11. When I did what I loved, everything just became my own power

I used to have deep-seated guilt about doing what I loved. Now, that is gone.

I have lived with a super negative mindset, but this is a story about how I surprised even myself when I tried doing what I truly wanted to do from the heart.

The power to do 'what you truly want to do from the bottom of your heart' and 'what you love from the heart' has the strength to change a person. It really does.

Reasons not to do it are no longer necessary.

The guilt I felt about doing what I loved was due to past experiences imprinted on my subconscious. Honestly, that doesn't matter anymore.

I won't deny that there were days when I constantly compared myself to others, ranked us, and kept screaming inside, 'Why am I so useless!!!'

While some people even labeled me as someone who thinks too much and doesn't take action, my lightning-fast ability to act was triggered, and I started attending a patchwork class over ten years ago.

I first thought about wanting to try patchwork when I was around 24. I had the chance to attend but gave it up, and I finally started going when I was 50.

Even so, negative thoughts still emerge.

What is the point of starting something new at such an advanced age? I wish I had started when I was younger... and so on.

That is when I remember these words. They are the words that once encouraged me and became the catalyst for me to start taking different actions than before.

Things you are not conscious of do not enter your field of vision

When you are strongly fixated on something, you develop blind spots and there are things you cannot see.

There was a wonderful teacher very close to my home who had been running a class and a shop for a long time.

To me, with my heart fixated on the idea that 'I must not do what I want to do,' it was as if I couldn't see it at all. Even if it was tucked away a little from the street, if I had truly been seeking it from the bottom of my heart, I should have found it.

When such clouds of fixation clear and a light that could be called my true feelings or my original self shines through from within, the blindfold comes off and I can see, and what I need naturally appears before my eyes.

Comparisons and rankings were all power for tomorrow

The seniors learning with me in class were not only older, but they were all people walking far ahead of me in terms of patchwork skill.

When my super negative self is triggered, I end up thinking, 'Oh, I'm no good.'

But it was different.

As I kept doing it for a long time, I realized I could finish this project and that project. How amazing, how wonderful. I want to learn to sew like that too.
I was just purely happy.

Even when we started sewing the same thing together, my progress was overwhelmingly slow.
Even when we spread bedcover-sized projects on the floor to baste them together, my section was the only one with crooked stitches and it took forever to finish.

But that was fine, too.
Because I was a beginner.

I would peek at how the seniors and the teacher sewed.
Oh, so that's how you baste straight.
If you do it this way, you save time and sew faster.
Whenever I made discoveries like that, I was so happy.

When the same projects were lined up at an exhibition, you inevitably look at them with a comparative eye. That is not a bad thing.
However, what is this joy I feel?

Even though we are sewing with the same design and the same fabric, each piece is like a different personality. How fun it is.

I want to sew more. I want to know more and more techniques and try them out.
Such thoughts were overflowing.

If you keep doing what you truly love, your power will never run out.

Even when I wasn't depressed, I was always fed up with my own lethargy.
I had lived my life constantly preoccupied with the thought that I didn't want to do this or that.

However, patchwork was different.
The "I want to do this" and "I want to do that" never stopped.

Before long, I realized the importance of the fabric I used.
When I encountered beautiful fabric that made my energy surge the moment I saw it, my motivation was stirred even further.

Depending on the combination of fabrics, each other's beauty is highlighted.

How wonderful. I am so grateful to the people who make such fabrics.

The greatness of the teacher who selects such fabrics and shows us how to combine them with such outstanding sense.

I cannot forget the beauty of the stitches the teacher made for me on my very first project. Stitches that were neatly aligned even when looked at from the back.
Since then, I have been aiming for those stitches.

Anyway, I just love sewing and using various projects with my own hands.

From a certain point on,
I tried sewing simple clothes for myself to wear,
I remade jeans that my family didn't wear anymore into bags,
I took apart my own kimonos and obi that I didn't wear anymore and made them into tunics and bags,
I tried sewing bags according to my family's requests,
there was no stopping me.

Things I want to do keep popping into my head. So much so that my hands can't keep up.

I am living the days where I realize through my own experience that this is what it means to do what you love.My power never runs out. Even now, as I enter my 11th year of attending patchwork classes, the things I want to sew never run out.

I have only just reached the starting line, and everything is yet to come.

About nine years and three months after I started attending classes, I completed the textbook assignments and achieved my goal of obtaining an instructor certification from the Japan Handicraft Instructors' Association.
But I am not going to stop attending classes.

That is why I will continue to learn from my teacher.

There are people I have looked at with envious eyes until now. I used to wonder how they could work so hard and how they could go so far.

Compared to them, I wondered what was wrong with me, since I always wanted to give up so easily.

When you do what you truly love from your heart, an astonishing amount of power overflows. Difficult things are not painful. Rather, overcoming them is rewarding.
I have experienced this firsthand.

However, from the perspective of the person doing it, it was nothing special; it was just natural.

My husband, who supported and watched over me while I suffered from depression, once said:
You shouldn't even think about quitting patchwork. You love it that much. If you quit, you will fall apart.

I am simply and deeply grateful that I am allowed to do what I love.

This is what Fu is like ↓

★ Click here for my thoughts on my mother, which I reached by continuing to learn from my teacher ↓

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