I hope you are enjoying your Labor Day. If you are just lounging around, I have more reading for you, possibly related to laboring. This article entitled "No Escape" talks about the importance of schedules for any creative, and how we instinctively tend to make excuses for not making or keeping them.
"...you need a schedule. It needn't be an onerous schedule; you don't have to write every day, or for many hours at a time, or anything like that. But...you do need a schedule."
There are some things I have no trouble scheduling and sticking to that schedule. My daily walk is a good example, drilled into me by years of dog ownership when to say no when the appointed time arrived was never a good option. I may not walk at exactly the same time each day; I generally like to take it shortly before dinner but depending on the season I may have to take it earlier when it is still light. But I nearly always get it in. It feels very good to be getting back to that schedule after surgery and to keep extending out the distance. The picture above is taken from where I'd been having to stop and turn around, but as I mentioned, always had me looking longingly past the Goodwill out to the main drag which is those buildings in the middle of the picture - click for a larger view and you will also notice to the left behind them a difficult-to-see mountain shrouded in haze. There are 5 lightning-started wildfires to the north of me that together comprise about 9000 acres and we had several days last week socked in by smoke again. Anyway, I was feeling particularly spunky one day last week and headed down that sidewalk and made it to the main drag and back home again, just a little tired. I've also started just walking around the loop of the neighborhood like I was doing prior to surgery when that was about all I could manage. Having that schedule for walking gets me out there, whether it is short or long.
The sad thing though, as I read this article, is remembering that I used to have a schedule for studio work, pretty much every day between breakfast and lunch. Sometimes I put in more time, but I always got in there in the morning unless I had to keep an appointment or attend a meeting or teach a class. Somewhere along the way, my routine changed and every day I found other things I thought needed to be done first until there was no time left for the studio, every day except for Wednesday for some reason. If I had an exhibit deadline of course, I'd MAKE time for the studio, but it was oh so easy to lapse into the mindset of, oh well - there's tomorrow. More recently I gave up on mornings since I'd started staying up way too late and thus sleeping a lot of the morning away, and looked to the time between lunch and my walk as a viable time. Still not daily but maybe a start. As the article says, no matter what your objections (or excuses), you still need a schedule, no matter whether it is doing something every day or just a few days a week. It is so right. Yet, I still struggle to set a schedule for my art/quilting while easily set a schedule for the 2 hours a day I need to wear a bone regenerator to hasten my post-surgery healing. Why is that? Do you find you succumb to the same struggle? The article suggests an answer:
"...for a huge proportion of people, "you need a schedule" is precisely the right advice, yet that they'll still invest a massive amount of energy coming up with reasons why they shouldn't make one. They want ... unveil[ed] some productivity technique that's newer and shinier, and preferably easier to implement – one that doesn't seem to condemn them to month after month of plodding, incremental forward motion."
Yeah, guilty as charged to reading so many self-help articles looking for that magic solution/suggestion to get me back on track. And it hurts just a little that the following hits home so hard:
"I think the general point here, beyond the specific question of how to get writing done, is that we desperately want to be saved. We want to find some person, or some philosophy of life, that will spare us the fear or discomfort or self-doubt or tedium that so often seems to come along for the ride, whenever we try to make progress on things we care about. We hate feeling yoked to reality in such an unpleasant way; we long instead to soar above it, in a realm free from problems. And it's the mark of a bad self-help book, a dodgy spiritual guru or an incompetent therapist that they'll be only too happy to encourage the illusion that this might one day be possible."
I have to admit I'm still using the excuse of the surgery to keep from setting aside a specific time to work on anything, although I have started on another Zentangle that will force me into the studio for some additional art supplies to finish it up. I think I very much fall into the category mentioned that is not new to me and that I know for a fact works: that all [I] need to do is the straightforward thing that's been staring [me] in the face all along: to just write (sew/sketch/paint/etc) for a few hours a week; to sit down for a few minutes and meditate; to be the most capable of a being [I can be] on this particular day..."
It ends on a gentle note though, almost as if knowing my history of being hard on myself when I don't live up to my own expectations and sometimes too ambitious goals:
"There's no need to be mean to yourself. You can be entirely gentle. It's just that what you have to (gently) remind yourself is that there is, in fact, no secret ingenious alternative to just walking the uncertain and sometimes uncomfortable path forwards...Your internal resources are entirely up to the task."
So do you struggle too? Or does setting a schedule for your creative outlet pose no problem for you? (And no, I'm not looking for your magic solution!) And is there a difference between schedule and routine? I wonder because I've been thinking I have lots of routines that don't feel difficult to keep and often fall at the same general times. A quick google points out there is indeed a difference, for what it is worth: a schedule is a plan of what is to occur, and at what time while a routine is a course of action to be followed regularly. The difference is slight but there. Gotta figure out a schedule so it will become a routine, me thinks!
4 comments:
It's great to hear you're getting more outdoor walking time! Your smoke has drifted Southeast, I'm afraid, because we're really getting it in our neck of the woods! I understand the point you're making in today's blog, but am probably the last person you want to take advice from! My days of actually scheduling non-essential things are in the rear-view mirror! Once I re-retired (first from 30-years of teaching, then 12 more of restaurant cashier/hostessing) I decided I was no longer tying myself to a daily schedule! Appointments & activities I want to do are about it & the rest happens when it happens. That includes saying a firm 'no' to becoming an officer in a club/group & enjoying what they offer without taking on responsibility! Of course, none of this means I'm not cheering for you getting out & about daily or putting time in in your studio! As they say...'to each her own'. Jan in WY
Jan, because of the back and forth we've enjoyed, I anticipated this might be your response. I've been able to tell that you are a freer spirit than I am, and as the article notes, not EVERYONE needs a schedule and you are apparently one of those. I on the other hand tend to waste too much time, especially on the internet, then find myself unhappy that I have run out of time to do some of the other things floating around in my head of a creative nature. So a schedule helps me put things in better priority and rather than feeling a slave to it, I feel a sense of release at not facing a day wondering what I am going to do with it and when. Indeed, to each her own! I AM with you though about turning down group responsibilities like holding offices - I learned to start saying no as well awhile ago. ;-)
Goodness, I hate to think that the smoke you are experiencing is coming all the way from here but it only takes a change in the wind to send it far afield. We keep getting fronts passing through with wind so it clears out a bit, but still leaves things hazy. The smell was intense yesterday and I was careful not to walk too far later in the day even though it was better. Wouldn't you know it, just when I'm ready for outdoor activity, air quality becomes an issue!
So glad that you're able to extend your walks! As for studio schedules, I never was able to do that. If I have a project that excites me I spend as much time as possible in the studio. But otherwise I find plenty of other things to do around the house or outside. Unfortunately, since I moved here and left all of my sewing groups back in the NW I haven't felt very inspired to get into the studio except for making gifts or smaller items to sell. Gone are the days of having spreadsheets to keep track of exhibits and teaching.
Sherrie, that's an interesting take on how one spends one's creative time. I guess I've always had so many projects lined up that I was excited to get to, I soon realized that without some kind of a schedule that got me regularly in the studio, I wouldn't make progress to move on to the next one. And it's not as if I didn't have other interests or things that could keep me equally as busy. In fact, for the longest time I could tell I would get cranky overall if I missed more than a few days in the studio. Droughts of studio time haven't affected me that way for a long time, I realized not too long ago.
But you are right, or at least I feel the same way, about no longer having to track exhibit deadlines or prep for teaching, focusing more on gifts or experiments or just things I've wanted to try or finish for the longest time. It made me wonder, is this partly because of aging, or maybe just that without the pressure or incentives of belonging to groups, we are taking a more laid-back approach? Be that as it may, I always seem to go back to a desire to schedule creative time rather than to just let it happen.
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