This is from my email newsletter in April 2020:

I feel so grateful to've discovered that I can still do my work, the work of teaching quilting and mending, but just in a different format for a while. Back in 2005, when I graduated with a degree in art education from SAIC, I had no computer graphics or Photoshop experience. Yet, I got a job teaching intro art and computer graphics! I promised to work hard teaching myself over the summer. I enjoyed teaching at that school for 9 years, and it was a wonderful success. I've also benefitted tremendously in the last 15 years from my skill with Photoshop.
This moment of adapting my teaching from in-person to online reminds me of that moment when I transitioned from art school to the work force: I had to improvise, and adjust my skillset for a future that I hadn't yet dreamed of. Here are a few thoughts that I've found helpful as I've reconnected with my 22 year old self this month:

Before I was born, my maternal grandmother organized this collaborative quilt for me. It taught me that all my aunts could sew. My grandmother perfectly embroidered her signature next to 'Jack be nimble.' Sometimes I think I have free will, and other times, I think this life of mine was always coming for me.
As my grandmother has continued to age, she's 89 right now, I've lamented that she hasn't been more nimble, changing with the times. Like when, in the late 90's, she taped a magazine clipping of Antonio Banderas to her desktop computer screen, because it was more useful to her that way.
An ex boyfriend used to irritate me when he went through airport security, slow as molasses, failing every time to anticipate the needs of airport staff for him to empty water, remove shoes, and take out his laptop.
Freshmen year at SAIC, my Time Arts professor Steve (why can't I find his last name?), said an art degree was the most useful degree on the planet, because it taught creative thinking.
My art ed professor Lisa Hochtritt taught us that we could teach creativity, and that anyone can make art, no mater what. Like, art with no hands, art if you're depressed, art without art school, art with no art supplies. Art. No. Matter. What.
I used to watch news reports about job loss, and wonder, why can't they be more nimble, get a new job, and react how I would react? I then learned to have more compassion, as being nimble is a skill that perhaps they hadn't learned yet. Nimbleness and creativity aren't taught in every classroom.
In book arts class, I spent many hours on my homework, while another boy made a book by stapling some fresh leaves together; and we got equal praise from my instructor Susannah Strang. She was right, and I learned that effort and struggle don't necessarily make things 'better.'
Sometimes I thought I was teaching high school art, but then I had to shift to preventing mischief, or helping a student feel seen. I find I'm often multitasking like that, and have noticed that the more important thing is often unspoken. Like, you think I teach quilting, but I actually teach ________.
Sometimes like the tortoise and the hare, when I slow down, I get faster. (Did you all know yet that I feel deeply connected to the rabbit?😉🐇
In The Makerie's Playful Pause, I said something, and then got to absorb it as a quote from @midwest_monarch later on instagram. I said, "What we see as beautiful is malleable." I was speaking in reference to wabi-sabi, and the way I learned to see mending as beautiful. Amidst so much suffering, tears, change, and frustration, it is also possible to find new joys, and I'm learning from my therapist that we're allowed to enjoy and savor those new and beautiful moments.

My maternal grandmother made this quilt and quilt block for me before I was born.