Obsessive Compulsive Making (aka Just One More Row)

I spend a lot of time by myself. Theo is at nursery 3 days a week and every other week spends the day at a friend's house. Often I work at the weekend, and Kev takes the kids out all day.  Then I get up at 4am most mornings, (hopefully) a good few hours before anyone else. I work from home, don't have neighbours and can go weeks without leaving the house other than swimming lessons. 

Other than cultivating a near-constant external monologue (aka talking to myself, out loud, nearly all the time), dancing and singing wildly to Adele, and wearing an assortment of mis-matching clothes (today's outfit= denim shirt, snowflake pj bottoms, orange socks and a hot pink knit hat) all this alone time has ignited an obsessive need to make things.

It is likely that this need has always been here. I think when I worked in the office or there were other people around more often, social norms kept my making mania in check.  Now, alone all day, the need to make is only bridled by deadlines and with a shift in my working life, even those are more the self-imposed kind, things I want to be doing. Even when the kids are around, I seem to be on endless repeat "Yes, I'll play Uno/make dinner/find your shoes, just as soon as I finish this row".

And so I make things.  All day long.  I crochet until my wrist aches, then I move on to working on bread recipes, building willow wreathes, making a new coffee table.  Its like I can't be still unless I am busy doing something. I am sitting here, willing myself to write, check my tasks off my list, so I can go downstairs and make SOMETHING.

This is the other side of creative block - the obsession, the inability to sleep because of planning my next project, the willing the children to bed to I can just do one more row.  It is good and a relief after months of slogging through the making side of things, but it comes with its own dangers-- I've forgotten to make dinner 3 times in the last week alone and the dogs are currently begging for a walk...

...which I will do, after I finish one more row.