Shifting Patterns

It is now winter and I need to settle down to work – to really work on the business – the making of stuff, the promotion of stuff, hopefully even the selling of stuff. Once again, this means looking at how I do things and what will get me motivated.

Winter sets in at Wareham for another year

I've been doing lots of little bits of tidying up – clearing little annoyances off the lists to help clear a path for me to have less that can potentially “call me away” from the tasks before me. Once again, I'm studying my spaces – particularly my desk, to try to figure out what will work for me. I already know that I need to like a space to want to work there. A good space helps draw me to it, gives me an anticipation and excitement, inspires me. That doesn't mean it has to be beautiful or perfect – but it has to have an inviting energy...I guess that's the best way for me to describe it. It has to be comfortable or I will spend my time being distracted by all the things that serve as an irritation in the space.

I need too, to find my groove. I've been trying different patterns of the day to see what fits. For a while I was working on the pattern my partner uses – practical in many ways, particularly in the wintertime when it is colder. It seemed a good fit, since I have a more nocturnal habit and I prefer my waking to be a more relaxed affair.  Get up, make tea, go to the computer and start there – doing email, communications, writing and all that. Then move on to the other work – the making and doing late morning or after lunch, depending on how much time the computer work took.

I've been trying to make that pattern work for quite a while now, because it is good logically. I'm finally admitting that it does not work for me. I get onto the computer and I get lost. I lose my drive, I lose my creativity, I lose my will. I find it draining.

The computer is something that I find useful, but I've never become enamoured with digital tools. When I am brutally honest, I kind of hate most computer work. It is okay for writing, and some of the stuff can be interesting for a short while. Figuring out how a program works and what it can do for you, the ability to do print work and manipulate photographs for use can be interesting. It doesn't hold me though, and it carries as much frustration as it does interest. There is too much relying on something I only vaguely understand for me. And it is constantly changing, not just the how but the rules and the speed and the capacity. There is too much time wasted on things that are "necessary evils,"(no offense meant to all the computer oriented people out there.

I've also done enough time working in offices where the computer was where I was stuck all day (or all night) that it has always represented work for me, and not my favourite work by any means. I know just enough about them that certain things are very easy for me, and I type well enough that they are an incredibly useful tool. I know just little enough about them that I find them frustrating and often arbitrary, temperamental and sometimes vindictive toward me. They have been known to inexplicably cut me off from what feels like lifetimes of work with no recourse. I can see the file, but I can't open the file – or some such madness. The computer and I are not best friends.

My desk is nice and close to the stove.

I still like handwriting things, stories, poems, letters. I type faster than I write, but I like the feel of writing. When I read, I take notes by hand – the act of writing the notes out helps me to cement the knowledge in my brain. I have noticed that the more time I spend on a computer the less I am able to remember things I know that I know. And I can tell that the increased screen time is beginning to mess with my eyes – and as a wigmaker particularly, my eyesight is something that is very dear to me.

So I am trying new patterns. Read first thing in the morning – whether for work or pleasure. Come to the computer at lunchtime or thereabouts....and limit it to lunchtime, then another quick shot at the end of the day just before dinner. Take days off, entirely, from it...something I used to do with regularity and do rarely in recent months. Ideally I will start with a walk in the morning – or most mornings. Or stretching at least – something active rather than sedentary. The computer may get relegated entirely to just before dinner, at least some days. I know there will be days, if I am to manage to survive, that will have to be all computer – the digital world will demand it. But I can hope that they will be strategic, rather than habit.

There will be lots of patterns tried and tossed, I'm sure, before I find the one that works here, in this space and time. I am just glad that I've stopped following blindly based on habit and trying to convince myself that I can make something so unsuited to me work.  With every step, I learn - (or I hope I do.)  There is lots of winter left.  Come spring, patterns will shift again.

Observing from the Sidelines

The earlier version of my forge space here at Wareham.  Photo by KPS

 

Some days are infinitely frustrating. I think I am just beginning to get down to it, starting to be able to dig in and do what I am “supposed” to be doing...and sproing! Suddenly I'm hijacked. My attention, my emotion, my focus shattered – the intercom of life buzzes and prompts me to drop what I'm doing and change direction immediately.

At the heart of it, the problem is not the inevitable sproing! The problem is my willingness to be hijacked. My belief that what I'm doing is not as important as whatever the interruption is. My lack of faith in the fact that this work deserves my undivided attention and is vital to me. It is the idea that giving focus and time to the creation is an aside, meant to be done on stolen time.

This is nothing new, and nothing I haven't addressed before. Everyone who runs a small business, or creates art, or works from home (a lot more of us in these days of pandemic) or is self-employed or.... Let's just say that many people face their own version of this countless times a day, every day. The circumstances will change, but the core problem is the same.

Perhaps, though, if each time we face it we choose to recognize it for what it is, if we choose to mark it rather than letting it sneak by, we will begin to change the pattern. The sooner we see it for what it is, the more likely we are to be able to say, “no, that is something I can deal with later” and shift our focus back to where we were and what we were doing.

Somehow, a guaranteed paycheque allows us to do this when we are “at work”...at least it does for me. So perhaps part of the problem is the value I place on the financial reward vs. the more intangible rewards. Not surprisingly it seems that once again, it is a problem of perception.