Welcome to Making Time - Introduce Yourself Here!
What makes a life feel vivid rather than rushed?
Hello and welcome,
I’m Sarai, the person behind Making Time. I’m here to explore this question: What makes a life feel vivid rather than rushed?
If you’re new here, please take a moment to introduce yourself down below!
What is Making Time all about?
In 2021, after a lifetime in cities, I moved to five acres in rural Oregon. I came looking for a slower life. Instead, I found that my old habits and hurried mind came with me. The setting changed, but I didn’t—at least not automatically.
This newsletter is the ongoing work of that change.
I write about what it takes to feel vivid rather than rushed—not through productivity systems or life optimization, but through attention, ritual, and the rhythms of making things by hand. I explore what I’m noticing in my own life: the pull toward presence, the resistance to it, and the slow practice of waking up to the life I already have.
Some of what I write takes the form of longer essays, following a thread until I find something I didn’t expect. Other pieces are shorter dispatches—observations from the garden, the changing seasons, or a morning walk through the woods with my dog. All of it comes from the same question: what makes a life feel alive?
By day, I’m the founder of Seamwork, an online community that helps people sew a meaningful wardrobe. I’ve been sewing for nearly thirty years, and making things with my hands remains central to how I understand the world.
But this newsletter is where I explore the larger questions that hover around the edges of that work—questions about time, attention, place, and what it means to dwell fully in your own life.
If you’re someone who suspects that the answer to feeling rushed isn’t doing more, but attending differently—this might be a place for you. I send letters a few times a month, and each one is an invitation to slow down and notice your own life a little more closely. Subscribe below and I’ll meet you in your inbox.
Introduce Yourself
Now it’s your turn! I’d love to meet and get to know you all a little better. Tell us:
Your name
Where you live
Your #1 favorite creative outlet (mine is writing)
Any other fun facts you’d like to share
I live in the North of England and mainly sew and draw. I would like to learn how to knit snd crochet too but I'm in no big rush.
I am being more mindful these days about how I spent my time so no matter how mundane the task I am trying to do it fully rather than while rushing or thinking about other things. Meditation has helped with this enormously.
I'm Miriam.
I'm a theatrical costume designer and also do custom work. While I'm good at focusing when I have a clearly defined structure, I have a lot of difficulty without it.
I have so many ideas of things to do and techniques that I'm interested in and want to pursue for both my clients and myself, but I find that I can't seem to find the time to pursue them in a focused way unless I have specific deadlines imposed externally.
I love taking workshops and learning new things—all things seem possible to me under those circumstances—but when I get home, life takes over. Part of it is life with 3 human and 2 feline agents of chaos (also, have to admit, I'm kind of an agent of chaos myself).
I don't have any answers, just observations.