July ABS Carnival Blog Post - Commitment

This month’s Art Bead Scene Blog Carnival Theme is: commitment.

I wrote that sentence two weeks ago and that is as far as I got with this entry. I kept thinking about it, though, and trying to come up with something to say on the subject. And the more I thought about it, the more uncomfortable I got.

Turns out, I’m not such a big fan of that word. The “C” word. It kinda gives me the willies. So, I decided to explore that.

Why was this word bothering me so much? I don’t seem to have much of a problem with setting goals and meeting deadlines. In fact, I pride myself on getting things completed on time (or early) whenever possible

But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that those are things that I control while I tend to view “commitments” as things that are imposed on me from the outside. For example, I’m not really all that psyched about attending a certain community event (I could be home beading instead!) but I’m committed to attending it.

Ah ha! Once I realized that my inner control freak was secretly behind this, it all began to make sense. I don’t mind self-imposed commitments so much, but I chafe when they are applied from outside.

This means I say “no” to a lot of things. I hate to be over-scheduled and will sometimes need to decline things I’d actually like to do, just because I already have too much going on at a given time.

This was the case last month when the ABS Blog Carnival took an official “break” due to the Bead & Button show. The alternative, for those of us unlucky enough to miss out on the show, was to do a voluntary post about a “statement necklace.” Since this was something I’d actually been wanting to try for a while, I was really bummed when I had to bow out. I just knew I wouldn’t make the deadline what with custom wedding orders, magazine deadlines, a ton of family events (nearly everyone in my family has a June birthday – and every year we all complain about how it’s too much to cram it all into one month!).

I could’ve tried to shoehorn this project into my schedule, but I knew that was going to cause me extra anxiety AND, I never do my best work under pressure. It tends to quash my creativity and I end up with a “safe” design because I’m more concerned about meeting the deadline than about pushing the boundaries creatively.

So, I chose not to participate in the statement necklace post last month, but the idea of it continued to percolate in the back of my mind. And, once my schedule cleared up, I decided to go ahead and give it a try.

I can’t imagine having tried to create this piece under any kind of pressure. It’s random and haphazard and it was fun to kind of go nuts with it.

I think I’m going to name it “Uncommitted.”

Oh, and it was a great way to use up scraps of chain and leftover items from other projects. Thus freeing me of the commitment to clean up my space.

And that is a commitment I’m HAPPY dodge any day!

The only thing this design is missing…is an art bead. And since this is for Art Bead Scene, there is a requirement to include an art bead into the post somehow. So, in the spirit of being “uncommitted,” I dug deep into my unpublished Bead Porn stash to provide you with one, random art bead:

This lovely image transfer polymer clay cylinder is from SCDiva.

KJ