Celebrate the Victories!

As I work furiously at 52 years old on completing one pair of Ginger Jeans by the week of Thanksgiving, Lillian Weber sews a dress a day at 99 years old! She will be celebrating her 100th birthday in May and plans to have sewn 1,000 dresses by then. And she's not stopping there. 

Have you heard of this amazing woman? She sews for a charity called Little Dresses for Africa, a Christian nonprofit distributing the dresses to impoverished young girls. More than 2.5 million dresses have been collected by the nonprofit and have been sent to 47 countries in Africa as well as Haiti, Honduras, Thailand and Mexico.

What do you hope to be doing when you're 99? Do you still plan to be sewing? I sure hope my fingers and my brain allow me to sew if I make it to 99! And ride. As a cyclist I meet a variety of people of all ages when I'm out riding. A few weeks ago one chilly morning I came up on a man who I decided to ride with for a bit, if he'd have me. Meet Ron:

Ron is 75 and in addition to being a veteran, he has ridden over 4,000 miles this year and has completed 3 bike tours nationwide. Wow! And like Lillian, he's not done yet either. We only did about 5 of our miles together as he had started earlier and he had to turn around since he had a 3 hour ride planned for the next morning! I asked if we could take a picture for my Facebook page and he said sure and then asked, "Is this a selfie?" Cute, eh? I'm the worst person in the world at selfies. Apparently so is Ron, as he tried too. After about 7 failed attempts I asked if I could take a picture of him. He said he thought he'd be famous now. I haven't seen him since but I did see a man who I thought was him and I waved like a maniac and as I passed him on the other side of the road I realized it wasn't him. Do you ever do that? Oy! He happily waved back and probably thought, "What a kook!" I look forward to riding with Ron again.

I'll wrap up finally with this lovely bit from Heather's blog at Closet Case Files:

"I think far too many of us are intimidated to make pants because we are focused on achieving “perfection”. Perfection is a dangerous goal. This is a lesson I am learning personally as well as in my sewing practice, since I am one of those type-A control-freaks who struggles with letting go. When you are only satisfied by perfection, you are bound to be disappointed again and again; perfection is so rarely achieved. Life, sewing, all of it, is a process. We learn something new along each step of the journey, and I truly believe that getting tripped up by the flaws, rather than celebrating the victories, takes the fun out of making."

If only I could go back to 30, or 40 and put this into practice. But it's never too late. I wouldn't have had the fabulous opportunity to ride with Ron if I wasn't changing my ways. I would have simply waved and passed him up in favor of a faster ride, because you know you're really super cool if you can pass a 75 year old...who can most likely out ride me mileage-wise anyway! 

Celebrate the victories!