Was it the manic spending of a bipolar or simply the failed plan of an unhappy creative? How I ended up with an outrageous inventory of china, tapestry fabrics, vintage sew-ons, faux gems, glass pendants, charms, and findings that now, twenty-plus years later, I am finally ready to liquidate.
Author’s note: I decided to write this when a valued customer from my Etsy store asked me to write and tell her how I ended up with so much inventory. I had memorialized the facts of the story long ago, but the underlying motivation was another thing. I knew it would take more than an email to explain…
Part One —When I Was a child
When I was a child, I didn’t know how to pretend. I didn’t understand the point of pretending and felt ridiculous when I tried to do it. My aunt usually gave me beautiful dolls at Christmas, but I never knew what to do with them. Besides, I was almost always playing outside.
Me, as a child, not knowing how to play with what I had set up.
(Photo by my father)
At age six, as I sat on the bare wood floor of my bedroom, surrounded by the shredded remains of a booklet of paper dolls someone had given me, scissors still in hand, I explained to my aghast mother standing above me that from then on, I would really prefer paper dolls!
It had occurred to me that having fun cutting out a paper dress and putting it on a paper doll that I’d also had fun cutting out would be more interesting and occupy me for much longer than the two minutes it took to put (with undoubtedly dirty fingers from playing outside) a pretty dress on a real doll that I didn’t know how to play with.
It had not occurred to me that having trouble cutting out a paper dress (with my blunt-end scissors) and getting it to stay put on (while remaining removable from) a flimsy paper doll that I’d also had trouble cutting out would be more difficult and frustrate me for much longer than the two minutes it would take to put a pretty dress on a real doll and then go play outside.
By age seven, I had abandoned both real and paper dolls. That must have been the beginning of my interest in arts and crafts… and a quirk in my character.
The single exception to my near total lack of imagination was playing Store at about age ten. I collected all sorts of little boxes and containers and arranged them neatly on my toy shelves out on the screened-in porch. I’d select some things for a pretend customer and happily count out change from my treasured Tom Thumb cash register.
I have always enjoyed collecting little things and arranging them into groups. I liked having lots of things all the same. More fun still was starting with a jumble, then sorting, counting, arranging, and packaging. Working as a shopkeeper would have been a completely logical career choice.
So, how did I end up as a computer programmer twenty-five years later, in an office with no outside awareness, miserable in a male-dominated field? That remains one of life’s perversities—although I was predictably decent at database design—but it should be no surprise that when I began to fall apart, I found comfort in collecting things…