Finding "Calendar Identity"

 In going through the things I've written but not published, I'm finding that there are a number of pieces that are out of context now.  This was one of them...and yet, in reading it and reflecting, I think I've learned a lot.  Once again, I'll italicize the post as it was written (in July of 2018!) and then reflect on what I've learned in the new circumstances of the pandemic world.

I sit here 3 weeks in to my Summer At Home in a mild panic. My personal deadline for a business project is looming, and likely to pass yet again, unfinished again. I have yet to MAKE anything this summer. I have a wig job that I am working on – which is great, but means I am trying to fit everything else in my life into about 3 or 4 hours in a day. And I see my pattern. I am still letting it happen. I see my mistakes, but I am torn.

This transition I've been trying to make, these transitions...in part my difficulty is my identity. I was always an army of one, and I was surprisingly, fairly efficient. I could work stupid amounts and accomplish more in an afternoon than should have been realistic (sometimes). But I am getting older and I don't want to do that anymore. And that is certainly part of it. Realizing limitations.

Another part, though, a part that is harder to recognize and reconcile is finding middle ground for my new identity. Particularly in terms of prioritizing my schedule. It is easy when I have “work” - standard work – a theatre contract or a wig job or a demonstration. There is an outside schedule imposed.

My partner is a successfully self-employed blacksmith – has been for a lifetime – pretty much the bulk of his working lifetime. And that means working 6 or 7 days a week – as much on communications and research and background and paperwork as in the shop – usually more. In many ways we have very similar lives – (I too have always worked an average of 6 or 7 days a week, for example), and we each have kept our own lives – largely. We enjoy each other's company and try to spend some time together – often on work projects or work related ones. And this whole partnership thing has been a big learning curve for me, and boy am I still learning.

Here is where I run into trouble with my own business, my own time, my own identity. In my “down” time, the time that is not scheduled by the outside world, when I'm working on making things and my business and making my new life my time is pretty flexible. I have long lists, as we all do, of things I want and or need to get done. The trouble is, in part, that I'm allowing them to be driven by my partner's schedule. Often because it involves cool fun things that I want to do. Like going to Scotland to work on projects. Or going to opening ceremonies for art events that he is involved in. Or doing Iron Smelting or Experimental Archeology projects that may or may not involve travel and/or gatherings at our home studio.

So, I set my schedule by the outside world and by my partner's schedule. Which should not present a problem, but unless I am very conscious of it all the time it gets away from me. I end up fitting everything into the margins, including my business. Hence the lack of progress on my projects. I don't put my business first, (or myself.)

It is hard to take my business out of the margins, because it provides me with no guarantees. It has proven to have far greater expenses than incomes, so far. I work at my jobs in part, to support my business...because I love it. Through my artwork I grow and learn and change and discover. And that is worth the price to me. And maybe it is part of the problem. I wouldn't be the first person to self-sabotage in order to avoid enough success to change the nature of something from joy to drudgery.

I have to learn to change that, though. I have to take this business out of the margins and put it in the content. In the table of contents and the index – or I will never be able to create the life I am striving for.

It should be simple enough, you say. Schedule tasks in hours and stick to the schedule, just as if it were a paying, clock your time job. Easier said than done, but re-identifying the problem it is what I will try. Not 8am-4pm work on business. That won't work. Not for me. But maybe Tuesday 9 -10 write for business. 2- 3 work on grounds. Sunday 11-12 work on photographs. Break it into 1 or 2 hour bites that can be shifted and managed.

The other tool I am using is a time log. A very loose time log – but in order to keep track of what I am really doing, I am making a loose accounting of my day and how the hours are spent. The categories are very broad, but the benefit is that at the end of the day I can see where the time went. Often the day is over and I feel like I accomplished nothing. Yet, I am bone tired. The time log, when I look at it tells me, yes, you actually put in x hours today, and this is how it was broken down. And at the end of a week or a month I can see how much time I actually put in on my business (for example). A little like tracking your expenses in order to make a realistic budget.

So, does this still apply after 15 odd months of being home in a pandemic?  Well, not so much, though I'm not quite sure the take is an entirely unbiased look.  It turns out that after a rest period I have worked on the business steadily.  Given time and space in my brain and a chance to re-energize, I've gotten a lot off of my to-do list.  However, I need to keep in mind the fact that there was virtually no outside schedule to conflict.  There was nothing in my partner's schedule that could distract me.

I haven't made as much new stuff as I think I should have, but I have made pieces.  I have managed to build an e-commerce website, do a lot of product photography, revise and improve my inventory system, build and maintain a Patreon page, write (somewhat) more regular blog posts, do a lot of work on organizing my spaces (and my forge space has been pulled apart entirely re-modelled and re-assembled


!) and making them workable and start "advertising" by creating a much more consistent social media presence.  I've made huge strides in the work I'm doing on the grounds here, spent a lot of time digging and planting and making the space more versatile and abundant.  I've had time both for myself and to spend with my partner (and, of course, the cat.)  I've been given a reminder of what I can do without and given a much more comprehensive picture of what the cost of living and maintaining the business is if I'm just here all the time.  It has given me a clear snapshot of the financial cost as well as the time and energy cost of maintaining multiple careers.

So...what I've learned is that things are possible, and most of the struggle with my "calendar identity" comes from having too many slots to fit into each day.  It is not that I didn't know that this was a big part of the problem, I just thought that there were way more factors playing a much bigger part as well. All this has given me a lot of food for thought, and let me step back and see the forest as well as the trees.   Once again, I am shown that perspective changes everything.