Good work day

Whew, I’m completely exhausted again after another good work day. Lots of foundational work and daily-life-type stuff: sending and answering emails, typing up a description card and coupons to go with the Tierra tote, pitching my shop to Hipline for inclusion on their website, writing cards to friends, dance cardio followed by lunch with Bright, helping Erik make turnip soup for dinner (accompanied by La Farine bread… mmmm!).

I also spent a good bit of time taking appreciation photos for one of my trades, which arrived today! I’d been eagerly awaiting this gorgeous necklace from Chrystalyn, which she extended for me at my request. She traded me the necklace and a sweet feathered ornament in exchange for my green quilted bag. If you are in the market for jewelry, do check out her site. She did a beautiful job extending the necklace (adding some sparkling citrines to create length, instead of just sticking on a chain or something!), and kept me posted throughout the process with photos and updates. I’m almost tempted to run back into her shop and get more baubles…!

Oh, and I experimented with not blow-drying my hair today. Pretty different look from the original styling, no? Of course this is also post-dance class so it’s a little crazy. 🙂

After taking the photos, I settled down for another hour of drawing practice; Erik was already busily composing at his keyboard (musical, not computer) and laptop. At first I planned to do more McCloud exercises, but I felt itchy to get to an actual project, so I made some preliminary sketches for my annual Valentine’s Day card.

You know, “the zone” is really weird. It’s the strange frame of mind one gets into when fully focused on some activity, like drawing or making music (or making love!) or exercising. You never know you’re in the zone when you’re in it, but once you’re out of it you have no idea how much time has passed. I did four different layout sketches for the Valentine, and I felt really good and like I’d been working at them for a long time. I looked at the clock and it had been just fifteen minutes. Other times when I draw or write, an hour can pass like that *snap!*. It’s very mysterious. Anyway, I’m excited to start doing the real drawings for this year’s card. I’ve picked out some potential fonts for the headline, and I may go for a fancy serif look this year instead of the usual sans-serif.

Since the Valentine brainstorm-sketching took such a short time, I used the rest of my hour to do some sketches for the website overhaul. Ideally, I’d like to have the site fixed up and ready so I can include the link on my V-day card, but I’m not going to push it if that doesn’t happen. On the other hand, it looks like I might need to order some more business cards in the next month or so, and if the site is ready by then I can put my own URL on the card instead of Etsy’s. So that’s another incentive to get the site set up ASAP!

While doing today’s morning pages, I pondered yesterday’s work day (and yesterday evening’s weariness), and came to two conclusions: first, if I’m working straight through all day, I must take more stretch breaks. There’s not a thing I do in my creative life that isn’t bad for my body, and it’s up to me to take care of it so I can continue writing, drawing, crafting, and using the computer for years and years! Second, working all day also fills my head with way too many thoughts. If I don’t wind down properly, my brain tries to decompress from all the activities of the day when I’m lying there in the dark trying to fall asleep, and this makes for poor sleep and weird dreams. I’m thinking I can take care of both these problems at once, by doing something I’ve attempted to adopt many times: stretches from 8:30-9 PM, wind down from 9-10. I’m already too late tonight for 8:30, but I’m still going to aim for some stretches and winding down before bed.

Non sequitur: I’ve been on a nostalgic-music kick lately, thanks to Lala. Tonight I’m listening to Paula Abdul’s Spellbound, one of the first non-classical tapes I ever owned. Wow, Ms Abdul is really not a good singer. But the songs are a lot more interesting than I expected. Yesterday I tried returning to a Better Than Ezra album — I loved “In the Blood” — and I couldn’t finish a single song, they sounded that dated. So it’s a bit of a shock to find that Paula Abdul holds up. There are few things like music to bring one back to earlier days; as a writer, I’m grateful for this mental-emotional time machine!