wants to be my friend in the way I want to be theirs. Plain and simple. I'm going to use flickr less and show less "in progress" photos. The projects that mean the most to me will be kept close to the chest until I'm ready to share them. I'm also not going to even try and keep up with the quilters who can make a queen sized quilt in a weekend. I'm putting tons of pressure on myself to make a quilt like, every other day and thats realllllllly hard. Hahaha. :)

Of course there is a LOT more to it than I'm comfortable talking about here, more real life stuff, more personal every day things, I save that sort of private stuff for late night conversations with Mr. McPorkchop, but I'll talk about the crafty stuff because I know it's not just me and I think it's important to show that yeah, I LOVE being crafty and being blessed with the ability to make a living off of what I love, but its not always sunshine days! Sometimes I'll turn on wii fit and box until my little arms feel like there going to fall off.

Ok. Phew. Off my chest.

So this doesn't seem all doom and gloom, I've started working on our wedding invites! We ordered paper from paper-source, I'm using this kit (a wedding gift from the designer herself!) and I'm going to either gocco or yudu the invites very very soon! I'm so very excited! I'll share them with you once I've printed them.

Today my goal is to jump in the shower and then head over to quilting, I have maybe 25% more to quilt on my five and dime quilt, its about a 2ft section and I'd be so excited if I got it finished. Binding a quilt is my FAVORITE part and if I get there, tonight Mr. McPorkchop will go to the video store and we can rent something and I can sit and hand sew the binding on! Best night!

Thanks for listening to me bitch :) Have a great Thursday!