Welcome to my first blog! For those of you who don’t already know me, I have been beading since 2003. I have always had an interest in craftwork, ever since I was a very small child, and I went through a phase of playing with beads whilst I was at university, studying History. The beads provided some light relief, along with sewing, but at that time I had no idea what I was doing when it came to making jewellery. I also never imagined that quite so much could be made out of beads!
In November 2002, two years after leaving university and starting work as a management consultant, I became seriously ill. I was eventually diagnosed with ME, also known as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, and my life seemed to fall apart. I could not conceive of being ill for any length of time beyond a few days – I had in fact been struggling to keep going for months, initially working through two doses of ‘flu and then continuing in denial of a constant sort throat and extreme tiredness, until one morning my body decided it had done enough and I actually collapsed on the way into work. That of course forced me to stop and I spent a few days incapable of anything other than sleep – I actually had to be woken for meals and could barely sit up for about half an hour at a time to eat. In the early days I remember phoning into the office each week promising that I would return the following week, then it became ‘in two weeks’, then ‘definitely after Christmas’. Looking back, this was crazy since I barely had the energy to get out of bed, let alone travel into an office and carry out a job that frequently demanded working for eighteen hours a day, or more. I have never been good at ‘doing nothing’, so I fought on. I could not work and could not do anything that required any level of energy or effort, so life seemed to have lost all purpose.
Two things kept me going: ballet and beads! I have been a mad keen ballet fan forever! I was taken to my first ballet, by my Mum, when I was four years old and I started taking ballet classes when I was six. I kept this passion up all my life, still trying to fit in the odd ballet class in my lunch hour at work and I went as often as I could to watch the Royal Ballet dance in Covent Garden. When I became ill, I had several ballet tickets booked and forced myself to try and get to the performances – it became both a goal and a reward. If I managed to rest enough to save the energy to make it to the theatre, I was rewarded by escaping from my problems and enjoying the thing that I had always loved. The price was a few days in bed recovering from the total exhaustion that my efforts had produced, but well worth it! In 2003 I received a marketing brochure from GJ Beads which featured a book by Arlene Baker, ‘Beads in Bloom’. The front cover showed a three-dimensional rose made from beads. I thought this was amazing and decided I just had to learn how to make it. This happened to be a little while before my birthday, so I received the book as a birthday present that year. Being impatient, I soon forced myself to make my first flower – a tiny little thing that took me almost an hour and used up that particular days’ available energy, but it was oh so worth the effort! My passion for beading was born! I still have that flower (see the photo!) and soon added a few other early experiments to it to create a tiny bunch of flowers and leaves!
I very quickly realised that just about anything can be made out of beads. I proceeded to roblox download style=”color:#000;text-decoration:none” href=”http://clashroyaleboom.com”>clash royale acquire more books, to teach myself different techniques and straightaway began designing my own work. Beading proved to be just perfect – something I could pick up and put down, allowing me to pace myself according to my energy levels. It also gave me back a sense of achievement – I had something concrete to look at to be able to say, ‘I did that today’. Most important of all, beading has a very meditative quality and although I didn’t realise it at the time, this kind of meditation has been critical on my recovery path.
So, here I am today, just starting to follow my beading passion as a full-time career (which may or may not work out – we’ll be finding that out together here!), still passionate about ballet and on a stable recovery path from the ME. I still experience mild symptoms from time to time, but I see these as my body’s way of letting me know when I’m straying from the right path. After a lot of research and a lot of trial and error, small steps forward that were often followed by large steps back, I hope I have learnt to manage the illness so that I can lead a reasonably normal life. The past ten years have been an incredible journey, an unbelievably tough learning curve, but episode choose your story hack not the end of life after all. Just the start of a new phase…
