I have to admit that I wasn't always a Crafter. My career was in Casino Management and I dedicated eighteen long years to climbing the gaming ladder both in Spain and in Canada. Only a few months and one short promotion away from fulfilling my ultimate goal, I found myself in the Emergency Room of the local hospital staring incredulously at the doctor as he was shaking his head and telling me not to panic but that my career was basically over. As it turned out, my ridiculously swollen knees and acute joint pain were more than just blips on the barometer, they were Psoriatic Arthritis.
The six months on crutches were physically grueling but nothing compared to the mental torture that I put myself through. At the ripe old age of 38 my career was at an end, I lived alone in a town with no relatives and the one friend I had, had left the casino and the town a couple of months before this happened. Moving back to Toronto where my Mother lived and where I had grown up was the obvious choice as I had a larger pool of specialists to choose from but mostly because I had friends and family that could put a smile on my dour face. They, in fact, were the ones that told me to take advantage of my time on disability and take some of the classes that I'd always talked about but never had the time to do. So, I took all sorts of classes including Faux Finishing, Cake Decorating, Stencilling, Chip Carving, Oil Painting and even Piano. That's how I kept my sanity and controlled my depression. Discovering how much I really loved to create beautiful things was a revelation because I'd never thought of myself as "artsy" but now, I started thinking of myself as "crafty". I continued with classes but soon found that I was experimenting on my own and adding substantially to my knowledge base with every single project. As it turned out, I was on disability for three years at the end of which, I met my husband and moved to Buffalo where we were married. A year later, we moved to Knoxville, Tennessee where I started looking for a job with a flexible schedule. My husband suggested I do something with all my crafting skills so while shopping at Michael's one day, I applied for a position as a Craft Instructor and was accepted. A few months after being hired, the Cake Decorating Instructor left to start a family and I took over that department too. It has been almost six years and I absolutely love what I do. It seems that I have found my niche after all these years. So now you know my story and why I am so passionate about Crafts. In a way, my Crafts saved me from a deep depression and led me to my destiny. What more could I ask? |