My great-grandmother loved to embroider. She was always doing a piece of needlework. She finished her last piece, a cut-work tablecloth, when she was 89 years old. My mom said she had no memory of her grandmother not having needlework close to hand. Mom remembered her grandmother always started each piece with great excitement. She would exclaim how beautiful the colors were and how they worked together. She would be so excited about beautiful the piece would be when finished. She would comment on good the fabric felt under her fingers. She looked forward every day to her “needle time”, as she called it.
But as the work went on, the excitement would dim. The comments would change. The colors were trite. The pattern boring to work up. The fabric was now coarse. Needle time was a chore. Before the project was finished, it had become a “devilish thing.”
This Lotteryist Project has become a devilish thing. I seem to have nothing new to say. I have little joy in this writing. I am just slogging on because I said I would do 52 blogs and I have determined to perseverance.
I must admit I thought that each week something fun or different or exciting would happen each time I went to PLC, and that 52 blogs would be a snap.
This is not what is happening. I go in the store. I say the same thing – “I need to lose some money.” The clerk, and it doesn’t matter which clerk it is, says the same thing – “Think positive. You might win. It could happen.”
I thought I would by now have won more than the $8.00 that is sitting in the special Winnings Envelop.
Nope. No new winnings
Every week, samemo samemo.
Sitting down to write these blogs takes real effort and determination. I have to reward myself now to get to work. To finish this draft, I have had to promise myself a Hershey Bar. When I finish the whole project, I have promised myself a box of See’s Candy.
That’s what this project has descended to – not the hope of the means to do great things in my town, not the joy of weaving words, but the hope that I at last will finish this devilish thing and the joy of whole box of See’s Candy all for my own selfish enjoyment. That state of affairs is in itself is a devilish thing, a devilish thing indeed.