Activity

Most of my other passions and dreams have died away over the years, since I lacked the means to pursue them. My family couldn’t afford sports lessons (I was very passionate about gymnastics) and when my parents split up, my Mom worked evenings so couldn’t take me to anything. It was a big hassle just arranging to get me home from school while she was at work, so activities were not an option. I’d been in Girl Scouts from the start, but couldn’t continue when we moved to MN because of the lack of transportation. And then my anxiety disorder reared up, and agoraphobia and panic attacks caused me to withdraw from high school and thwarted my attempt at college (I’d been looking forward to college since learning about it in kindergarten).

Reading and writing is about all I can do anymore, and all I felt I truly could do throughout life. Especially now, after Mom’s died. She was the one person who helped me through each day, because of my disability. Losing her, I can’t see that I’ll have the courage to do some of the hobbies I once did, such as my dolls. I love American Girl dolls, and years ago I created a set of identical quintuplets (the dolls inspired my writing) from five brown-eyed dolls that I customized (hand customized, this was before AG offered Create Your Own dolls). I like thinking about them as my daughters, since I’d love actual daughters but it’s rather difficult to meet guys and date when one stays in one’s apartment most of the time… I love thinking up stories about them (struggling to actually get them written now, but years ago I did manage to write a few full manuscripts and even self-published a book about them), and also really enjoyed photographing them. I once belonged to a group of teen and adult AG collectors, and we would encourage each other to explore hobbies using AG – sewing for the dolls, writing stories about our dolls, photographing them, crafting for them, etc. A couple times I competed in a photography contest and the first time I placed second. It was a lot of fun. Each week was a different theme, and we had to take the most professional-looking photo we could and then the whole community voted on them. Mom loved helping me pose the dolls, trying to make them as human-looking as possible.

I left that group after some changes made it not much fun for me, but have tried to keep up with the different things I enjoyed doing with my dolls. I’m not as creative on my own, though, and the older I get the less energy I seem to have for all of that, too. It used to be no problem carting the five around (publicly), but the past few times I tried, I felt more frustrated by what I wasn’t about to do (poses, positioning, angles, etc.) than I was enjoying the whole thing.  And most of the people who enjoyed seeing my doll photos have either passed away or aren’t in my life anymore.

One thing that I keep wanting to pursue, is an online doll clothing or clothing pattern business or something related to them. I can sew, but am not particularly good (not bad, but not a pro) and actually don’t love sewing to the point I could see myself sewing inventory. But, at the same time, I keep thinking of things I’d love to see for my dolls and think “I bet others would like it, too” and then daydream about having my own doll clothing line/ store for a while. I think what I’d really like is to get into fabric design and pattern making, with only a few sewing obligations. Mainly for my own dolls, and to show off the fabric and patterns. I don’t know if that’s feasible, though, since fabrics from those Print On Demand places are kind of pricey. I don’t know if that many doll seamstresses care enough about getting a wider range of fabrics with appropriately scaled designs, to make the effort (and investment) to learn and do all that I’d need to, worth while. It’s sort of a dying dream now, since I feel like I can’t really do both it and writing right now and have chosen to focus more on my writing. But every now and then I think it’d be fun to, once I’ve written a book, create a line of doll clothes to go with it. Or even, to somehow write a mystery focused around “my kind” of doll collecting (which is different from what I envision traditional doll collecting to be, where dolls are collected and displayed, not used as a launch pad for creative pursuits).

I guess, actually, my passion for mysteries in general could count as it’s own thing, apart from my interest in writing. I love reading them, and very much want to write them, but I also really enjoy the whole culture of traditional mysteries – the coded messages, the secret passages (if I ever am able to build my own house, or even just afford renovations of one, I would dearly love to create a hidden room or passage!), and the stereotypical costuming of capes and tweeds/ houndstooth and, of course, magnifying glasses.