About Time & Task

When I was younger, when my children were little, when creativity was my career, my routine was firmly established and I got the work done. Now that I'm older, my children have their own children, and my creativity is more personal than work, I've been completely frustrated by the lack of doing - like I'm wasting wide swaths of time with nothing to show for it. That only increases the frustration and it becomes a vicious circle going around and around. I'm not fond of frustrated. About a year ago, I started including a vision board in my daily journal time. The pictures change as the dreams are achieved. A few months ago, I included a picture about an artist residency but as I researched how to make that happen, it seemed like it wasn't the residency I wanted as much as what it represented only I didn't know what that was. So I kept writing. And eventually realized it was the time and the routine I wanted back in my life. The search for a new place to go deep may have been a contributing factor. If I'm going to get down to doing the work, what is the work I'm going to do? Such a good question. I've been taking a workshop with Harriet Goodall called Form to Freedom: Weaving for Fibre Sculpture in my ongoing exploration of three dimensional work and this has the most potential of anything else I've looked into in a long time. YES YES!

This week I started a new way of working that I'm calling Time & Task. It feels very me which makes me think it could be the thing only I'm old enough now not to jump to conclusions but then again, I'm old enough now to know what works so there's a good chance I'm right. When I leave the studio, I prepare the first task for the next day and think about which projects I want to work on. I'm not the best multi-tasker in terms of studio projects so there's usually no more than one task and two projects in different mediums. I finish the task and then give an hour to each project, and then rotate between them until I'm ready for errands or something else. With this routine, my daily routine looks like this.. get up, take my puppy out, have coffee, get dressed, take puppy for a walk, go journal, breakfast, task, and projects. It sounds rigid. It's not. It's actually a very freeing boundary that gets things done and is reminiscent of the "old" days. And of course, since I'm semi-retired, I can juggle the routine for what's important to me which is almost always people since I believe life is about relationships. This feels so very positive and not at all frustrating. It's good. Yesterday, I finished my first coiled basket and today I'll photograph it, post my thoughts and pictures to the classroom, and then have the pictures ready for a future blog post. This morning, I finished a t-shirt and now I'm about to go work on another basket style. I'm limiting the three dimensional forms to baskets and vessels for now so my ideas are focused and not all over the place. The course and the assignments have led to a fabulous flow of ideas that need a bit of corralling. I'd hesitated to sign up for the expense only it's been well worth it. I'm glad I did. Talk soon -