Over the past year  I’ve been teaching myself how to sew and design clothing, something completely outside of my formal education or current career path. I didn’t go to fashion school and am currently pursuing my master’s in social work. Learning to sew has been both exciting and humbling, more humbling at times even bleeding into discouraging

Like learning anything new, you start as a beginner with technical limitations, and sometimes the ideas in your head need to take a back seat until your technical skills catch up. I’m not at the point where I can create freely and bring my ideas to reality how I imagined them in my head. The reality is, I’m still learning the fundamentals and sometimes that means slowing down, repeating the basics, and also sitting with the acceptance and discomfort of being new. I’m learning that the process of starting a new skill is not always energizing or fun in the traditional sense. Imposter syndrome has become that devil on my shoulder and sometimes creeps into my focus more than I’d like to admit. 

As of late my way of thinking has shifted, I’ve been understanding and accepting that going slow doesn’t mean staying stuck, or that I’m not eventually going to be able to go fast. I’m attempting a balancing act of honoring the patience and growth required to learn something new while also taking risks and embracing the fact that failure is part of the process. I am beginning to understand that failure may actually be a positive thing, it means I tried something new, learned from it, and made some kind of progress. So despite the fact that seam ripping and breaking a needle can throw me into a mini rage I’m coming to see these "setbacks" as valuable and necessary in my learning :)