I’ve been busy at work. 12 to 15 hours a day busy.
I hope that it will mellow out today, and I will be able to get back on schedule.
I have an ambitious schedule of art production after all. I paint on Monday and Tuesday, draw on Wednesday and Thursday, and work on print projects all weekend.
The impact on my “night” schedule when I am this busy at work are two-fold:
- I spend many hours at work, hours I planned to spend creating art. I was at work till 10 pm last night, but my schedule has me painting from 7-10 on Tuesday nights. No painting got done.
- After 12 hours at work, I am too tired to get anything done at home, even basic stuff like clean up. Last weekend, after working over 12 hours on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, I had to spend most of saturday doing chores like laundry, dishes, running errands and cleaning my apartment. I didn’t get to spend 4 hours with the brayers and blocks, making prints, as I had planned.
When I have to spend my nights working at DayJob, not only does it displace the time I scheduled that night to work on art, but it displaces time afterwards that I have to spend catching up.
It has been a conundrum, and not how I planned to start the year. I set a rigorous schedule of art production for myself so I could start strong, right out of the gate. Instead I got put in another race.
It’s not necessarily bad, because the work I am doing at DayJob right now is decent, and I have gotten some assignments that I am interested in, and bestow me with greater responsibilities.
When I come home from work however, I see my art supplies waiting for me, and I see my calendar listing out what I planned to accomplish that night, and I know that it is too late, and I am too tired, to get it done.
When I get set back liek this, and I get tired like this, it has a toll on my emotions. I feel dissappointed, and I end up feeling sluggish. My energy levels go down.
What I am learning is that some days, and some weeks, I will have to put art on the side, so I can do a good job at DayJob, bring home the bacon, and pay the bills. It may set me back a week or two, but it is what will create success for me in the art field.
The trick is to realize that I have not gotten behind, but have just spent my time in other ways. I don’t focus on what I didn’t do in the past, but what I will do in the future.