Connect, Support, Evolve

I’m just returning from two back-to-back weekend shows where I taught and had a booth selling my fiber-wares.

I’d forgotten how much work these shows are; in the preparing for them, traveling to them, setting up, breaking down, loading vehicles, unloading vehicles, reloading vehicles. What I didn’t forget, and what I was looking forward to more than anything, was connecting with people I hadn’t seen in over a year.

Lincoln also had a very busy couple of weekends with the 4th-of-July celebrations (thank you LVCC and Lincoln Rodeo Club), the Lincoln Bike Rally (thank you Tenacious Dames), and the Hooper Park Flea Market (thank you Jill and Jesse Sallin). A lot of the folks who participated in these local events likely know exactly what I’m referring to above.

But it wasn’t just getting back to doing what we were doing before we all lost an entire year of income and doing what we did. It was about getting together, and connecting with those people who do what we do, and often who remind us why we do what we do while feeding our souls.

This year, I’ve seen an increase, not only in general sales, but in the sheer number of people getting out to these events, or coming to Lincoln. We as humans, by and large, are a social group of people, and we’re proving it. We’re proving that in general, and as a whole, we don’t like being separated. We don’t like being secluded. And, more often than not, we do better when we connect than when we’re told we’re not allowed to do so.

Despite the heat, despite the smoke and despite some of the scare tactics that I’m still hearing about to keep us all apart, the majority of people are saying it’s time. It’s time to do what we like, it’s time to be with one another, it’s time to connect, it’s time to learn, shop, enjoy people, places and things again.

In our year apart, we had time to be with our immediate families. For people who create products or artwork, we had the time to do so. But what I heard from several of my fellow creators who were getting ready to participate in shows is that they didn’t have any product to sell. They, like me - for whatever reason - couldn’t create. Most everything we had available to sell were things already in our inventories prior to our world shutting down, or things we had created frantically in the last month or so prior to our events.

One person described the reason they thought it was difficult to create, even though there was plenty of time, was the stress of what was going on around us. It’s difficult to do anything in stressful situations, and I think this person’s thought process is right on target. Because if it’s difficult to create in a non-stressful time, it’s darn near impossible to create during the stressful ones.

Another person described it in terms of not only not having the energy to create, but there was no real consequence for not doing it either, because there was nowhere to go to connect with the people who wanted or appreciated the items. Their exact words were “There was always tomorrow to create, because there was nowhere to go, and that excuse repeated itself through the entire year until suddenly, there were places to go again.” I felt those words deeply, and truthfully, even lived them a little during the past year.

What I do know, as I try to look at the positive aspects of it all is this: the year off from life as I knew it was hard, just hard, but in getting back to what I love after it, is causing me to think and re-think why I do what I do. It’s causing me to ask myself if it’s still what I want to do, or do I want to evolve. Evolving doesn’t necessarily mean giving up on everything I do, but going into the next phase of it all. I’ll always be a teacher and a creator in my heart, and in the things I do - and connecting through those avenues in the ways I do now and in the ways that I’m moving into - is just the process of it all.

I heard a woman at my most recent show who was shopping with a younger individual say, “Now, more than ever, we need to support our local artists at events like these.” I share her thoughts, and appreciate her teaching the next generation the importance of shopping local and supporting artists and small businesses. This is how all of us are going to survive whatever comes at us next. Connecting and supporting one another, in my opinion, is the only way we can make it.