This Wednesday we had a half day at Lambrick Park due to parent/teacher interviews.  It was exactly what I needed to balance my mental health, and honestly do some very basic chores that I had fallen way behind on.  I got back to my room, took out my mountain of garbage, did my laundry, and vacuumed my floor–it was a good day.  I decided to take the rest of the day to continue with some self care, and so instead of doing

homework, or watching Netflix, I embroidered.  My friends birthday is coming up so I decided to embroider her a present, a very very cute bear with bees flying over its head. Going into this embroidery, I was feeling slightly overwhelmed, stressed, and in need of some me time.  I turned on my favourite podcast and started a new embroidery project.

I got the design idea from, you guessed it, Pinterest!  I actually ended up spending several hours doing this. It was a pretty simple design that didn’t really challenge me very much but it was exactly what I needed in order to disengage from my very busy life.  After approximately four hours, I had created a great present for my friend while allowing my body to relax and my mind to calm down.  One thing I havenoticed is that, unfortunately, I sometimes get carried away by my enthusiasm for embroidery.  I’ll start, and four hours later I’ll realize there were a million other things I was supposed to do during that time, which honestly often adds stress to my life.

The process of creating something was an amazing way to develop my own self-efficacy.  This program has been very busy, and with all the projects and assignments that we have to do I’ve often found myself feeling incapable of completing this program to a level that I’m proud of.  While embroidery doesn’t have much to do with teaching, it’s allowed me the opportunity to feel confident in my ability to complete a project, and do it well.  In the future, I think I need to set time limits for myself, or maybe just make sure that I have everything else done before I start sewing.  I’m going to continue to make note of how I’m feeling both before, and after, each session of embroidery in order to document the (hopefully) positive affect it has on my mental health.