Is everybody bone-weary like me?

 Hello folks.

Are you feeling it? That profound tiredness? A sense of disconnection? Disinterest? Drained?

I know I am. The constant feed of political outrage, racism, genocide, murdered women and children, entitled men doing awful things, surveillance, AI and the ramming through of data centres, cost of living pressures, housing, job security, climate catastrophe and war. All of this coming off the back of a world wide pandemic that exposed the worst of society, and opened the floodgates for many to do and say the things that history showed us would be detrimental to our social cohesion.

The things that used to bring us joy and connection are now being used to control our habits and influence our decisions. (I'm looking at you, Facebook and Instagram.) We are forced to dance like trained, chained monkeys in an effort to reach our audience. If we don't post in a manner that the tech overlords would like us to, we have zero reach. The audience that we  carefully curated due to similar interests or inspiration, mean nothing now, because it's all about monetization and data collection.

I'm trying to do the things that marketing experts tell us to do in order to make a sale, but it's disheartening to spend a full day taking new photos of things that you've spent days making, only to receive zero interest and no feedback. And then see inferior products flood the market, or read stories of creatives having their work copied and  entire website images stolen by bad faith actors with no moral compass.

I'm trying to be creative. I have periods of self doubt about why I make things, or who I'm making them for. I try to convince myself that I'm making them for me, but doubt always sneaks in. I worked out a colour palette that has given me some guiderails for starting new projects. It's one less decision I have to stress over and it seems to have opened up a vein of creativity. I've just got to keep the momentum up and finish the project, rather than putting it to the side when things go awry, as they inevitably do. I made a little felt trinket with some embroidery on it, the other week. 

Yellow felt dangle with embroidery 

I was going to attach it to a zip on my handbag, but it ended up being a bit too big, so now it just sits on my felt project board.  I've started another project making something stitched and stuffed, using fabric from my collection of vintage men's ties. It's mostly hand stitched, so it's going to be time consuming. But it's about the process, right? 

A selection of blue and yellow ties.

In an effort to see more art this year, I took myself and my daughter to the Latrobe Regional Gallery in Morwell, on Saturday just gone.  I wanted to see the Gathered Threads exhibition and also saw some absolutely mind-blowing work by Michele Beevors that was just amazing. 

Knitted giraffe skeleton by Michele Beevors.

Knitted kangaroo in motion, by Michele Beevors.

How does someone even start a project like that, let alone spend 17 years on it? Just incredible. We wandered around the rest of the gallery, looking at the other collections on show. Then it was time to find some lunch. Morwell is one of the few towns that close their shops on Saturday, so trying to find something to eat was a bit difficult. We settled on sandwiches and drinks from the local Coles supermarket, which we took to the lookout at Loy Yang Powerstation, to eat. The picnic tables were covered in a fine film of coal dust.

I have memories of visiting the powerstation and the neighbouring pulp mill as a child, on a family outing. I remember it being noisy and very smelly. Now that the pulp mill has ceased to operate, the horrible stench of wet wood is no longer prevalent.  We took some photos of the marvels of engineering, then made our way back home.

View of the decommissioned Energy Brix briquette factory in Morwell

It was nice to have a day out of the house, seeing some inspiring art and craft work and showing my daughter some of the history of Gippsland, an area I lived in for part of my childhood (though further south, towards the Bass Coast.)

Sunday was spent in the garden, digging up plants that keep taking over, pulling weeds and mulching in preparation for a long, possibly dry Summer. I was physically tired when I finished as it was getting dark, and my usual remedy for a sore body after gardening is to mindlessly scroll the socials after dinner.  But lately, that has left me with a sense of anger and unease. I made the decision to delete Bluesky from my iPad so I wouldn't be tempted to spend hours scrolling. I was going to delete Facebook, but I don't use that much anymore because it's full of intrusive ads and blokes that think their opinions are more valid than mine. It's handy to keep it to be kept up to speed on markets and exhibitions, as well as keeping a connection to the platform that I sell (!) my handmade goods on.

So I'm intending to ween myself off the socials and try to connect with the people around me more. Addiction is a hell of a thing to break, but it's not impossible. And when the worst people are profitting from SM app usage, it's an even bigger incentive to give it up.