Finding Balance and Living Intentionally

Podcast Show Notes

• Making Time: Always too busy for your creative projects? Learn new ways to manage your energy and do more of what you care about. Subscribe to Sarai’s Substack.


• The Perfectionist's Guide to Losing Control by Katherine Schafler.


• The Gifts of Imperfection by Brené Brown.


• The Isolation Journals by Sulika Jaouad

Podcast Transcript

Sarai
I'm Sarai.

Sarai
And I'm Haley. And this is Seamwork Radio. Hey, everyone. Today, I have something special to share with you: a podcast interview I did with Tina of In Kinship, a podcast for makers who crave a vibrant life on their own terms. So we had a terrific conversation and really got deep on intentionality in sewing, making, and life, and I hope you enjoy it.

Tina
You are listening to the In Kinship podcast. A podcast for makers who crave a vibrant life on their own terms. I'm your host, Tina Vandenberg. This is a live show, so at the end of the show, we're going to have an opportunity to ask questions, comment, and talk with Sarai if you'd like to, which leads me to the guest I have today is Sarai Mitnick from Seamwork. She also has a Substack that I thoroughly enjoy called Making Time. All of those links will be in the show notes.

Sarai, it's wonderful to have you here.

Sarai
Thank you for having me. I'm really excited to be here.

Tina
Yay. I want to start this out. If you were on early to the call, you know that I have a little fan girlness when it comes to Sarai because she was one of the first people that I stumbled across doing indie sewing, pattern work, or even blogging, 16 years ago when I started sewing clothing.

In fact, I have sewn several of her patterns. It was Colette patterns before Seamwork was even a thing. I also devoured her book the moment it was available, the Colette Sewing Handbook. Is that correct?

Sarai
That's right, yeah.

Tina
Yeah. Vintage designs have always been an inspiration to me. I love the '50s look, and you certainly move into then out of that type of style. I love that book.

I remember distinctly, I was at Christmas with my family, and I have this book, and it's got this very vintage look to it, and it's sewing, all of which is in the non-sewing world, it feels antiquated, I guess, to other people.

My sister-in-law is fully stuck in the '80s still. If she could do the tall bang, she would do the tall bang still.

She's listening to the '80s. Now she can listen to it on, I don't know, some satellite radio. But at the time, she would wait for the '80s band to come on, and she’s like, “What are you doing?” Because you would never sew anything either. So I got a lot of family ridicule for that book. But it hit my soul so deeply. And it hit my soul not only as somebody who was just beginning to sew clothing, but also as somebody who... I was in my late 20s, and I was really embracing the idea that joy could be found in simple ways.

I had just read the book Julie and Julia, My timeline might be a little scary here, but I had read the book Julie and Julia by Julie Powell, and I was so taken by the fact that somebody could find purpose and meaning in their life just by giving themselves a project.

I was exploring that. I was exploring food in my life. I was exploring sustainability in my life. Then your book came out and your take on intentionality in your making and your take on mindfulness just hit me in all the right spots. And it is something that I can attribute to being the gateway for my making journey.

In fact, I was part of... ages ago, I don't even know what it was called, but I think you did it. I think they were blog post. You did a blog post on designing your own wardrobe, which is probably the precursor to the program that you have now in Seamwork, I guess.

Sarai
Yeah, it was called Wardrobe Architect.

Tina
It was it, yes. I would devour it. In fact, I did it several years in a row. This is a while ago. I was like, I saved the blog post and I would go back and I would read them and do it. The mindfulness of it really hit me.

I just wanted to say on behalf of everybody else who feels the same way I do, and I know there's a ton of us, thank you for the work that you've done in the world.

Sarai
Awwl, thank you so much. That's awesome to hear. I love hearing your story. I feel like all of it really resonated with me, especially what you said about having a project and how important that is to our lives. I think having a creative project to work on can add so much dimension and meaning to anyone's life, whether that is a big project, like running a business or a hobby. I think it really is something that is missing from a lot of people's lives these days.

Tina
Yeah, I agree. It just allows for that zing of excitement that comes from, I just did this thing.

Sarai
Look what I've discovered or look what I found.

Tina
I can imagine it would be very similar on a smaller scale to land exploration.

Sarai, will you share with us what prompted you, 15-ish years ago, to begin Colette patterns? Paint the picture of where you were and what made you take the leap to creating this business.

Sarai
I was living in the Bay Area at the time, so it was before I moved to Oregon, and I was working in in the tech industry. I was working in a large company, and it was supposed to be my dream job. It was what I wanted to do. It was shortly after grad school. It was the company I really, really wanted to work for.

In a lot of ways, it was a great career with really smart people that I enjoyed quite a bit. But I was getting really burned out on working for a large business and all of the bureaucracy around that, I really felt like I had this lunch with a friend of mine who also worked there. I'm sure he wouldn't even remember this, but he said, “When you work in a place like this, you're having an impact on so many lives because it's such a large company, but you're having a very, very tiny, tiny impact.”

Somebody who's, for example, a teacher or a social worker, they have a huge impact on a smaller number of lives. It's really about what gives you the most meaning. For me, I realized that I would prefer to have a larger impact on a smaller number of lives, and that I would feel more connected to people that way.

That was one impetus. Then the other thing is that I've just always loved sewing. I'm really To this day, even 15 years later, even doing it day in, day out, talking about it, writing about it, thinking about it, looking at other people's work, it's still really invigorating to me, and I'm still really passionate about it.

I just love it. I just think it's such an amazing hobby allows so much learning and growth and fun and visual stimulation. I just love everything about it.

I've been interested sewing since I was a teenager, and it really had a big impact on my life. And so at the time, there was this resurgence of craft happening. There were things in San Francisco, in the Bay Area, at least, there was the maker fair going on, and people were getting really into Etsy, and knitting was big. There was an online knitting magazine called Knitty that I loved, and I thought it would be so cool to create sewing patterns that are different from what's out there already, because I think a lot of people would be really into sewing if they had a way to learn it.

But many of us don't have a teacher.

We don't necessarily have a mother or a grandmother who can teach us or somebody else in the family who can teach us. A lot of people are trying to learn through patterns, but the patterns aren't necessarily teaching instruments. They were really designed for people who already knew how to sew.

I thought, how about we create something, or I create something that can help people learn as they go. It has more detailed instructions, really is a learning experience at the same time.

That was my impetus to start Colette patterns, and we started with printed patterns. I had five designs to begin with, which I spent about a year developing. Then I moved to Oregon and quit my job and launched the business. That's the origin story.

Tina
I love that. You know what? You have very much achieved what you're looking for, at least in this life.

Certainly, when I first found you, it was when I was just a burgeoning garment sewist. So your book, in particular, and your patterns, I guess as well, because I did so several of your patterns, really taught me a lot about the actual act of sewing.

Not only, like I said, what I talked about earlier, that more intentionality and the mindfulness, that it also just really connected with me on, but also just the, here's how to put a facing in. Or here’s are why you want a facing in, all of that. And so that is impressive.

Throughout the years, as your business has changed, I would say, as an outsider, looking in quite a lot from what it began as to what it is now. I wonder, is the business that you have now, is it what you envisioned or dreamed of 15 years ago, or is it different?

Sarai
That's a great question. No, it's not really what I imagined, but I don't think I had a really clear vision of what I wanted to do with the business.

I remember I read this book that was about starting a business before I began that was written by these two ladies, and I can't remember the name of it, but it talked about how you should write down your goals and write down a little business plan and all of that stuff. I remember I had this little moleskine notebook, and What did I want? What did I want out of this business?

At the time, it was really like, I'd like to be able to support myself. I'd like to have some freedom in my life and be able to go for walks in the middle of the day sometimes. It was things like that. I think about that a lot now because as we've built the business, it can be very easy to get into this mindset of, Oh, we need to grow. We need to do this. We need to do that. Really, coming back to my original intention was to have a more creative and fulfilling life and to still have some freedom and still have some time to do things, like take my dog for a walk in the middle of the day.

I try to remember that that is a really key component of having a business for me is just the life that I want as well.

Now that I have employees, making sure that they also have that balance in their life. In a way, yes, because those values are still there, but in a way, no, because I didn't really have much vision when I started out as far as what the business itself would look like.

Tina
I have two questions fighting in my head to get out of my mouth. They're in different directions. I'm going to start with that idea of recalibrating back to what it is that you want. It feels like something that I explore a lot in my life as well in this idea of as makers, I'm going to build this up here for a bit, but as makers, we can continually be grabbing onto all the new things we want to make. I want to make this, this, and this, and this. I want to do this, this, and this, and this.

Then pretty soon, your to-do list has become really large. I know it's a hobby to-do list, but for me, it has weight to it still. I think that I also just bought property. People in the podcast are like, yes, we know. But I bought property a few months ago, and I have a million projects to work on it with. I moved this little house on wheels onto it. There's no yard yet. So I'm trying to figure out where the yard is going to go, and I put in some apple trees and things like this.

I start to get this pressure of like, I want to get all these things done. I want to have it all finished, and I want to get moving on it. Then if I can step back and remember like, All right, hold on. How do I want to feel in my life? How did I want this to feel? It feels like that recalibration can really inform everything that we do, including what projects we take on.

Sarai
Yeah, absolutely. I think that's a lesson that I have to learn over and over and over again. I'm sure I will learn it again in the future.

But I do feel like having that base to return to of how you want feel in your life and how you want to approach your life and, really your values, I think, provides a home base to make sure that you are living in the way that you really want to live. I think that's what intentionality means to me.

Tina
Yeah. Let's shift for a moment to Making Time, the writing that you do as a personal project on Substack. I know that you explore intentionality and mindfulness quite often, and joy, something that I also explore in this podcast.

I have certain ways that I make sure that I feel grounded in my day, and then I make sure that I'm bringing in as much joy as I can, because I have a belief that we as humans have more autonomy over how we feel or how we experience life than we maybe give ourselves credit for sometimes. 

I wonder how you approach that feeling of ease and joyfulness, what tools you have in place to bring you a sense of groundedness or whatever your sense of feeling is.

I wonder if you could share that with us today.

Sarai
Yeah, I have quite a few. I think for me personally, I think some of this comes down to personality type, and things that work for one person might not be necessary or might not work for another person.

But for me, my personality is a little bit obsessive. I would say I'm an ambitious person, but also a very enthusiastic person. I get super excited about things, and I love trying new things. I'm very much into novelty, I would say, like trying something new, but then there are those threads throughout my life that I really stick to at the same time.

I just am a more, more, more person, naturally, I would say. I have a tendency to, like you were talking about before, Tina, collecting to-dos, collecting hobbies, just keep piling on more and more and more and more stuff. I do it because I'm really genuinely excited to do it.

I'm really passionate about it, and I have this just enthusiasm. For me, it can be dangerous because it can lead to burnout. It can lead to just feeling like all of these things that I've piled on my plate are now obligations. They're things that I should be doing, that I promised myself I I would do. Oh, I was so excited about this a week ago. Why can't I make it happen? What's wrong with me?

It leads to all that self-taught. Over time, I've really discovered that I have to put boundaries in place for myself, and I have to have rituals. I have to have things that I do on a day-to-day basis to ground myself and to make sure that I'm not... both that I'm not over-committing because I have these things literally in my calendar in my day that I have committed to myself that I will do in order to stay centered and calm.

But also that will just bring peace of mind and remind me to be joyful in my life because it's so easy to miss that. It's so easy to forget that I have all of this amazing stuff, all of these amazing people around me, my animals, my home, everything that I've been really lucky and privileged to have.

It's really easy to forget about that. It's that two-pronged thing of actually having those boundaries in place, but then also having the tools to continually remember to live life and just be happy.

That’s a long preamble, but the actual things that I do, some of the things that I do. When I get up in the morning, I like to sit and read for a little while and just have at least 30, 40 minutes to just sit there and read a book and have coffee.

That's how I start my day, every day. Then this can change a little bit with the seasons, but after that, I meditate every day, just 10 or 15 minutes. It's not a long meditation, but I just do a very simple follow-the-breath type meditation.

Sometimes I do other exercises and things like that. I like the app Insight Timer, which has a lot of guided meditation. So occasionally, I will do a guided meditation. I usually don't do a guided meditation, but sometimes I do, depending on how I feel.

Then I get ready for my day, shower and all that, and then play with my dog, we go outside. This is in detail, but just to paint the picture of a very quiet morning. I try to really use that time to just think and be and enjoy life for a little while.

Then after that, I get to work. I start by planning my day. Every day, I sit down and I plan out my entire day.

I have something on my calendar that I call, I picked this up from some business guru, but my perfect week. It has everything mapped out. In an ideal world, this is what my week would look like, and that's actually on a calendar, so I can do that.

I really try to have large chunks of time in my day. In the past, I've had times where my calendar is very much divided up into these little meeting here, meeting there, all these little things. And by the end of the day, I'm like, “What did I do today?”

So I try to have large chunks of time to work on projects and really get deep into them because that's one thing that really brings me joy is getting into that flow state with my work. Because I am very passionate about my work. I really love what I do at work, and it's also another thing that really creatively fulfills me. But if I don't have those big chunks of time dedicated to it, it's not as easy to get into that flow state.

I try to structure my work day that way. Then at five o'clock each day, I have a little closing ritual for my day where I review my day and what were the good things that happened today.

I list three things that happened that day that were good.

Then I work out almost every day after work, which I love. I really love to get some exercise after work. I should also mention, in the middle of the day, I take an hour to take my dog for a walk.

Back to that original modest vision. Lucy and I go for a walk every day after lunch, which is awesome. We live in the country, and it's just gorgeous, especially this time of year in June. It's just so beautiful.

That's a really great opportunity for me to step away from whatever I'm doing and appreciate the natural world. We usually walk down to... There's a creek. We at the top of the hill. We walk down to the creek at the bottom, and she splashes around in the water. It's just beautiful. That's in the middle of the day.

Then after work, I usually, after dinner and making dinner and all that stuff, sometimes I'll do yoga after work and just chill out, read a book, sit on the porch, whatever it is. My partner, my husband, works in the business with me. He does a lot of our back-end and web development.

We very strict boundaries in place about work in home. I work 9:00 to 5:00. I don't usually work beyond that. We don't talk about work outside of work hours. That's really important for us, but we have that unusual thing where we work together, so it's necessary.

Tina
I think that's really impressive because... I've had a lot of different work that I've done, but I've often had my own business, and I've often worked from home. It can be really difficult to delineate between working hours and non-working hours.

Even if I find myself in the evening, if I'm answering work questions or I'm checking my work email, energetically, it feels like I'm on that entire time. Even I've only actually spent 15, 20 minutes doing it.

I think there's such a value as I also explore my own life and what brings me peace, what brings me joy, what makes me the happiest. It's like, I need that delineation. I think that Two things here. I think that ritual that you do at the end of your day is really smart because it gives you that ability to delineate between the work day and the non-work day.

I think that having the boundaries around that with your coworker husband is really smart as well. I think it falls back to that idea of how much ease can come when we're actually just doing one thing.

Sarai
Yeah, I agree. I will say, actually, the closing ritual is something I've implemented more recently, but for the last several years, I would work out right after I finished my workday.

There's something about that, about physical activity, that I think is so important for my mental health, at least. There's a really great book I think I've probably recommended on the podcast before, called Burnout.

One of the most important ideas in that book is that we have this natural stress cycle in our bodies, where when something stresses us out or when we have that stress response, the way we've evolved is that our bodies want to do something physical to release that stress.

If you can do something physical, like running or lifting weights, which is what I usually do after work, then it tells your body that it's safe to relax now, that you've addressed whatever the issue was, you ran away from the tiger or whatever it is, and you're okay now.

I think stress can be good. I don't think stress needs to necesSaraily be a bad thing. We have natural stress, I think, throughout our day, and especially in our work lives for many of us and for a lot of us in our family lives.

I think having that time to be physically active and physically release the stress in my body is really important to me.

Tina
Yeah. I've been doing a lot research, personally, on nervous system healing. A lot of the ways that we signal safety to our bodies is through motion, shaking is an idea, too, or just physically getting out and exerting our bodies.

So that idea, and then listening to you as you lay out your structure for your day, which probably if you hit those days, you feel pretty satisfied, I would guess, with the day. You feel at ease with this day was a good day, that feeling. None of those were huge insurmountable mountains to climb towards happiness or joy. They are in the moment because you have to make a choice to read your book and drink your coffee rather than check your email right away. You have to make those individual choices. But I am always struck by how it's just small things, really, that we continually promise to do for ourselves that can bring so much reward into our lives.

Sarai
Yeah, they are small things, but this doesn't necessarily mean they're easy, I think. They seem easy when you're just thinking about them from an intellectual perspective. What's easier than drinking coffee and reading a book first thing in the morning. That sounds pretty easy.

But there are a lot of messages, internal and external, and a lot of pressures that can take you away from those really, really simple things. It's It's simple, but it's not necessarily always easy.

For me, it's very easy to fall off the train if I'm not careful.

That's another component is just having that commitment to myself and enough care for myself that I'm willing to forego things that seem urgent sometimes in order to prioritize long-term viability. That's a way I try to think about it.

But again, I'm far from perfect on this. There are times where things don't go right, and there are times where I just have to come back to it, what we were talking about before about reorienting. I think that's just natural. That's something I think we all go through.

Tina
I wouldn't necessarily define myself as a perfectionist, but I do get really hard on myself when I don't follow through on my commitments to myself. I don't know if this is aging.

I once had this woman's circle, and I was in my mid-30s at the time, and the woman that said this was in her mid-40s, she was like, Oh, yeah, that's because you're in your 30s. And I was like, What? That's so insulting. We're just in this space because we're this age.

And then now that I'm in my 40s, I'm like, Is this because I'm in my 40s? How can this be?

But I have found that my biggest lessons of the biggest things that I'm working through right now in my own growth is just allowing it to be. A morning ritual is really important to me as well. For the longest time I had it, I can be really nerdy. I had the spreadsheet, and I had it all listed out. This is what that perfect week would look like. This is what the perfect day would look like. Then I finally realized I was like, I had so much pressure on myself to achieve this, and it became...I also had this rebellious nature that's like, Let's not do that. Let's do this instead.

Where I finally decided, which I think might be the key to life, I'm not sure, to just allow myself to be who I am. Rather than having a morning ritual that is like, I do this for 10 minutes, I do that for 20, I do this for 30, have it be open and decide, I'm going to commit to doing a morning ritual, I get to pick on that day what that looks like, and just allowing myself to work with my own personality and what really works for me so that I don't instigate that little rebellious nature of mine.

I'll be like, “Oh, don't put me in this little box because I'm going to do it how I want to.” But I just keep coming back to the idea that there's so much ease that comes from just allowing ourselves to be who we are.

Sarai
Yeah. I think a lot of it is also experimentation and figuring out what works for you and being willing to change if it's not working for you. A lot of the things that I've tried have just been, like you're saying, maybe they were too rigid. Maybe they just made me feel like it was one more thing to do, one more thing on my to-do list. The things that I do now, at least at this moment, don't feel that way. That might change over time. I think a lot of it is just being willing to experiment a little bit and also listen to yourself and how you're feeling, which is not always something I've been good at.

That's another thing that I feel like I have to practice is just how do I actually feel, not how I wish that I felt right now.

Tina
Right. Allowing that to be...

Sarai
Yeah.

Tina
Is this something that interests you? Do you ever look at your human design or astrology? Do you ever add any of that information into the fact-finding about yourself?

Sarai
No, I don't really know very much about that. I have been learning a little bit about the Enneagram lately, which I think is really interesting and fun to learn about.

I learned that I'm a three, which is the ambitious person, I guess. I'm reading a book about it, so I'm trying to learn a little bit about it just because I think it's really fun.

I think it's really interesting to learn about personality types, even if I don't completely buy into it, just because it gives you a frame to think about things and talk about things and explore yourself and explore your relationships with other people.

That's the one a little bit more woo thing that I am into right now, but I don't really do a lot of that.

Tina
I find it fascinating for that same reason. I think our reaction to what we read is really telling. Are we really grounded in like, “What? No, that's totally not me.” Or for me, when I did my Enneagram, probably eight or nine years ago, I don't remember exactly what it said. I think it was a three as well.

But it said it was highlighting when I'm in a dysregulation state or when I'm most vulnerable to... Dysregulation is probably the best word. It was something along the lines of not feeling worthy of love, something like that. I immediately was like, No. What is this even? I was so angry that I actually might have thrown the book because I think I had a book across the room.

Then I'm like, Okay. If my reaction is going to be so visceral and so strong to this, maybe there's something there for me to explore. Until It actually was the beginning of a really deep healing that I had. In some ways, I didn't even know that I had as a wound. That was really pivotal for me. I still hate Enneagram because it really still makes me angry that that's what it told me.

But I do find it fascinating, and I'm really into human design. Again, that is like the be all, end all, like this is who you are and who you need to now conform to be. But as in, for me, there's been so many areas where when I might find insight based on my own reaction, I don't know why we often need this, but I often find permission in it to be myself. Be like, “Oh, yeah, that is who I am.” Maybe it was something that I found really frustrating, but now it's like, “Oh, it's okay. This is who it's supposed to be.”

Sarai
Yeah, that's very true. I read a really great book recently that I had a similar reaction to, which is The Perfectionist's Guide to Losing Control by Katherine Schafer, I think her name is. It's about perfectionism. There was a time where I definitely did not consider myself a perfectionist, and it was actually reading Brené Brown's The Gifts of Imperfection that made me realize, “Oh, maybe I am.”

Then this book was even more, I think illuminating because she talks about different kinds of perfectionists. I discovered that I am what she refers to as a messy perfectionist, which is that I am highly organized but also messy. If you could see around me right now, there's sewing stuff everywhere. It's a little bit physically chaotic, but I'm also extremely organized at the same time.

It seems like such a contradiction, but it's true. I'm the person who just, like I was saying before, is a more, more, more person. I tend to just accumulate a lot of things to do and a lot of hobbies and all kinds of stuff. I really saw myself in characterization in that book.

But another really important point she makes is that if you are a perfectionist of one kind or another, that it's okay. It's okay to be that way.

You don't have to change yourself. That it's actually in many ways, a superpower. Yes, it has some drawbacks to it, but any strength you have has drawbacks to it. Learning that it's okay to embrace the way you are and the things that make you you, as long as you're not harming yourself or harming other people, and finding a healthy way to do it, finding the way for you that feels good and feels healthy, is really what it's all about.

That was a real eye-opener for me about self-acceptance and learning that I don't have to conform to a certain type of person that I might dream of being that's Zen all the time and isn't quite so harried or ambitious or whatever it is that I wish was different. That was really eye-opening for me.

Tina
Yeah. In that same women's group That I mentioned earlier, there was a good friend of mine, and she always used to say, which also used to irritate me. She always used to say, “Too much of a good thing is not a good thing.” And I'm like, “Oh, shut up.” You know what? And now I'm like, “Wow, that was really nice.”

I'm going to have dinner with her tonight, so I'm going to have to tell her I'm going to apologize for the internal message I had when she used to say that.

Sarai
That's funny.

Tina
Yeah. Let's bring it back to making for a minute. What are you excited to work on now as far as a personal project? Let's just leave it at that. What are you excited to work on right now?

Sarai
As far as hobby projects and things like that.

Sarai
Oh, so many things.

Like I said, I'm surrounded by the chaos of all my making right now. So as far as sewing stuff goes, I'm working on some of our upcoming patterns right now, just making things for myself and for videos.

And I'm very excited about that at the moment because I'm really diving into details and details that I can add to things, which is really, really fun for me. I have a lot of older sewing books from the '80s and whatnot that have a lot of cool heirloom details, so I'm learning a bit about that.

The other day, I was planning out a couple of these projects, and it was a Saturday, and I was like, I'm going to go decide what I'm going to make and cut them out. I ended up spending two hours just looking through these books and trying to figure out exactly what I wanted to make. That's something I'm really excited about right now.

Then other personal projects, my garden, it's June, so I'm very immersed in gardening right now. And growing vegetables and some flowers, but a lot of vegetables. That's taking up a lot of my time right now.

Making Time, which is the Substack newsletter you mentioned earlier, I'm trying to spend a little bit more time on that. That's a little bit... I try not to be too strict with myself about writing for that these days.

When I started, I was like, I'm going to write every week, and I'm going to have this schedule. It just became a little bit... I was being a little bit too strict with myself. It's really That's just my fun place to write about anything that's interesting to me right now, ideas that have come to me from books I'm reading or just things that I see reflected in my life. I try to leave that space a little bit more open. I share links to really interesting things I've read online, that sort of thing.

It's a fun little side project and definitely a bit of a creative outlet for me as well.

Tina
Yeah. Well, it resonates for me deeply, and I look forward to them every time they come up. I think I love it that you're giving yourself grace around it because I think that probably all of us can relate to this.

When you're a business owner as well, we put so much pressure on having to do things on a certain schedule or you've put out a schedule, so now you have to maintain that schedule rather than just be like, This no longer works. Now this is going to work. I think that bit of grace, when you're in the public eye, I think that having a little bit of grace for yourself and sharing it allows all the rest of us to set permission, right?

Sarai
Yeah. I think, at least for me, in having a business, I do feel definitely a sense of commitment to everything that I'm doing there as far as writing and creating videos and all the things that we're doing at Seamwork and my commitments to the other people who work there.

It's nice to have, when it comes to my hobbies, to things outside of work, it's nice to have a place to come where it's what I feel like doing.

Tina
Yeah. Sarai, before we open this up to any questions our guests today might have, I have a question I love to ask all of my guests on the podcast.

My question is, what do you think people “should", it's, of course, a complicated word, but what do you think people should know deep in their hearts, or you wish that they knew deep in their hearts that maybe they don't?

Sarai
This might sound a little bit of a downer, but for me, I think one thing that is important to remember is that life is limited and that life is short, and we are all going to die at some point. I think that's something that people have a natural resistance to, of course.

We forget that life is so limited and that this day is the only day like it that you're going to have. To make the most of, and it sounds like a cliché, but just to make the most of each day, each moment, and especially each moment you have with the people that you love.

I think just remembering, occasionally reflecting on the limited time we all have on Earth and that we don't know how long that time is going to be. For me, it's grounding and brings me back to what's important in my life.

It's hard to think about. It's not pleasant to think about. Before we started recording, I mentioned that I just read a book by Sulika Juaad. I hope I'm pronouncing her name right. She also has a wonderful Substack newsletter called The Isolation Journals. She battled with leukemia in her 20s and now, and just finished her memoir.

It just really made me think about the times in my life where I've had to face challenging health circumstances, either for myself or somebody else, or had to face mortality.

In her memoir, there's just something so beautiful and so enlightening about seeing somebody come through that and their perspective on the world afterwards. To me, that's just something that I try to keep in mind, and it helps me to be more connected and to remember to show love to other people as much as I possibly can.

I think if we all remembered that, we might be a little kinder to each other.

Tina
Yeah, it's beautiful. Thank you.

Sarai
Thanks for asking. It's a great question.

Tina
Yeah. So any of you who are here with us live today, if you'd like to talk with Sarai or share something or ask a question, we would love to chat with you. Just raise your hand, if you will. I'll keep my eye out for some raised hands, but I did want to share something that made me, I guess, just the invigoration that can come with facing the mortality of somebody that you love or facing her own mortality.

I have a man that I dated for most of my 20s, and he passed away last year, which was incredibly sad. But his younger sister, who is a decade younger than him, she and I still keep in touch. She has started a new project to go and see the world because she's like, My older brother was 10 years older than me, and he passed away. It just really hit her as if she only had 10 more years, what would she do with it? How would she have wanted to spend those 10 years? I think that for her, it invigorated her to do this project that she hadn't found the energy or the time to get off the ground.

She's like, “What if I only had 10 more years.” She's off and running. I just think that's beautiful. My dad is also often, he's on the kidney transplant list, and he's often in a state of emergency. I would not wish that on him by any means, but every time I go down and I spend time with him in the hospital, the gift of it, I guess, is it gives me this moment to recalibrate my life and be like, All right, what matters here? What doesn't?

Because I just want to call the things that don't really matter towards what I in life.

Sarai
Yeah, definitely. That experience of being close to someone who is in danger in that way can be so incredibly difficult. It's the most difficult thing that we can deal with.

But at the same time, there's not really a silver lining to it. I don't want to say that. It's just something we all have to deal with in life, I think. If you haven't had to deal with it yet, you will at some point. I think there is something very profound in it and very connecting to other people.

Tina
Yes. It has the opportunity to burn away, like I said, the ways that we're just filling our time, the ways that we're just walking through life not awake, I guess.

Sarai
Yeah. I do wonder sometimes. I had an experience. When I was young, when I was 12 years old, I had a very serious surgery and spent some time in the hospital. I look back on that and I sometimes wonder if the pain I experienced at a young age and relearning how to walk and doing some of these things that put me... I wasn't in danger of dying or anything, but just dealing with that physical limitation and that physical difficulty, I do wonder if that had some effect on my outlook on life later and feeling a little bit more risk-tolerant than a lot of people I know and willing to do things that maybe a lot of people aren't so comfortable with. Other people have different life circumstances and different approaches to life naturally, so I don't want to attribute it to only that, but I do wonder about that.

Tina
I think those experiences that we have in life are still pivotal. When I was in my young years and in early '20s, I was in three different house fires. And so I don't have any belongings from before '25. They were horrific in their own ways.

But I also, I love to cull what I have. I love to go through and shift things and only keep what's really important to me. And I don't have that same, for better or worse, I guess. I don't have that same hang on to things to me. And I wondered if that, because I lost everything several times I wonder if that influenced that, right? I know what it feels like to not have anything, and it's okay.

Sarai
Yeah.

Tina
For me.

Sarai
Yeah, you really don't know where painful experiences are going to take you. When they're happening, they feel so horrible, and they are. But at the same time, without them, you have to wonder what a person you'd be without pain in your life.

Tina
Anyone in our audience want to jump in? I know we've gone into a deep conversation. You're welcome to join in that conversation if you'd like, or if you want to share anything that you're making or any thoughts that came up for you during our conversation today. Feel free to do that.

Podcast Listener
Yes. I joined you last week at the end, and I just enjoyed it so much. And this is an amazing podcast. And Sarai, I follow you also and appreciate you and I'm learning about Tina now, but this has been an amazing... It's more like church than it is like a podcast. Before you all said it about the Enneagram, and I'm an Episcopalian, and there's a lady in our diocese that had a twelve-week class on Enneagram using Suzanne Stabiel's work.

If you look it up, it's called Life in the Trinity, and She's out of Dallas, but she has her curriculum. So we had a 12-week curriculum. I took it in the fall with my sister from Texas, and I'm in Illinois now with my kids. Then we took it again in the spring. So I had that. And it's not the gospel, but it is helpful. And I think it was interesting that I lost my job in December. Anyway, I was 64, and I got let go from being a special Ed teacher, and it was traumatic.

But then in the exit interview, I said, “Well, I'm a strong believer in providence.” My daughter said, Mom, just come live with me. They were in North Carolina, and we moved all across the state to Illinois, and my other two daughters came here, too.

So we had a house full of my daughters and my precious son-in-law. But anyway, the first few weeks after that enneagram, I thought to myself that God was saying, “You might could try loving again.” Or is that romantic? Because I divorced 16 years ago, mentally 49-year marriage, mentally unhealthy husband who's totally out of the picture My kids and I are just really close because of that.

I hadn't gone to coffee with a man in 16 years. Then I met this really nice man at the YMCA. He's eight years older, but we talk, and he's Catholic, and I'm Episcopalian, and I love religion stuff. Anyway, it's just been really sweet. I don't want to get married. I don't want to go live with him, but it's enriched my life. As many other things have.

But I told him when I first met him in November, I said, If you'll do the Enneagram. He had been during 12 weeks of the Enneagram.

He's an eight, and he's a very business-like, and he was like, he did it for me, but he held in there. My kids had done it, and they knew all about it. They talked, Brené Brown and the Enneagram, and I thought, What are you all talking about?

Anyway, it is a tool that is interesting and helpful. But I just appreciate all of your wonderful, profound comments, and I agree about the deaths, even the divorce deaths, and it had to happen. I did all I could for 29 years, and that was it. We call it independent state.

My middle child took his life when he was 24 and a half, and that was his...he made that commitment, and We talked about it, and he talked to his sisters, and we couldn't change his mind. So he's just right over there. He's just over the veil. But I'm not going to let myself be obsessed because that's what he did, what he wanted to do. He was an adult, whatever. So we all have these things, and it's just beautiful to visit with you lovely ladies about all these things.

Tina
Yeah, it's nice to hear from you.

Sarai
Thank you for sharing. I’m trying to get my husband to do the Enneagram. There's like an online 30-minute quiz you can do that helps you uncover which one you are. So I told him I would send it to him today. If nothing else, it's just a way to have a conversation about your personality and who you are. There's harm in it.

Tina
Super fun.

Podcast Listener

I don't think men like it very much of it.

Sarai
No. Especially skeptical men.

Tina
Well, thank you for joining us. It's so nice to have you here.

Podcast Listener
But I also want to say that just what you all were talking about, planning your day and making your day count. And Bill and I, my boyfriend and I just had this conversation last night because he's very much, if he gets his to-do list done, he's been retired 12 years, but it's got to be more than about the to-do list, and he sees that. But anyway, I struggle with all the things that you all do. Thank you for this, though. It's been great.

Tina
Thank you. Anyone else want to hop in and chat with us?

Sarai
That was really wonderful, though.

Tina
It's always fun to have somebody else come in. Before our call, and Sybil really reinforced this for me, it was like, actually, one of the questions I have a million questions that I didn't get to with you because we just had this beautiful flow in conversation, but one of the questions was, when it comes to joy, when it comes to intentional living, do you think we ever get there, wherever there is? Do you think we ever get to that spot, the spot that we're striving to get to?

Sarai
I don't think there is a finish line, personally. I've given up on that. I think life comes and goes, and I don't think there's ever a period where we just experience joy all the time. I just don't think that's in human nature, personally, both because there are a lot of external things that are bound to happen to you that are naturally going to be unhappy. But I also think humans have a lot of natural tendencies that take us away from that. I think it's just about coming back to it over and over again. That's why practices and rituals are so important to me in a way. I write about that a lot on the personal newsletters.

I think it's always a recentering and returning process and not necessarily stability that is going to last through the rest of your life.

Tina
Right. I agree. I agree 100%. Then, like I said, I was walking with my friend this morning and I'm talking about the property and all the projects. There is not that long ago in my life, that would have caused me a lot of stress to think about all the things I have to do in order to get the place, the vision that I see.

Then I'm like, again, I'm not sure if this has been in my mid-fourties if this has just grown or what this is, but there's something about this year that I'm looking at all these projects and I'm like, I'm just going to go at each project with the energy that I want to feel every day, and I'm going to allow them to unfold as they do. Yeah, I have a grander vision for what it's going to look at. It's out my window here. I have a grander vision for what it's going to look like, but I'm just going to work at it. I may never get there. It may never.

Sarai
If anybody has read the writer Oliver Berkman, he writes about this a lot, and this idea that a big part of life is just accepting its limitations, so that you're never going to reach some state where you are able to do all the things that you want to do. That's just not going to happen. A big part of finding peace is just being willing to accept that.

He writes a lot about productivity from that point of view, that There is no perfect productivity. That really resonates for me because I feel like a certain amount of finding happiness is just accepting that some things are going to go by the wayside. Maybe my house is not going to be clean 100% of the time, and I just have to accept that. It's tough if you are a perfectionist, but that's a big life lesson for me that I'm continually learning.

Tina
Very nice. Do you mind if I ask you one last question?

But along those same lines, I wonder, how do you keep, to bring it back to making for a minute, how do you keep your making fresh? And do you feel like you ever get to... I'm assuming the answer will be similar, but do you ever get to state of finished when it comes to what you're going to learn or what you can embrace as far as your making goes?

Sarai
No, I mean, I think it's just the rest of life. But I think that's one of the, at least for my creativity and the things I do just for creative practice, I feel like that's part of the joy of it, is just the continual learning. That's one reason I really love sewing, is just that I'm always learning something. It's the same reason I love running a business, is just there's always more to learn. For me, that's very gratifying. I love learning new things. One of my big motivators in life is learning something and then sharing whatever I learn. Hopefully, it's helpful to somebody else.

That's something that I just get tremendous joy from. I'm so lucky to have built an entire career around that, about learning about something I'm really excited about, which is sewing, and then sharing that with other people. I don't think there's ever point where I feel like things are going to be done.

Thank goodness, that's not... For me, that's not the point. I guess that's a good lesson to take into life, too. If you think about it, that way, that life's never going to be perfect and done and just the way you want it.

And that's the beauty of it, is that you're always going to be changing and you're always going to be learning and growing and becoming somebody new. And isn't that cool?

Tina
It It is so cool. Sarai. You know what else is cool? It was so cool to talk to you today. I'm so glad you were here.

Sarai
Yeah, this was an awesome conversation. Thank you so much for having me. I'm so happy that you asked me to be here.

Tina
Good. I'm glad to have you here. Before we jump off real quick, if folks want to find you, where can they find you online? I will have this in the show notes, but if they're just wanting to look at it right now, where can they find you online?

Sarai
Our podcast is Seamwork Radio.

If you like listening to this podcast, you can check that out. You can check us out on YouTube. I love making videos. That's one of the things that I love doing in my work, and we're always improving our videos.

You can find us on YouTube at Seamwork Video. You can go to seamwork.com, which is where you'll find our community and all of our patterns and everything that we do is right there at Seamwork. Then if you want to check out my own personal newsletter, it's called Making Time. It's on Substack.

Tina
Very nice. Thank you for being here. I was just checking to make sure we didn't miss any questions, but we did lots of love for the work that you do and your podcast and such.

Sarai
Thank you so much.

Tina
Thank you everyone for being here. Thank you for listening. Have a great day.

Sarai
So thank you to Tina for having me on her show. If you want to check it out, it's called In Kinship, and you can find it on your podcast platform of choice. I definitely subscribe because, obviously, Tina is a wonderful host and has some great conversations.

I just wanted to say thank you to her. And also, thank you to you guys for listening. Thanks for listening to Seamwork Radio.