Ginger Hendrix, Writer

How Public Rejection Sucks

A couple of months back, I put up a free class on Skillshare, a sort of beginner's guide to getting started at the sewing machine. And, you know, I did it the Ginger way. Pulled in good gob of goofiness so that I could have fun doing it. 

Then yesterday, I got my first real, nasty kind of public comment about it. And, of course, there is the thing of how we always focus on the bad reviews and not the good ones, but there's got to be more than just that too. Something about the hiding that wants to come when the bad news voices come at us. 

I've written thousands and thousands of words about this failure loop, but it never stops intriguing me. So I thought I would just go ahead and list publicly here my best rejection to date--think of this as a christmas gift to you and to me (something almost as tasty as watching ice skaters fall in competition):

Drumroll...

The former university student who wrote: "she is a dry humored left wing cocky bitch..."

And I have to say that after years of receiving public blips of out-in-the-world rejection, this one is still my absolute favorite. It's the one I prefer to quote when anybody else starts to talk about their own rejection and somehow it accidentally turns into a competition.

Score!

And why is this a Christmas post because there is not a single red and green picture included here, and also rejection doesn't seemed related to baby Jesus in the manger or blackFriday or Christmas morning breakfast casseroles in any way that we can muster the connection?

Because we offer our real stuff up to the world in moments of our souls' Christmastimes, those pull-out-from-the-routine moments when we say that other stuff doesn't matter, and that we know we're just supposed to pop a love note in the mail, or spend more money on a gift than we really should, or eat plates and plates of cheese potatoes followed by cookies with sprinkles around a folding table at our holiday office lunch without a single thought of how we will want to go to sleep by 2 and also not be able to fit into our pants tomorrow.

And this courage for jumping to spring up and dive in is a precious thing, a sort of fragile thing that we can't let the world keep us from.

So I raise a glass to you at this holiday time, as you're making your humble crafty gifts happily at night, and then wondering if they're good enough to send in the morning. And I say: stay at it. Glue and glue your heart away.  Sew and crochet and paint into the night. Rubber stamp out all of your real feelings for the people you love. 

And keep in mind always, that not a single one of your friends or relatives will call you something as mean as "dry-humored" for sending what you made.

Dear John/Downton Abbey,

I think it's time we end things. I'm sorry, but I just can't take it anymore. Just when I think I know what we're really about, everything changes.

The thing is I just don't know where we're going. I' feel like we've been through so much together. We talked Branson into wearing better clothes; we helped Mary be nice to Edith. And Cora, think of all we've done for her relationship with her mother-in-law. We've made a difference together, we really have.

And I've loved you, I mean it. When I think of the way that I waited for you to come, all those lovely meals, all the beds we've made and made and remade  together.

But, honestly, J/DA, I just can't take the ups and downs anymore. All this emotional tumult has really got me asking some hard questions, Where will be in 10 years? How will I bear your intensity?  Why can't Miss O'Brien just lighten up--shouldn't smoking help her more than it does?

But all of these ups and downs are just making me, well, anxious. I never know who you'll be when I see you next.

I'm sorry. I just can't take the pain anymore.

I'll miss you. I really will. I will miss all those forks and knives and spoons and glasses on the table, and our long walks stalking stag in the heather, the sight of Mr. Carson talking into the earpiece of the telephone. I'll miss all of it, I really will.

But it's over.

Goodbye. Think of me every time you are falsely imprisoned or meet someone who can't comb their own hair.

--ginger.

 

Dog Chat 37*

This Happened to Me. But You Weren't Here, So You Didn't Know Until Now.

I found Baby Pumpkinhead's monkey languishing on the sofa. Apparently he/she (not sure--haven't asked) was asking reflective questions like, "What will I do after college?" or possibly "Should I grow out my hair?"

The space seemed so private and sacred for monkey, that I quickly snapped the shot and left quietly. He/she may still be there thinking deep thoughts. I'm not sure.

Making This.

That huge street-sized rug that I discovered yesterdady is 1) not the size of my street, and actually not even the size of my current rug and therefore, a little too tiny-ish and 2) includes an old sheet with flecks of green, which means that I will hate it when it's done. What can I say? I got excited and didn't pay attention to the fact that I don't really like the color green. So when I said to myself, "It will just like blend in," I was, in fact, lying to myself.

I'm going to do this to it.

True story. Also I handstitched the back for my trailer quilt last night. It's flannel.

Those sheets stripes are there because I didn't have enough flannel. Even after I used all the white flannel my friend gave me, even after I ripped up the white flannel sheet I used for a paint cloth and kept mostly only the pieces with no not very much paint on them.

Postal Regurgitation: Pep Talks.

No, I'm not going to barf mail. This is the part where I tell you to go read a post I wrote a long time ago because I think it will hELP you and because Tricia asked me to give more making pep talks, which I will, but also which I have done so BEAUTIFULLY in the past (*ahem* *serious nod*) that I want you to read every last word I've said on the matter of Making as the Meat of your life and not the Mashed Potatoes.

GO here for a Making Pep Talk: Time to Grow a Pair, Ladies (a classic from 2011).

We Just Don't Know Yet. But Maybe.

I might write a tutorial about how to make those bike warmers. But only if anybody else has a secret desire to have a bike as cute as mine. It's entirely possible that everyone is satisfied with having an ugly, un-adorned-by-polyester bike and is merely satisfied seeing my bike be better than theirs. Let me know if you wanna know how to do that.

 

 *Dog Chats 1 - 36 were written only in my mind. Please don't try to search for them on the interweb because that might involve having my head www-ed and I feel sure it's a painful process even though other people have probably survived it.

I Woke Up One Morning With a Clear Desire to Change the U.S. Economy

This isn't, of course, the way that it happened.

It wasn't one morning that I had the clear desire. I've been asking questions about the Handmade Economy for some time now. And I've heard Maker Friends ask them too. These are questions I've been chewing on like jerky for a few years now.

As a Handmade Maker, how do I increase my buying power?

[Current available answer from inside the structure of our economy: "You make a lot of stuff that you can sell at a high price, then get lots of cash for it, then take that cash to another maker and buy something 'expensive' with the cash you've landed."]

What would happen if we didn't have to include cash at our party?

Don't you just mean barter?

No. Take it back. I mean something different--very similar . . so similar that if you were at the grocery store and Barter was in the vegetable aisle and you were in canned goods you might look over and say to the toddler who was sitting in your cart, "Look Honey--that's Barter over there!"

But you would be mistaken. It would be Swap. not Barter.

I have yet to prove how these things are different, so I will have to check back in with you at a later time. Suffice it to say that I am not suggesting we Barter. There is something entirely too connected to some Revised Version of the Cash Economy that hangs around the edges of the idea of Barter.

[Insert assertiin of how we all feel here, even though you have no idea how we all feel--unless of course, you believe that we all feel like you do.]

Plus we all think of it as lame and unrealistic and we don't know how to try to find people to fix our air conditioner who will want to receive 32 jars of backyard-culled real live Bee Honey in exchange for his/her fixit services. And then if we go to a place hwhere they are listed, we think, "What kind of AIR CONDITIONING REPAIRMAN is going to be want to get HONEY for their work . . .  They Must Not Be A Very Good Air Conditioning Repairman." And we decidedly slam someone who may, in fact, think like we do about not wanting cash to stand in the way of our needs.

That's as much as I'll say about that right now.

But believe me, I'm not talking about Bartering.

I'm talking about Swapping. Lots of Swapping. More Swapping. Friendlier Swapping. Easier Swapping Riskier Swapping. More Honest Swapping. The Sort of Swapping Where The People Swapping Both Feel Like They Got More Than They Deserved For What They Offered.

That Sort of Swapping.

I May Have To Have a Chip Implanted In My Head

Drop Pin from little sister: "At Shwanky Hotel" [accompanied by instagram pic of mai tai with tiny umbrella that a worker has written her first name on in glitter paint made from organic monkeys]

Drop Pin from me: "Home, Morro Bay"

This does not say enough, people. It just. doesn't. say. enough.

I need a drop pin functionality that can say:

Kitchen, Morro Bay. Still Standing Up.

Garage, Morro Bay. Trying to Find Pathway Through Garage to Washing Machine.

Garage, Morro Bay. Waiting on Washing Machine Repairman.

Bathroom, Morro Bay. Looking for Clorox Wipes.

Bathroom, Morro Bay. Wiping Toilet.

Kitchen, Morro Bay. Heating Something.

I think that there is a possibility that the only way that facebook could actually offer me this funcitonality is if I were willing to have a chip implanted in my head that a satellite could track. So I am considering it. I might have to sign a waver, of course.

In response to my recent other declaration of the insufficiencies of technology, I have recently created these Pinterest Boards:

Things I Will Do For My Children In Order To Have A Slideshow Worth Watching At Their Respective Weddings

Things Other People Are Obviously Doing To Make Me Feel Bad About Myself

Other People My Children Wish They Lived With

Possible Tattoos

Happy Truth Telling. Implants optional.