My friends and I joke that we don't have mid-life crises. We have mid-life craft crises.
Mine has cost about $3,000 since January and shows no sign of slowing down.
It's also the reason I'm stepping away from the blog and newsletter for the rest of the summer.
What a Mid-Life Craft Crisis Looks Like
Apparently I'm not the only one this has happened to — and honestly, that makes me feel a little less unhinged. Several of my friends are in their own versions of it. Some women our age buy fancy cars. We buy fancy art supplies.
Ever since I turned 50, something has cracked open in me. I cannot stop making things.
It started with watercolors. Then drawing (which I am terrible at). Then coloring books. Then scrapbooking. Then collage. Pick a medium, any medium — I want to try it. I think about color and form and pattern constantly now. I dream in compositions.
Even my YouTube algorithm has completely surrendered. Where it used to feed me writing craft and indie author talks, it now serves me an endless buffet of process videos, supply hauls, and “messy art journaling for beginners.” I am here for it.
I've already spent close to $3,000 on supplies and classes since the start of the year. I am not kidding. I am not exaggerating for effect. Three thousand actual dollars. (Maybe more, I don’t know. I’m not going to go count it all.)
My OG Crafts Have Friends Now
Writing and knitting are still my originals. Those are the crafts I've been doing for years. They're the ones I'm actually good at.
But suddenly they have a lot of company. And the company isn't gentle, polite company that waits its turn. It's the kind of company that elbows in, makes a mess, drinks all your wine, and stays late.
I want to MAKE THINGS every minute of every day. It is all-consuming.
And while I'm fully aware I am not particularly skilled at most of these new mediums yet, I know how this works. I've done it before.
- I was a terrible knitter. Then I wasn't.
- I was a terrible web developer. Then I wasn't.
- I was a terrible writer. Then I wasn't.
If I keep going — even when the results are objectively bad, even when I cannot shade a circle into a sphere to save my life — I will eventually become competent. Maybe even good. Make a lot of bad stuff first. Keep going. Eventually some of the stuff stops being bad. That's the entire process.
What This Is Really About
There's a deeper thing underneath all of this. I should probably name it.
My dad died, and I've been grieving for a while now. Grief is sneaky. It changes the way you see time. It changes the way you feel about the hours you have left in this body, on this earth. And somewhere in there, this manic, joyful, all-consuming need to make things showed up — partly as a response, I think. Partly as a way to process.
Life is fleeting. I can feel it now in a way I couldn't before.
I want to use my time. I want to leave behind things I made with my hands — paintings and sketches and knit projects and books and weird little collages — because they're physical evidence that I was here. That this short, beautiful life happened. That I noticed colors and patterns and stories and tried to put them somewhere they could outlast me. (Okay, I legit cried writing that. Sigh. Yeah. I need this.)
It sounds dramatic when I write it out. But it doesn't feel dramatic. It feels right.
What This Means for the Blog
I'm taking the rest of the summer off from the blog and the newsletter (Friday will be the last newsletter for a bit).
Not from writing fiction, which I know is what most of you come here for. I'll still be writing books. That part isn't going anywhere. But the blog, the newsletter, the constant churn of “show up online for the readers” — I need a break from that part of the equation.
I'm burned out. I won't pretend otherwise. Between losing my dad, my work at the Future Fiction Academy, the podcast and Substacks I run, the general workload, and the gravitational pull of this craft crisis, I am running on fumes. I need to step away and just make things for a while without performing it for anyone.
So I'm going to spend the summer immersed in my arts, my words, my fiber, and whatever other mediums sneak in along the way. I'm hoping it heals me a little. I'm pretty sure it will.
See You in August
I'll be back in August with things to show off — paintings, scrapbook pages, sketches, knit projects, who knows what. Hopefully I'll be re-energized and ready to talk to all of you again with a full tank.
Until then, thank you for understanding. Thank you for being here. Thank you for caring about my words and my books and my weird tangents about Japanese culture and AI and all the rest of it. It means more than you know.
I'll see you on the other side.
Anyone else in the middle of their own mid-life craft (or non-craft) crisis? I would love to hear what's eating up your time, your money, and your heart right now. Drop me a comment before I disappear into the paint and the yarn for a while.
Enjoy your summer! I had a craft phase in my 30s, and then for a while I did some sewing with my mom that had me buying tons of fabric. I have petered out of all of them by now though. Losing my stepdad 2 years ago meant I now spend so much more of my time with my mom since she’s not really ever been alone. I miss some of my alone time though because I have been used to that, and it has cut into some of my creative time and I haven’t done much writing. Which I had hoped to get back to this summer, but that hasn’t happened yet. So who knows.