The first week of May was a big one for me.
Actually, “big” might be a slightly polite word for it.
I was in Chicago for Quilt Market, introducing my first fabric collection with FreeSpirit. After more than 14 years with Moda, changing fabric companies was a major step in my career.
There had been months of designing, planning, decision-making, quilt-making, pattern-writing, booth-preparing, Lookbook-finishing, and approximately 847 other things I had apparently decided were absolutely necessary.
Very calm. Very reasonable. Very “why do I do this to myself?”
And then, finally, there I was.
New company. New fabric collection. New chapter.
It was exciting, emotional, exhausting, and absolutely worth it. What I hadn’t planned was what came afterward.
During the trip, I had already noticed some discomfort in my neck and shoulder. Nothing dramatic. The kind of thing you notice, find mildly annoying, and then continue doing whatever needs to be done.
And there was plenty that needed to be done.
There was a trade show to get through. People to meet. Luggage to carry. And eventually, the small matter of getting myself and my considerably less small suitcases from the airport back home.
By the time I arrived home, the mild discomfort was no longer quite so mild.
I had said, more than once: “After Market, I’m taking two weeks off.” My body apparently heard that, looked at my calendar, and said:
Adorable. No.
My New “Desk Allergy”
Without going into the long and rather boring medical details, the pain in my neck and shoulder developed into a nerve problem. Imagine a toothache moved into your arm, unpacked its little suitcase, and decided to stay. Very rude tenant.
And the most ridiculous part? The one thing that caused me the most pain was sitting at my desk and typing on my computer. I had developed a “desk allergy”.
Which is somewhat inconvenient when you run a creative business that lives somewhere between fabric collections, quilt patterns, newsletters, blog posts, photo editing, Lookbooks, emails, and one very large computer screen that suddenly looked at me like a personal enemy.
The desk and I are currently seeing other people….
At first, of course, I thought this would be temporary.
A few days of rest.
Some medication.
A little patience.
And then back to normal.
Except my body had apparently not received my schedule.
Days became weeks.
Weeks became months.
And the two weeks off I had casually promised myself turned into something much longer, much less glamorous, and with significantly fewer charming café moments than I had imagined.
Still Creative, Just Horizontal
Here is something I discovered about myself during those weeks:
I really cannot stop creating.
Even when I probably should.
Give me a pencil, an iPad, a stack of fabric, or apparently a slightly ridiculous construction involving pillows, cushions, and a bed table, and I will find a way.
My new bed table even came with something called a “laptop stopper.” I have smiled at that label more times than I can count.
Apparently, I had finally found the one piece of office equipment I actually needed 😂
During these past two months, I designed an entire new fabric collection.
From bed.
Not exactly the elegant studio scene one imagines. No cinematic morning light, no beautifully arranged desk, no fresh coffee sitting beside a neat pile of sketches.
More like: one designer, several pillows, one suspicious shoulder, and an iPad balanced in a way that probably made ergonomics professionals quietly leave the room.
But I found positions that worked. I improvised. I moved things around. I worked for shorter periods. I stopped when my body told me to stop.
Well.
Eventually I stopped when my body told me to stop.
We are still working on that part.😉
But the interesting thing was this: Being creative never felt like the problem.
I still had ideas. Colors were still moving around in my head. Fabrics were still having opinions. Shapes were still lining up politely, or not so politely, waiting to become something.
I wasn’t suddenly a different person because I was sick.
I was still the designer.
Still curious.
Still full of ideas.
Still me.
I just happened to be horizontal.
And Then I Started Watching Television
There was, however, another part of my new life.
I watched television.
A lot of television.
At first, this felt almost suspicious. Surely, if I was lying on the sofa anyway, I could at least make it useful?
Maybe watch an online course.
Learn something.
Use the time wisely.
Turn the sofa into a productivity opportunity with cushions.
Because apparently even resting needed a tiny improvement plan.
But by that point my arm had started hurting more and more whenever I tried to work on a laptop or hold a stylus. Eventually, there was very little I could comfortably hold at all.
Except the TV remote.
Very high-tech recovery equipment.
My new productivity tool. Very advanced.
And because I was taking strong pain medication, my brain was not exactly available for deep learning. An online course would have required attention, memory, processing, and the ability to follow a thought from one sentence to the next.
My brain looked at that proposal and quietly closed the curtains.
What I could manage was television.
Simple television.
Trivial television.
The kind of television where nobody expects you to take notes, improve yourself, or become a better version of anything by the end of episode four.
And honestly?
That was exactly what I needed.
Somewhere between one episode, another episode, and the slightly dangerous discovery that there is always a button that says “Play Next Episode,” something strange happened.
I enjoyed it.
Not because the television was so important.
Because I had nowhere else I was supposed to be.
No project hiding behind the sofa.
No course waiting to make me wiser.
No tiny productivity gremlin whispering, “Could this be turned into content?”
Just rest.
Actual, slightly boring, wonderfully unproductive rest.
Who knew.
When Doing Less Is Not the Same as Being Less
I think many of us live inside success stories.
We see the finished quilt.
The new fabric collection.
The beautiful photographs.
The business milestone.
The trip.
The book.
The achievement.
What we don’t always see is how easy it is to become so accustomed to producing, achieving, and moving on to the next thing that stopping begins to feel uncomfortable.
Almost suspicious.
Surely I should be doing something?
And I don’t think I had realized how deeply this had become part of my own rhythm.
I love my work. That is the wonderful thing. And possibly also the dangerous thing.
Nobody has to force me to come up with another idea. Nobody has to tell me to design something new. I genuinely enjoy what I do.
But perhaps that makes it even harder to notice when enough is enough.
Until your body confiscates your desk chair.
And your stylus.
And your clever plans to make sofa time educational.
Rude, but effective.
Creativity and Productivity Are Not the Same Thing
Perhaps this was the most useful discovery of these past two months.
I had always thought of my creativity and my productivity as being closely connected.
I have an idea.
I sit down.
I work.
I make something.
Next idea.
Next project.
Next thing.
But suddenly, much of that was no longer possible.
I couldn’t spend entire days at my desk.
I couldn’t work at my usual speed.
I couldn’t turn every thought into a task.
I had to stop.
Rest.
Wait.
And somehow, the ideas were still there.
Actually, there was more room for them.
I could think about things without immediately turning every thought into a project. I could follow an idea simply because it interested me. I could design when I felt like designing and stop when it became too much.
And yes, somehow, work still happened:
The strange thing is, I didn’t even realize how much I was still doing. I only noticed afterward, when I looked at what had actually happened during those nine weeks.
A new fabric collection.
A complete Lookbook.
Weekly marketing campaigns.
A sales weekend
followed by 31 fabric orders to cut, pack, invoice, and ship.
And, for two weeks, a student intern.
All while I was unable to sit at my desk and, on most days, needed very strong pain medication.
Written down like that, it sounds slightly insane.
But that is the interesting part: while I was doing it, it didn’t.
I never saw one enormous workload. I only saw the next thing.
One project.
One deadline.
One order.
One responsibility.
Each one, on its own, seemed perfectly manageable.
Apparently, my idea of “doing less” still needs a little work. 😏
Two Months I Wouldn’t Have Chosen
I am not going to tell you that these past two months were a gift. They weren’t.
There was pain. There was frustration. There were plans I had to cancel and things I couldn’t do. There were days when I was tired of being patient. I would very happily have skipped the whole experience.
But two things can be true at the same time.
I would not have chosen this experience.
And still, it gave me something.
It showed me that my creativity doesn’t disappear when I slow down.
That I can design a fabric collection without spending ten hours at my desk.
That not every empty hour needs to be filled.
That watching television for an entire afternoon does not cause Zen Chic to collapse.
Who knew?
And perhaps most importantly, I discovered how quickly we can turn the freedom to do something into the feeling that we should be doing something.
There is always another task.
Another idea.
Another project.
Another thing that could be improved.
Especially when you love what you do.
But maybe an empty afternoon doesn’t always need to become something.
Maybe sometimes it can simply remain an empty afternoon.
No assignment.
No achievement.
No elegant little learning moment.
Just a sofa, a remote control, and one very tired brain being allowed to be tired.
Very advanced stuff, apparently.
What I’d Like to Keep
I am slowly finding my way back now. Back to my work. Back to my computer. Back to a more normal daily life.
And I am very happy about that.
But I don’t want to go back to exactly the way things were before May.
I would like to keep a little bit of this unexpected pause.
I would like to remember that an afternoon does not automatically need an assignment.
That rest does not require a doctor’s note.
That watching something completely trivial is not a moral failure.
That sometimes the most useful thing you can do is absolutely nothing useful at all.
I will continue designing fabrics.
I will continue making quilts.
I will continue having far too many ideas.
I don’t think there is any danger of that changing.
I am still the designer.
Still curious.
Still full of ideas.
Still me.
But perhaps I can leave a little more space between the ideas.
And maybe the next time I say, “After this, I’m taking two weeks off,” I should actually listen to myself. Before my body books the vacation for me.