Pausing to play with my needle

Sometimes I just need to stitch. Needing to stitch is different from wanting to stitch. And this kind of needing isn't about having to finish a project for a deadline.This kind of needing is about putting myself into a calm, focused, peaceful place.  Sometimes the color of the thread helps: blue is a calm color; add green and it becomes peaceful.There's a lot going on in our lives right now, almost all of it positive. The excitement of my upcoming online class, the end of the school yearapproaching which brings with it leaving one school and moving to another, considering options and opportunities during retirement in the not-too-distant future, selling, buying and moving house, travel to see family and friends in the USA, embroidery classes I'll be taking, some minor health concerns but nothing really worrying...nothing out of the ordinary at our time of life.But sometimes it's all too much to think about. I just can't think about one more choice, one more option, one more opportunity, one more creative idea. Mental exhaustion threatens to drag me under and the one thing I know will help is to sit down with my needle and stitch. When I feel like this the project should be something relatively easy, not for a class or a commission but something I can stitch easily, effortlessly.My Canvaswork Sampler is that kind of piece and I've been stitching it almost every day over the last few weeks. There are spaces to fill but the choice of stitch is whatever I am drawn to at that moment.It's such a delight to see how a stitch works out, how I can change it or tweek it a bit, how the different threads and combinations of threads work on the canvas. It's as much like playing as embroidery gets for me.So, that's what I'm going to do, right now.Do you ever feel like this? Does embroidering help?