The rediscovered minimalist

I am home now and doing house and life catch up. Floors and cooking and visiting and forms and details. Meetings again tomorrow.

I don't want to forget what I learned while I was away sewing for a month in a hotel room. This is what that was:

I am happiest when things are simple. Eat one of the two things in the fridge, sew from the fabric that fits in a suitcase. Stretch out the project and the pattern or two because that is all you have, so fill in the time being careful, moving that bust dart, trying that read-about shoulder fit, practicing non automatic buttonholes. Non-fusible interfacing.

I was really happy with few options, in two rooms and time to work right through. Really happy.

It has occurred to me that like a lot of women I have been cluttered up with all the stuff I have gathered and all the things I have been because other people wanted me to be them. I had a long talk when I was away with a young woman who was working in NYC and told me that she really didn't like her good job but that everyone around her in their 20s was trying so hard to get set up to make money, work with a great firm - she told me most people she knows don't really like what they are doing everyday.

Add a few decades onto that, and I have been lucky to have avoided most of this, but a person can find herself in a hotel room with her sewing machine and realize that this is all she needs to be happy.

And it is as simple as that.