A kick up the bum!

I've spent most of the last few days (while conscious anyway, I have a cold and I have a tendancy to sleep ridiculous amounts when I'm sick) sitting being very aimless and thinking of all the things I should be doing and haven't, and mentally adding them to an as-yet unwritten list for some unspecified 'tomorrow'.

So I still haven't....

• Finished listing the beads on my desk to my eBay shop (get a move on woman, there are only 6 styles and some chain left to do)
• Tidied my office
• Put away all the new storage boxes into useful places where they can be used to STORE
• Put away all the stuff that I HAVE listed and that is now selling and isn't where its supposed to be when it comes to packing
• Done any art 'lessons' of any variety
• Made any jewellery.
• Not even managed the tinyest hint of writing a tutorial. Stupid thing is I know exactly which project I want to write up - I just haven't done it
• Done anything on my 'book'. OK its not actually a book, its writing for personal gratification and the satisfaction of curiousity for interested parties, but it still needs doing!
  
• Finished my jewellery website. All it needs is a few pictures and a link changing. Not rocket science.
• Read this months jewellery magazines. I have a Simply Beads, an Art Jewelry and a Bead & Button that I've done nothing more than quickly flick through.
  
• Gone through all the starred stuff in google reader and acted on those which require action

I could go on... but its getting silly.
Trouble is I rely HUGELY on Geoff to help keep me focused. I am not the most self disciplined of people. Not that HE disciplines me (well not at work anyway *grins* ...he can be rath... oh OK, TMI, I'll shut up... ) but he's pretty good at getting me to focus myself. I'm great with ideas, conceptualisation, innovation, ingenuity and occasional flashes of brilliance. I'm not so good at daily grafting and staying focused. Neither is Geoff of course, but he's pretty good at keeping me on track. And now he's back at work full time, I don't have that help here when I need it.

So focus, Stephie. Focus!

A bit of a bust...

I've been a bit useless today really. Not helped by feeling decidedly washed out post-friday night having gone out for drinks for our friend Andy's birthday. I'm getting too old to get trashed and sleep on floors.

But today... I've slept a lot for me, again I think because I'm slightly ill with a sore throat and sinus infection. I've not done much in the way of work due to a combination of illness/sleeping, the Evil Nieces being here till 4pm and then a (welcome) trip to Georgie's of madcowbeads. It was good to see her and good to get away from the kids. Then came back, had dinner, slept some more and have pretty much messed about on Facebook until now.

Tomorrow... I need to focus. I have a lot of stuff on my desk ready to list in my ebay shop and it needs to be done yesterday, then I need to send out my Monday product update email. I really need to do various things this week that have been sorely neglected as well. My design ideas gallery hasn't been updated in ages, I desperately need to start writing a jewellery tutorial a week, I also need to do the finishing touches to the jewellery website and start promoting it - its structurally there, more or less, but needs prettifying and personalising - and I have a whole bunch of jewellery that needs making to model some new findings I have in.

I'm dreading Tuesday's weigh-in. I ate soooo much rubbish over the weekend its unreal - I worked my way through a fried breakfast, then lunch, then chocolate, then a BK meal... etc... I rarely eat any of that stuff - or drink - and I dread to think how its affected my weight loss. Not well I suspect.

As for beautiul artistry-de-Stephie... gonna have to wait a few days I think, way too busy with work stuff. Georgie reckons our office is going to be completed soon (its being built) so I need to get in a position to pay the rent very quickly. I'm a little apprehensive about it. I desperately want my stock out the house, its got just too big to keep here but given funds, I'd go with filling in my swimming pool and putting a great big insulated shed in the garden. Sadly thats about 15-20k to be done properly which is way beyond our current means. But paying for space is going to be tight, I'm not making as much money as I should be at the minute, and I'm not looking forward to having to leave the house every day.

There's also the additional problem that, at the minute Geoff is working and we only have one car between us. And I can't get up there without a car. It also means that most days we're going to be back to me doing the packing on my own because we have Cam around once Geoff and the car are home and we can't really drag him up there every day. Plus I think G and I have different idea on how I'll be useing it. I see it as a storage and packing space, she sees it as joint premises complete with office-hours phone manning between us which really isn't practical for me - I can't have the computer up there because I can't live without it here and I don't want to leave the dogs and cats on their own all day. So its difficult. But it will be nice to not have the stock here.

Lesson errr...

I have no idea what 'lesson' number I'm up to. And I did these a little while ago anyway - almost two weeks ago, I mentioned I'd been sketching purple animals - well here they are. I wasn't going to post them, being rough sketches to see if I could get animal shapes vaguely correct but *shrugs* I've been too lame for words and haven't posted anything painty or draw-y or bead-y for ages (because I haven't done anything!) so this is my penance!

They were very quick, very rough sketches from photos. My personal favourite is the lion cub - although thats actually the one that looks least like to photo I was working from (in that the the original was erm... a kitten. But all kittens think they're lions anyway!). There's a multitude of flaws which I shan't bother to list - what I take from this is that yes, I can in fact learn to draw and indeed am doing so. I couldn't have done these two months ago.

Just half an hour to go....

...then I can SLEEP! The girls have been... tiring in the extreme today. Every time I've left the room to try and do anything their have been wails of Auntie Stephhhhhh I want a drink, auntie Stephhhhhh I want a sandwich, Auntie Stephhhhhhh, I need the toilet ad infinitum... so I'm kind of wrecked and peed off in the extreme now.

Which is a shame because I suspect if the girls hadn't been here I would have had a really rather creative day. I got all fired up last night after realising the 2008 Bead & Button Bead Dreams competition was now open. Not that that I expect to even register as more than an entry fee but one has to start somewhere and get in the habit of submitting (and that somewhere is erm... one of the biggest beading jewellery competitions in the world...) and I've had all manner of sparkling entry possibilities whirling through my head and no time to work on the detail. I reckon work productivity would have featured as well, I have soooo many things at the minute that I need to model in the form of sparkly jewellery and no time to make anything up.

I also found an RSS reader that I LIKE in the form of Google Reader. Perhaps I haven't really looked very hard before but no description of a free RSS reader ever sounded like exactly what I wanted. Google reader IS. Its perfect and I love it and now all those zillions of RSS feeds I click subscribe on and promptly forget about are all nicely displayed as new items for me to read on my browser homepage. I truly am in love.

So I'm feeling artistic, productive and completely and totally frustrated at my complete inability to act upon it due to stress-inducing babies of the niece variety. Made slightly more annoying because I strongly suspect that Phil could have picked them up this morning and taken them into their nursery for the day. But Phil has vanished off the face of the earth. Plus its Georgie's birthday TOMORROW and I still haven't finished her blinkin present (eeep!... its been in-the-planning-stages for weeks!)

The good news is that, assuming Phil actually materialilses into some sort of solid and useful form, rather than a rumoured existence, the girls WILL be going home tonight and WILL be going to their school tomorrow. Then we need to not only repair the damage 3 days of small girls does to a house, but completely clean and hoover it so my asthmatic mother doesn't die when we leave her babysitting (we're off to have birthday drinkies with Andy tomorrow night and will be gone from tomorrow lunchtime to sometime Saturday afternoon).

And ~yay~ typing has cut down my time-to-go to just 15 minutes till Geoff gets home. ~does a happy dance~. And I don't think the girls are screaming... which could be a bad sign but I'm hoping one or both has fallen asleep, they did at this time yesterday.

The girlies have descended

Now as anyone who knows me even vaguely well is aware, I'm not good with babies. Yes this is despite having four of em. I'm never quite sure what to do with them (apart from the basics of keep em fed with dry nappies). Plus my brain switches itself off and runs away screaming when confronted with the task of Keeping Small People Happy. If I start in a neutral mood, I merely descend into a zombie-like numbness. If I'm tired or stressed or have other things to do I morph into in an incapable, sobbing wreck. I think its a conditioned reaction of way too many years of PND which resurfaces when I'm around little people. And today I have two of em.

Usually, everyone is very careful to make sure I'm not left with small babies. Its a simple matter of pragmatism. We wouldn't ask Geoff to do jewellery design, my mother to do marketing, dax to do financial management, tricia to do website design - or me to do childcare. Because we're all a bit crap at those things that we wouldn't ask each other to do. So usually in this situation, Geoff would look after the babies and I'd make money. Because I'm good at making money and Geoff is good with kids. Sady at the minute, Geoff is also in the somewhat novel position of breadwinning and therefore at work today leaving me to play Auntie Steph to two very lovely but very demanding small girls while their mom hatches a third.

Sooo... how to approach it? Do I try seeing if I can work while they occupy each other in the living room? I have shitloads to do but if I end up not being able to do it when I've planned to do so I'll get majorly stressed. Or do I write off the day entirely, shut down my PC and move into the horrible dark living room for the day? I'm aware that technically its possible to just.... go with the flow and be wherever is most practical at the time. I'm just very much an all-or-nothing girl. Half-assedness doesn't come naturally and 'maybe getting a little work done, if I can' is very much half assed. And kids being chaotic and unpredictable, I can't plan ahead well, I can't set targets and goals and lists for the day which might seem like a little thing to you but its a major issue for me. I need my time to be planned and filled because boredom and indecision and internal conflict are not things I deal with very well.

So.... expect the worst, and anything else will come as a nice surprise has to be the way to go I think. It frequently works as well. So if I expect the kids to be horrible and demanding and me to totally not deal I feel better when its not as bad as expected. You'd think it has the potential to be a self fulfilling prophecy - ie I think it will be awful so it will be - but surprisingly, it doesn't tend to work like that.

Skiving! With purple unicorns!

Hokey cokey... I've been OK today. Still rather tired but I think thats the beginning of a cold taking hold, I felt decidedly ill last night and first thing this morning. Which was unfortunate given that it meant I forgot my dentist appointment until they rang with a 'Mrs Hall... you were supposed to be here five minutes ago'. Ooops.

Nonetheless I've been good and (mostly) worked today. Then Geoff and co went off to geekland and left me with the Evil Small Children who were on the whole OK. Finn did require my pretty much constant presence until he went to sleep but was happy with me reading in there with him. And Cam both let geoff leave and went to bed with no complaints which is nothing short of miraculous.

Then I escaped and skived off for a couple of hours. Technically I should have been doing stocktaking, in practise I've been sketching purple animals. And a unicorn. Just to practise drawing shapes accurately more than anything. I did have to find a clear picture of a horse's head to check what kind of nose they have. Flared nostrils. Got it now. Thought the bear nose didn't look quite right on my unicorn... I'm improving. Still not great though I need to be much better. I can't draw all the cool things in my head till I'm better at it.

Other than that... things are boring. My sister STILL hasn't had the bloody baby. I wish she'd get a move on so I can relax and not be permanently ready to drive down the M4. Bitch woke me at 3am to come down when she had the last one. That was fun....
Darren turns 16 on Thursday (eeep!) and should be starting to work for me next week as week (its a long story... but I get cheap labour, he gets bribed to actually pass his GCSEs.... because he's damn clever but damn lazy and so disillusioned with school its unreal). Jay's friend's parents came round to complain about prank phonecalls at 2am on Sunday morning *sigh* and Geoff goes back to work on what looks like Monday (coincidentally the same day as my mother - another blinking physicist contractor - goes back to her old workplace). Nothing has made me laugh all day which is a little sad.

And I'm now bored. Geoff's been out all evening and I definitely prefer having someone around to mutter at. I'm not tired (plus I'd quite like to still be awake when Geoff gets back)

I'm bloody knackered

I have finally been through every single template of every single relevant product in my shop (there's around 1200 products - with around 1-2 templates each) and changed all the bloody listings that still have image URLs for the old domain. Its boring, mind numbing and what few braincells I have left are attempting to escape their torture by climbing out my nose *sniff*. I also stock took as I went... so now in theory all my stock levels for those categories - which is most of the stuff I have - are correct and absolutely everything is listed for sale. Erm all the already written-and-photographed stock that is. That doesn't include the few hundred lines I have sitting here unphotographed, uncounted and unwritten. So much as I'd like to, I can't really take much of a break yet. But its a good start to the year I guess and my shop is now reopened so I should start making money pdq again. Which we need coz we're a bit screwed at the mo.

Soooo tomorrow its stocktake the remaining stuff that doesn't have potential wrong domains - glass beads and jewellery - sticking the jewellery up on the new website as well as I go. Then starts the slow process of getting through all the brand new lines that aren't up yet. And I'm still only on step 2 (of 10) of The Big Picture. And they're not even linear steps *sighs* they go like this:

1..2....3....4................5..6......7...................................8.............................9......*10* utopia!

Or to put it more simply, the first 6 steps - about 2 months. The next 3 steps - about 6 months and simultaneous. Thats way more planning and forethought than I've ever shown any ability to stick to before.


Unsurprisingly I've done bugger all other than work my bum off and sleep the last few days but I figure now the absolute immediate essential stuff is out the way I can maybe go back to having slightly more balance. And, y'know, reintroducing my husband to his wife. I think he's forgotton who I am.

And finally a question.... because I'm really quite interested in the answer. Is finding balance supposed to be so damn difficult?

Its a MAJOR mental logistics problem trying to get my head around doing work-play-family-house-health-etc every day. How do people manage it all the time?

Coz my natural inclination is to one or the other. Like... I can work solid for a week no problem. I can spend days straight reading new books. I can decide my house needs cleaning / redecorating and keep going until the damn thing is done. I've lost weeks of my life completely immersed to the exclusion of everything else when finding new hobbies. I've lost entire months of my life in online communities (or amateur dramatics! Away from rehearsals, costumes need making, props and sets need doing, the am dram pub quiz team Needs You!... is very easy to give your entire life over to it)

But I find it sooooo hard to do little bit of each, every day. So whats the secret?

Being a good girl

Sadly the fat chick picture tells me that I've lost the ability to do sweet, cute and delightfully angelic so I shan't try. It would be grimace-like. Sadly my kids noticed it and have been teasing horribly. Or rather Darren was teasing horribly until he decided to convince me that if he really stopped talking to me I'd be worried (haha - I won that one though, he's 'not speaking to me' for a week to see if I get panicky. Yay! No incessant teenage rambling!). Then he just sent Jay in with comments about double chins *glares*.

But I have been behaving in the sense of sticking to my lists a little more. Work has been getting done, although I've changed the shop reopen date to Monday to allow me to get through the rest of the stock edits unhindered, I've been dutifully getting my minimum-per-day exercise, staying (mainly) off the chocolate and attempting to get my finances slightly more... afloat. As Geoff appears to be still largely non-posting on his journal, I'll say that it looks like he's going back to work part time as a contractor - at least for a little while. I won't pretend I won't miss having him at home - I'm not sure how I'll feel to be honest, I've been a lot less depressed with him around - but we need the extra income at the minute. We're not entirely sure how we'll manage kids though given that Cam needs collecting from school at 3.15 daily and I don't currently have a car.

I'd like to have found some time for drawing/painting but most of the stuff I'm in the middle of is currently at the stage where its going to require a good few hours uninterrupted to get further and I haven't really had those hours to spare. I have however got several new books that I've yet to read some of which are relevant to the artwork I'm working on so could read them instead, takes considerably less time!

Sadly the one major thing on my do every day list that I've skipped today is 'something houseworky' so I'm going to bugger off and change the cat litter trays in a mo... Oh and I didn't take my extensive collection of vitamins, supplements and meds this morning either. Ooops. Bad Stephie. Bad, bad bad. *Adjusts the halo from where it slipped anklewards*

The End is Nigh!

So its another New Year's Eve and another night in. Technically Geoff and I were supposed to get to go out this year - we had my sister's kids last year so it was OUR TURN, dagnabit! But Daxi is 8 and a half months pregnant and not in any real condition to have our kids as well as her own so we don't get to go out. I can't even drink because I'm on labour emergency call (so if she goes into labour I get to jump in the car, drive down there and look after the evil wee girlies). Which is a shame because I'm high as a kite at the minute and partying the night away would be FUN. Although I'd be seriously at risk of inappropriate, gender irrelevant snogging. But c'est la vie.. there's always next year and she's going to bloody well get spayed this year if I have to take her to the vets hospital myself!

Otherwise I'm good. My Plan is going to... well, plan, helped along by the fact that I'm almost certainly mid mania at the minute, not sleeping, highly energetic and ultra efficient but I'm pleased I've been doing quite well at keeping a balance betweeen different things. Work, play and home are all featuring in equal amounts (even my husband doesn't appear to feel neglected... just slightly harrassed by my constant demands that he do this, that and t'other). I have set myself the possibly unrealistic target of stocktaking everything and changing all those blinkin domains by the 3rd (because thats when the shop reopens) but I'm actually getting through them OK at the minute so it should be perfectly manageable.

Both Bry's and Jans paintings have had work done on them (I say painting, they're both technically still drawings - brys is at least mapped out on watercolour paper whereas jans is still getting its rough draft done). I was waiting for masking fluid before doing any more work on Bry's (which also served as a reminder Not to Shop when manic - because a simple quest to get a couple of bottles of masking fluid turned into a £350 art materials & paper shopping spree *sigh* including masking fluid from four different retailers...). And my house is getting tidy and hoovered (another classic manic thing.... I clean when I'm manic. I don't clean any other time though...!) I've been kind of good with not eating too much rubbish which is to say I've ben eating less of it, not none, although it won't kick into full gear until all the christmas goodies are gone. And I've been home exercising dutifully. Holly likes it - slightly bemused kitty rubbing up against me when I'm on the office floor doing stretches!

So... here's to a productive, busy and highly enjoyable 2008 :o)

~loves y'all lots~

Stephie

Making my life better - creativity

"I want to find a balance between money making, personal fulfillment and my responsibilities as a wife and mother. I want to make my husband and children happier while not feeling it takes away from the money or personal side of my life."

That was written amidst some notes but probably sums up what I'm aiming for overall.

With my job, and business development plans, creative wellbeing is intrinsically tied to work. So this post is about creativity and work as two separate but interrelated topics. I'll have a separate one about money and work although again, I have a fairly holistic approach. How could work, money, creativity, relationships, health and fitness not be interlinked? They're all about the common theme of me and my sense of happiness and fulfillment.
I want to work through the points 2 and 3 in Steven Aitchison's article 'Change Your Life Part 1: Grab Your Balls'

[Taken from his post with my answers in red:]

Most people don’t know what they really want to do with their
working life. Try the following exercise:

Write down 7 things you love to do: Read, Shop, Spend time with friends, Draw, Play with Beads, Write, Receive praise

Write down your 7 best talents (be honest and don’t be shy): Design, Analysis, Seeing how things (physical or abstract concepts) work, Jewellery making, writing, ability to learn quickly, sales, animal interpretation

Write down 7 jobs you’d love to do: Jeweller, Artist, Singer, Entrepreneur, Writer (non fiction), Wildlife photographer, erm... I'm stuck

Write down 7 things other people say you’re good at: Jewellery making, art & design, making people feel better, self analysis, sales, techy web stuff, mind reading (its a combination of empathy, logic and interpretation of body language, I do it unconsciously).

Write down 7 courses you would take [cut - specified university but I think thats too limiting. Not everyone wants to learn something purely academic - personally I've done quite enough academia to know I'm damn clever, now I wanna have fun!] if you had the chance: Silversmithing, salsa classes, drama, enamelling, fantasy watercolour painting, the psychology of mental illness, circus skills

After you have down this look at all the things you’ve
written and try and find a common theme. It might be teaching, it might be
learning, it might be driving just try and find the theme.

Art, design, performance, sales. I want to be good at my arts, and I want to achieve recognition and financial recompense for them.

3. If someone gave me a million pounds

If someone gave you a million pounds to change careers what
career would you choose?

I'd take the opportunity to learn to become a bench jeweller, opal cutter and artist, and to develop a name writing about my chosen arts. All three skills would require learning and practise.

[end article text]

To an extent I know what I want to be, what I want to do and how I need to change things to get there - but I think everyone knows that about themselves really, whats important is working out the specifics.

• I want to develop as an artist.
• I want the development of my websites, galleries and tutorials to drive money in through the business rather than the sales side being the focus and everything else being an afterthought 'when I have time' - switching those focuses is perfectly possible but requires planning and determination.
• I want to spend less time on the work that I dislike to free up more time for the artistic side.
• I want to get my websites up,
• I want to be a good artist,
• I want to be beautiful and I want to keep in touch with the things I enjoy.
• I want to stop procrastinating with things that mean nothing and result in me getting frustrated,

I can see all the answers are there, everything I need to change my entire life focus and I can see what's stopping me from reaching it. I need to work out how to get past those obstacles, not just now but as an ongoing thing.

So - back to the focus. Creativity is a wonderful thing and I have the good fortune to be passably good at most things I try. I also learn extremely quickly. But I do have a tendancy to be impatient and fickle. My interests can change quickly and I'm not very good at working myself through passably good and onto excellence. I'm also quite poor at doing things that require a degree of setting up - because its not instant gratification and inevitably requires the drudge work afterwards of clearning up. My strongest artistic skills are cold jewellery making, web design and written communiation - because they're the ones I've been doing the longest. They're also the ones that currently contribute to my income. I'd like to add traditional art, cgi art, bench jeweller, opal cutter, and specifically specialist jewellery making writer to that skill set that makes money. Of those four extra things, writing is the only one I currently do so it stays as its essential to my business plans. The others are all new skills that will require development over a period of time. As my current interest is traditional art (and by traditional I mean pencils, pastels and paints), that stays too. Bench jewellery and opal cutting both require additional expenditure and learning from scratch so they can be pus aside for later development. CGI art I was reasonably good at until I found a reason to stop doing it, and realistically I no longer have a computer capable of dealing with modelling software. So it stays on the shelf as well.

Creativity requires regular practise - the more you do it, the better you get. Simple and obvious but easy to overlook. Some creative things are essential to my job. Jewellery making sells my beads and components by demonstrating their potential use. Writing enables me to sell my products through clear use of words. Web design enables me to create welcoming and easy to use environments in which to shop. My fledgling tutorials project is aimed at reaching a wider jewellery-making audience to buy my products (I write the tutorials using the ebay guides feature. Whether you love it or hate it, ebay has great search engine ranking). But they all need developing. I have a jewellery gallery within my ebay shop aimed at providing design ideas but it doesn't get updated anywhere near as often as it should. I should be producing a tutorial a week, and I've only managed two since the conception of the project several months ago. Both finished jewellery and jewellery making sales websites are still in their embryonic stage. I have plans to start writing for magazines, again with the aim of promoting myself and my products to a wider audience (but need the websites finished first, realistically - eBay is a problematic venue). And I have all manner of plans for raising my internet profile to much higher levels (again, I kind of need the websites finished first). Artistically, I see no particular reason that I couldnt become a good enough artist to be saleable, but more importantly, its something I enjoy doing for ME. I don't want to spend every waking moment obsessed with whether what I'm doing makes a profit.

I believe that doing (I used 'practising' first but that suggests 'not for real' which is misleading) those artistic skills, regularly and consistantly will automatically result in a greater income. As above, I want to use my creativity to drive sales to the more mundane side of my business, by creating a reputable, well regarded presence within my fields, rather than my focus being entirely on the mundane side with anything creative being an afterthought. So my products are listed, sold and restocked with very little direct input while traffic comes from making jewellery, writing about design ideas, tutorials, magazine features etc which is a major shift from where I am now where all of my sales come through ebay and I'm constantly revising listings, and adding new products (and getting very bored and frustrated with it, and angry at myself for being bored with it).

So on a regular basis I aim to:

• Draw or paint
• Make Jewellery
• Write online tutorials for publishing on both my websites and ebay
• Write tutorials aimed at specific magazines
• Spend some time every week looking at promoting my web presence through the use of online communities (various methods from writing book reviews to offering advise on jewellery making forums)

I should be spending some time, every day, at a creative activity that I enjoy.

To do this I need to:

• Get my house in order - finish my websites and make sure my stock is all listed
• Energise myself - mental energy is related to physical energy and that is related to diet and exercise
• Create a calm environment - I hate mess and disorganisation (bit stupid really given that I'm one of the messiest people I know) - schedule in regular housework.
• Develop a balanced life schedule. I don't mean to the exclusion of spontaneity but I dont want to be sitting round going arghhh I don't know what to do either. I'm at my best when I'm structured and busy and I operate well with lists.
• Have welcoming artistic environments. My bead room is getting better, it feels a bit more homey now and Geoff shifted his CCG cards off my desk in there. My stock will be moving out of the office at some point in spring (to new premises - they're currently being built) at which point the office  can be optimised towards Geoff and I doing things we enjoy. Drawing is OK at my desk, painting really isn't.

My main problem here is balance and scheduling and organsation and I want help and suggestions with this.