I retired on January 1st of 2012 to become a full time fabric artist. When I think about it, it is a surprise to me that is 8 years plus a few months! During this time I have developed a loosely professional approach to ordering my day and I have found it really makes me feel right about the day. I guess it is because I spent decades working in sometimes pretty intense situations in my work life and got kind of use to having to put order in the day by necessity.
Now, even though I am home-based in my studio for work, I still like to take a professional approach to the day, and if you are sheltering in place at home you may find this really helpful. So I start like I am planning to go to work at my former job, only I have a little more relaxing time about it, and my wardrobe is more casual (all happy things). Here’s the list I give myself.
- Make my bed
- Get dressed
- Read my email and make a plan for the day…a to do list if you will…which I may or may not write down, but I thoughtfully think it through.
- Have breakfast
- Clean the kitchen
- Go to “work”. I put it in quotes because it is so much fun for me to work in my studio working with with fabrics and threads, or designing my next project. Remember that work can and should include some educational activities (like TQS offers and Bluprint or Iquilt) sometime during the week.
- Listen to podcasts, music, and audio books as I work.
- Keep to a (loose) schedule and actually have a “quitting time”, a day for chores (cleaning, bill paying, shopping), a day or a couple of half days I don’t “work” and just chill out. Sometimes I chill out in my studio though because I love this fabric art thing so much. Try hard to stick to this schedule.
- Eat well
- Try to get some exercise every day, even if it is just stretching or walking around in my house.
- Enjoy a relaxed evening during and after dinner (I might do some handwork here and watch a movie with my son).
- Get a good night’s sleep, but don’t set an alarm (that’s partly the fun of being home-based) unless I find I am way over sleeping more than one day a week
These may seem fundamental to many of you, and a lot of you would have a different list, but I know from watching myself and my youngest son, who is a writer and also a home-based self employed person) that it is easy to get sloppy about things and before I know it my production and self esteem suffer. This helps me to stay away from that.
Sew happy everyone! I hope I don’t sound preachy here, but I thought you may find thinking about this helpful in this stuck at home by yourself, especially if you are new to it. Personally, I love working in my studio most all the time so that the only thing I miss is a few social activities, but I am somewhat making up for that with Facebook and YouTube videos. There are lots of fun things out there for that…The Quilt Show, Pat Sloan videos…look around on the Internet. I’m sure you’ll find some you really like. And stay mostly away from the news so you don’t get all scared or depressed. Just check briefly now and again or online. That’s all from grandma BJ here. LOL