Scratching the Niche

I just read over my last post and wow, that was sad. I'm not that sad anymore. I still don't love it here, but I am at least looking for things to like. There are worse things than being a lonely housewife in a foreign land. I need to embrace this newness and slowly find my niche.

I keep looking in shop windows and envisioning kokoleo. It's like when I looked in the empty rec building and saw Club Teasdale. There's just something about an empty space that makes me want to fill it. I have enough inventory amassed in my more creative days when I was actively doing craft shows and selling in shops. Maybe if I had the space to create I would start up again. I miss the energy and excitement that comes from making things. My new studio is so suffocatingly small I can't even stand to be in it for more than a few minutes. There are too many reminders of things I used to make and do and projects I never finished. There are too many supplies that need to be turned into something new and rather than feeling inspired, I'm overwhelmed.

Clearly my situational depression is linked to not making anything beyond school lunches and piles of laundry. When I think back to the times when I was a manic thing-making machine it was when I was inspired by my environment - working toward craft shows, having kokoleo in neighborhood shops, answering calls for artists and participating in group shows, working on community projects and events. This is the niche I need to carve for myself again. Right now the only niche I'm carving is a divot in the couch. I can't force it. But I can get up and go for a walk.

... which is where I keep encountering empty storefronts. It's not that this area is a ghost town (like downtown Renton was becoming). The empty ones are randomly spaced between established shops and galleries and restaurants. I've made it a point to visit some of these shops and am getting to know the owners, trying to see if and where I could fit in. Next week I'm taking some of the kokoleo items currently crowding my studio to a few shops on Kingston Rd who have expressed an interest. The conversations I have with these people are my therapy. I am learning what this neighborhood likes and needs and would love to see. I am starting to write a business plan for the space I want to create. It's just a pipe dream for now, but it's a better thing to focus on than how sad I am. It's the first glimmer of excitement I've felt since we moved and I'm going with it.

Dear Diary

I was thinking the other day, I should write more. Not just fun little craft tutorials either, but what I'm really thinking and feeling and what's really going on in my life. Because here I am one year after my last post, living in a different country. How did we get here? It's a long story.

I figure this is a safe place to write. I need to write. I need an outlet. I'm lonely and I hate it here.

Well, I don't HATE it. I am trying to like it. But dammit I miss my old life. I miss my job at Club Teasdale. For the first time in my life I was doing exactly what I wanted to do. I did something important. I built an after school program where there wasn't one before. I filled an empty abandoned rec building with craft supplies and playground equipment and I started a camp program there in the summer. For two years that building was mine to run. And then I had to leave. Someone I've never met took it over. Now I don't even know what to answer if someone asks, "So what do you do?" Not that anyone is asking.

I miss my house. God, I loved that house. Every day we lived there I felt lucky that it was ours. Maybe because I knew we wouldn't be there very long because that's our lot in life. Every few years we move. We lived in that house longer than we ever lived anywhere (5 years). If you had told me one year ago that next year we'd be living in Canada, I wouldn't believe it. I wasn't ready to leave. Yet here we are. In a house that's smaller and more expensive in a city we had never even been to before. Toronto.

We are here because my husband got an opportunity to do what he wants to do. His work is always the reason we move. He was never doing what he loved in Seattle but we built a nice life for ourselves while we were there, regardless. We could have stayed. I wish we had stayed. But an opportunity came up and we jumped on it. We packed up the kids and dog and cat and bunny and hamster and we drove across Canada and lived in a high rise hotel in downtown Toronto for 2 weeks while we looked for a place to live. Now, we're one month in. We have a house and all our stuff is nearly unpacked in it. There is no turning back. Erik goes off to work every weekday and I walk the kids to school and come home and sit on the couch and stare the walls and cry. I don't think I have the energy to reinvent myself again.