Vive la difference!

I think I have the total trigger to my hurt feelings.

It's when my unique qualities are not only not embraced but shunned. It's when the things I do uniquely at looked upon as the trash in the receptacle.

I have never been shy that I do some things in my beading in my own way. I try not to push my way on people. I might show them what I do, explain my I like it that way but I don't ever expect them to change their own ways.

And I am faced at this time with a dislike for the way I do things and I simply am not equipped to handle it. I embrace differences whenever I can in others.

Even when they are foreign to me, I embrace the fact, that while sharing the same love of beads, many of us have things we do to get to a similar end that is extremely different. I find it fascinating! I try to learn from it instead of digging my heels in.

I could sit with a beader who mixes all the beads in a pile on their pallet and have my neat triangle trays out and bead just fine. I couldn't trade places and bead just fine from her pallet and maybe she could not bead from mine. As long as neither of us forces the other to do that, we should be peachy. Not that I would generally even pay much attention to the way they set theirs up, but neither way is wrong, just different. I use wax to assist me in threading the needle some of the time, seldom coating the entire thread with wax, as I don't care for the feel of the thread coated. I am a tactile beader - it's all about the feel for me. Another beader can coat their thread with wax and be just thrilled with the feel of the thread. We wouldn't want to trade places but we could sit and bead just fine with our own preferred wax usage. I have needle and thread preferences. So? I feel like I'm under a microscope and I don't understand why it is like that now.

I think what has me upset is the feeling that what I do that is different is looked upon as wrong. It might be wrong for one person but it's a bunch of right with me. It brings me back to when I created my first beaded ornament and the beading mentor I had at the time looked at it as I showed it off to her with glee and curled her lip and said, "where did you get THAT?" with as much detest in her voice as she could muster. I didn't create another new ornament for over 6 months. I let her have the power.

Not much has changed for me now, 10 years later. I should not be seeking approval at this point in my craft but I still do it. It's the approval I never felt I got from my mother. I seek it elsewhere because I never felt that anything I did was good enough for her and there are times when I STILL feel that way. It was a B could have been an A. It was the perception I had and not even always the reality. I don't like being treated like I am different. I do and don't want to be "normal", whatever that is. I guess I don't mind being different but I don't want the differences to be the focus of things. I like them to be part of the bigger picture. Like I bead this way and it's the end result that is the focus of things. The biggest difference this time is that I am not letting it stop me from creating. I have grown a little.