My name is Theresa Chan. Years ago I wrote a blog called At the Still Point of the Turning World. At the time, I was a family practice resident and, although I was busy and working my way up a steep learning curve, I needed an outlet for my creative preoccupations: handspinning, natural dyeing, and knitting. Still Point ran from 2001-2005, but after I finished residency, I moved on to "real life": a new community, a full-time job, buying a house, establishing a reputation in my local medical community, and that difficult-to-define process called making a living. All of these took more time and energy than I'd anticipated, and gradually, without wanting to or meaning to, I let Still Point lapse. I didn't think I had time for blogging any more.
It's been three years and now I find the urge to write about my creative pursuits overwhelms my professional fatigue. In addition to fiber arts, these pursuits now include theater, slow food, ethnographic art, mixed media/collage, altered books, and visual journaling--all of which will be discussed in this blog.
I don't know why I have such an impulse to do things, especially things that aren't practical and don't contribute to my professional bottom line. And yet, I find nothing as satisfying as hearing the pop of canning jars sealing in a boiling water bath, or finishing a collaged Moleskine cover with Modpodge, or writing a good paragraph. I don't think I'm the only person who is possessed by this creative drive, and I hope you'll join me in sharing your own creative predilections with me.
