Antique Sewing Machines and Borg Assimilation

Resistance is futile! In spite of my clinging inertia to remain the pure idealist, I've at last at my own discretion allowed myself to become assimilated into the endless horde of "goal-oriented responsible adults," the Borg. How could I have been so careless? What was I thinking? Is there any escape?

Perhaps with the looming pressures of becoming a parent, I over-reacted in my bold choosing of nonfiction corrective literature, "Getting Things Done," and was naive enough to be seduced by the caption "The Art of Stress-Free Productivity."

So those of you who know me (Wait, if you don't know me, why would you even be reading this?) know that I've never been the world's best "things done getter," or since that's a goofy word I'll replace it with "Natasha"--she's great at getting things done. Her trick is to get infinitely stressed out until everything is finished. It's a nasty cycle, because she's also very creative, so she can always create projects than are possible to finish, and as a result she's very often stressed out. But very productive. She just needs some outside help now and then to rip her out of the thick of things to let her recuperate now and then, like the America trip was great.

I learned that Natasha and I are polar opposites in our approaches, each having our merits. I can focus in the midst of chaos calm and relaxed. I can let things go, deciding what I'm not in the mood to spend my effort and attention on, then deal with the consequences. Lowered expectations= peace of mind. But whatever I am doing, I can give my full attention too, and the results, although I may not achieve them in the most efficient way, are usually of exceptional quality and I enjoy the process. Nice while it lasted, but my life has made this an obsolete coping mechanism.

Getting Things Done, (which I do highly recommend) is basically a synthesis of our differing approaches. That means almost everything I read I already knew well because I practiced it, or was familiar with as one of Natasha inherent abilities. That left nearly everything to implementation. I embraced my inner cyborg, purging our apartment of all non Borg cube-like attributes, delegating, writing notes, buying supplies, organizing reference, planning projects, executing tasks-- hard-core even beyond Natasha's taste. At least she's been pleasantly surprised to mention something once and it being magically done the next day. Unfortunately I've been less sensitive to some of Natasha's other emotional needs in my criticism of her methods. "My logic is undeniable!"Traded one poison for another. Sorry babe, but I'll work on that:)

Then I read the 4-hour-work week, which I'd been curious to read for a while. Although I'm not planning on setting up the kind of internet business he details, it gave me more ideas and perspective on cutting back some of the fruitless tasks I was accomplishing, and some ideas to increase my per dollar value in the entrepreneurial sphere. This was a mixed blessing, because whereas most of the principles in GTD were more intuitive to Natasha which made it easier for her to support, the 4HWW, and entrepreneurship, in Russia in general, but especially for Natasha and her family, is something still unfamiliar and uneasy. They're more used to the idea of being under big brother's wing than self-reliance. Even simple elements of it, such as choosing which tasks you will do and which you will not, are counter-intuitive to her. "You do what needs to be done." But who decides what needs to be done? So I've definitely felt more resistance in having any conversation about it. However, yesterday felt like a real success for Natasha in getting out of her comfort zone when I finally got her to give me some input about ways to increase my $/hr potential in English teaching. She's a very good sport.

On to one of the more interesting projects I did. Natasha likes sewing, and we were offered a good condition antique mechanical sewing machine. At first I was like, "ugggh, lets just get a real one, they're not that expensive and we don't have that much space, and I doubt it will be worth the hassle." But I went ahead and consented. I finally got around to pulling the thing off of the balcony, where it was left for us when we came back from America, (meanwhile Natasha has been doing her sewing projects at her mom's house). I was surprised at how much the thing managed to weigh for what size it is. After removing some of the frame and tightening screws so that the machine part would stand on the table without falling through, I cut and install a belt for the foot pedal. So far so good. Then I try testing it, and it won't budge for more than half a cycle. Not so good. I'm certainly no expert on sewing machines, but I do the obvious. I take it apart, to clean and oil all of the parts I can think of, cranking the flywheel of the machine manually, and then put it back together the way it was. It still takes way too much effort for the belt to be effective, so I give up and enlist for some aide, our branch president who's good at such things. Meanwhile I'm thinking, "hunk of junk," but at least the table is convenient to use the laptop on-- not a complete loss. He comes a couple of days later, tries it out and it works perfectly. Either some little fairies fixed it in the night, or it just needed a couple days for the oil to work it's magic, but now it runs smooth as butter. He refreshed Natasha on how to set up and use the needle and spindles for use, and a test scrap of material later, showed the machine was in perfect working order. All of a sudden my whole perception of the machine changes. How will the electric machines we use now stand up to a test of a few million years? I've seen several gone to trash. I was totally impressed with how sweet it runs, so smooth and rhythmic that it lulls you into trance, and feels just plain cool to use. It does of course take more skill which I'm lacking, and lacks the functions of a good singer, but so what. I've never had any desire to take up sewing until this beast arrived. I'll keep you posted when I clean it up and refinish the table:)