through a scanner faintly

This week I have got no crafting done what so ever, I barely cracked a book open. The hamster wheel is spinning but the hamster has left the building. I have instead of crafting done a small amount of writing, and when not watching episodes of Veronica Mars, I have been thinking a lot about who I am, and what people think of me.

Friday night I went to dinner at a friends house, four skinny birds and me the fat hen, if you like your poultry analogies. I’m well aware of the fact and though I find it depressing that I’m the fat one I also find it more so that I feel as if I’m a lost cause, I’m the only friend that doesn’t work, two of the group are teachers, one works in an office and Heather runs the comic shop. Me I don’t do anything much or anything that is particularly worthwhile, I start things but never finish them, I’m over qualified or vastly under qualified for nearly everything.

I’m a stay at home mother, but I am far from a domestic diva or Suzie Homemaker, aside from a flare for cooking. M says I should get a job or volunteer more for H’s school, but to be honest M is much more outgoing and happy go lucky than I am, he can easily talk to anyone where I really struggle at times to talk with people that I haven’t anything remotely in common with, aside from being parents. I loath having to pick H up from school, standing there at the class room door waiting for the kids to be left free, I talk to Heather and maybe two other mothers the rest ignore me and keep to their own cliques. I hated that when I was in school and I hate it still, I’m not an “in with the in crowd” sort.

That rules out any more volunteering for school, I will bake cakes and I will help out at craft nights, as long as I don’t have to do the sticking and gluing table because there is nothing that annoys me more than gobs of glue dribbled everywhere. M got very cross with me for my refusing to help the school out on a walk up to the church in town, its not my bag, I don’t believe in church I believe in belief, anything more organized just leads to trouble. I am American and schools in the States have nothing to do with religion aside from the small mention in the Pledge of Allegiance.

Work…I don’t know what I would do I’m not qualified for much, I only did a few years of university/college before burning out and coming to England to be with M, instead of having M move to California. I have worked retail so that bit isn’t a problem, I have done cash office and been a manager for Target in California, I worked for a few years at IKEA at Giltbrook until I fell pregnant at the same time they refused me working in the actual cash office. They were for reasons known only to IKEA getting rid of all the managers that actually gave a damn about the cashiers and changing the job title so that they could give a pat on the back to the people they liked, not the ones that could actually do the job. Bitter? Moi?


Craft…I have always been artistic, and for the past two years I have been getting back the artsy side of me that I misplaced when I moved to England. I have taught myself to knit (badly), beading, stamping, card making, vintage book staining and painting, and lately I have been learning to sew with my dinky little sewing machine. Crafting has lead me to blogging and meeting with some very talented and brilliant crafters, and to the knowledge that I’m a scanner.

Scanner…I never heard the term until last summer when I did the Fairy Tale Swap and partnered with Selena (Apron thrift Girl) who is a fantastic writer blogger and crafter who also happens to have a scanner personality. A scanner is someone who isn’t one thing, we aren’t this or that, we can become intently focused on one thing until it is mastered then may never do that again, having switched on to doing something entirely different. A Jack or rather Jane of all trades, that’s me(one of my lovely skinny blonde even told me so), I’m an expert in nothing, yet I will turn my hand to anything that I’m intensely fascinated by or in love with. Then a few months, weeks or days down the line I will drop it and move onto the next thing whatever that might be.

I have always admired those people who know what they want and have the drive to be the best at one thing, I have no special one thing that I am, I’m not a photographer, a writer, a doctor, a mechanic or anything special in particular I lack that drive to be that one thing and be the best at it. I wear a lot of hats but they never seem to stay perched atop my head for very long. And I never know what the next thing is going to be, aside from getting my arse in the kitchen and finding something to make for tea.

For more information about scanners have a look at the link below.

http://www.getmotivation.com/articlelib/articles/barbara_sher_scanner.html