So Inspired…Kidder

The really tough choices…
don’t center upon
right versus wrong. 
They involve
right versus right. 
They are genuine dilemmas
precisely because each side
is firmly rooted
in one of our basic, core values. 
--Rushworth Kidder

So Inspired

The greatest danger
for most of us
is not that our aim is too high
and we miss it,
but that it is too low
and we reach it.
–Michelangelo

Decision time…

 

Yesterday’s trip to the bookstore yielded 2 books.  GMAT prep and Art Saves.  Two very different books!  Last night as I was laying in bed it occurred to me that the books I bought represent the polar opposites of me.

Creativity has been a part of my life since childhood.  My grandmother taught me to crochet when I was very young.  Around the same time, my mother taught me to sew and I became obsessed with sewing clothes for my Barbies, my dolls and myself.  Before I graduated from 8th grade I sold my saxophone (yeah, NO talent there!!) and used the money to buy my very own sewing machine.  I have been making money sewing or crafting ever since!

Over the years I have sewed everything from wedding and bridesmaid dresses to country crafts.  Somewhere along the line I also picked up a love of painting.  In the 1990s, the craft show circuit put all three of my children through an expensive preschool and allowed me to be a stay-at-home mom…till I went back to college in 2000. 

Like most college students, I changed directions a few times.  I began with an interest in computer science and gradually moved towards business and politics.  As sometimes happens in life (or at least in MY life), once I decided what I really wanted, my circumstances shifted.  But not necessarily in a good way.  It was during my junior year of college that Elliot was diagnosed with a brain tumor.  That changed everything for me.  Fortunately I was able to finish my degree but my ambition had to take a back seat for awhile. 

During my college years, I had all but abandoned my creative side.  But in 2007, creativity began to creep back into my life.  I missed creating things with my hands and putting my creations out into the world.  I knew I no longer wanted to do it through sewing so I dove into something I had been playing with for awhile…scrapbooking.  And… a picket fence life was born.

I hadn’t really intended to write a “bio”…but that very brief and incomplete history in a nutshell brings us to today and where my life is right now.  I can feel things shifting again.  In fact, I feel as though I am standing on an active fault line.  I can’t imagine ever giving up the creative side of me…but I can also see the benefit of grad school.

Theoretically, I should be able to co-exist in both worlds.  But my reality has always proven otherwise.  So it comes down to CHOICE.  If you remember, CHOICE is my word for the year…and it has definitely been a year of making (life-altering) choices.  Given that, I shouldn’t be surprised I’m faced with this one now.  Of course, that doesn’t make it any easier!  :)

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