Wednesday Whine

You've perhaps heard about the Thursday Thirteen, or the Friday Five on other blogs. Well, I am borrowing the alliteration for the title today....a Wednesday Whine.

Mostly I love what I do. But after spending most of the last few days focused on the tasks I don't like so much, I am going to whine. Feel free to add your ..."I hate that I have to"..whatever .....in the comments. It is not all fun and creativity in the life of an artrepreneur. And today, I am going to whine and complain a bit. Sometimes I just have to get it out of my system!

I hate paperwork! I hate that I have to keep track of receipts, and create and file invoices, and that I have to file sales tax in every state that I do a show in, and they all have different filing schedules....not just different tax rates. I hate the time that it takes, and the sheer drudgery of it. But I am too cheap and too broke to pay someone else to do it. And every few months, the pile gets too big to ignore, and I spend several hours catching up.


I hate packaging and shipping an order. It seems like it should be no big deal. But it always takes way more time than I want to spend on it. Usually there is one or two items that I am missing when I want to send out the order, and so I have to go back to the studio and make those. Then I need to cross check again and make sure I have everything. Find a box. Package everything up so that it is not damaged in transit. Then I need to create an invoice. And make sure I have the information to charge the order to a credit card, or that I have checked their credit references. If not, I have to make one or more phone calls. I also need to include some support material if it is a first order. Find an address label for the box. All these tasks are at different places in the house, meaning trips up and down the stairs, or back and forth from my dining room (shipping room) and the studio (production department), and the office (accounting and billing). Finally, close up the box, and bring it to the post office. Whew. Can you see how such a simple little task becomes a black hole of time?

I hate doing all those tiny little jobs at the end of a project. The things that make a difference to everyone else but me. :-) I warned you I was ready to whine! Stringing cranes so that they can hang. Boxing cranes. Putting earrings on cards, ..... Things that make a piece more presentable and functional.....but my heart is never in them. They are work. Last night I must have strung and boxed about 40 cranes. I would rather just keep making them then do this last little step.....which is no longer a little step when there are this many to do.

I hate that no matter how careful I try to be, it is impossible to put shred in boxes without it ending up all over the floor and the table.

I hate pricing. Not just calculating the price....but actually attaching a price tag to an item so that people know how much it costs. Invariably I am putting price tags on pieces the night before and the morning of a show.

I hate that everytime I need to print out labels for a mailing. It seems like I am having to learn all over again how to do it, every time. It seems like I should have it down by now.

Okay, I feel a little better now that I got that out of my system. So, what are the tasks that drive you up a wall? What do you avoid, till you can avoid it no longer? Whining is for all those little things we are supposed to just do without complaint. But on this Wednesday, the Whining Window is open. Feel free to add your whine to the comment list. I am sure I left a few things off my list.....

Attachment

Last night my thirteen year-old daughter had a meltdown...pretty normal for a thirteen year-old girl, right? She managed to annoy every single person in our house trying to convince them how important it was that she slept in a certain bed at my mother's house on Cape Cod. She had all sorts of rationale. If my mother sold the house, which she is considering, and she does not sleep in that bed, then she may never have a chance again. She called it first. She never gets to sleep in that bed......and on and on, with the emotional intensity that only adolescence can bear on such a problem.

This morning it occurred to me that her struggle is about attachment. Attachment to a specific outcome. Without that outcome, she will not possibly enjoy herself....and of course we all are mean to not understand!

And as I was able to separate from the moment and see what was going on, I could also see how we as artists can fall into this trap of attachment. We get an idea. We start working on it, and it doesn't go as planned. Or it doesn't look the way we hoped it would. We have become so attached to the idea, that we are no longer open to other possibilities. It is good or it is terrible. And if it is terrible, it means we are untalented and foolish. I suppose we could say we are adolescent artists when we fall into this trap. :-)

When I learned to let go of attachment to outcome, my work grew the most, and the ideas flowed more easily. I make crap, just like anyone else. Remember Art & Fear? There is a certain need for volume of production to get to the really good stuff. But not feeling too strongly attached to the bad....or the good... is what helps us be open to the exploratory process that is so critical to creativity. We invest so much of our emotions into each piece of work we create, that sometimes we can't just look at it for what it is.

When we are overly attached to an outcome we can not see that we have permission to veer off of our original path. We do not have to always go the same way. When we hit a roadblock, it is an opportunity. An opportunity to discover something you might never have thought about otherwise.

When we are overly attached, our work can be come stuck. Fixed in place. Immutable. We are not open to exploring new paths that reach out from where we are right now. Do you remember as a kid, how much of play was about "exploring". That is the same excitement and openness we need to bring to our work.

This morning, my daughter seemed to have gained some perspective, and her sister may have also responded to my suggestion that she could have a bit of flexibility. Whatever the reason, the drama of last night has evaporated. The car has been loaded, and they are on their way to the Cape for two weeks. I hope to join them for a day or two, later in the week. And then it will be off to Colorado for a week.....no computer, no e-mail.....a real change of scenery. I don't know what to expect, but I am open to the possibilities!

Painting....a room!

I will warn you upfront, this may seem to be a advertisement. But it is my actual experience with a product that was so terrific, I had to share.

Six years ago, we moved into this house, and one of the first rooms we started to re-decorate was my youngest daughters. I was planning a mural for the room...one that actually was going to go all the way around the room. It was going to be an island in one corner, and then extend into the water, and gradually work around to deep underwater, with fish, and coral, etc. This was before I found polymer clay, and my creative energy was going into things like decorating the house, cooking, entertaining.....

But first we had to remove the wallpaper. The wallpaper had been there for over twenty years. And it did not want to come off those walls. It came in bits and pieces. And it appeared to have been put right onto the wallboard, without any paint or primer. It was the worst job I ever had of taking off wallpaper, and I have taken done my share of this kind of work. Eventually the wallpaper was removed, the walls sanded and primed, and I began painting. I got the sky and the water done. But the next step was going to be the artwork. It was going to take time. And time was in short supply. By this time I had found polymer clay. When I had time, her room was impossible to work in. When there was order in her room, I was swamped with work.....so, six years have passed, and her room has never been finished.

About a year ago we talked about whether the mural we planned was one she even wanted anymore. She loves reading books about dragons.....Tamar Pierce books, Dragonology, etc. So we decided we would paint the room one color, and then paint a dragon, a very large dragon, on the walls.

We picked the color, and the usual delays intervened.

Then this spring I was invited to a buzz campaign...(I had mentioned Bzzagent once before)....to try out a new paint from Benjamin Moore called Aura. It was supposed to be a wonder paint. Cover in most cases with one coat. Washable...even in a matte finish. Extremely durable and fade resistant. Fast drying and low odor. Everything you could want in a paint. Knowing I had to paint her room, and the range of colors I was covering...from white to deep dark blue....this sounded like a golden opportunity.

Even with a free gallon of paint, it has taken me this long to finally carve out the time to paint her room.

Yesterday, around midday, we went out to the paint store to pick up the paint. And I have to say this is not a wonder paint, it is a miracle paint. In four hours, we had bought the paint, cleared out space in her room...a bigger job than I expected....taped the trim, painted the room, and cleaned up! Four hours, from leaving the house to done. Unbelievable. What stunned me was being able to cover in one coat the range of color I had on those walls. This paint rocks!
I will warn you it is not cheap...$56 per gallon. But it is worth every penny. It will save you time, and paint. I have nearly a half of a gallon still left. We are going out to buy some to do the trim. And I may well get around to doing a few more rooms now. No paint I have ever used has been as good as this stuff. It truly lives up to the promise.

I still need to work on that dragon....December or January, when things slow down a bit, probably. But in the meantime, her room looks so much nicer, and it was so much easier to do than I ever anticipated. So, if you have a room to paint, seriously consider this paint. It more than delivers. No more product plugs for a while. I promise.

Context

I wrote about the ingredients for growing into a successful artist. And then the ingredients for being a successful artist/entrepreneur. But what I left out of all this is context. And context matters a great deal.

The context is where we are in our lives.

It takes the right time and place as much as anything else to help bring all of this together. I could not do what I am doing without the support and encouragement of my family. If I had to be the sole breadwinner, and raise a family, and then try to fit in being creative too....I don't think I could manage it. If we didn't have healthcare coverage, then we would have to look for other solutions.
We can pay the mortgage. We can pay for a few extras. But there is not much breathing room in our budget. Not like when we had two paychecks and no kids. But we have what we need, and a bit more.

So all the things I talked about have to have the overlay of where you are in your life. How much sacrifice are you willing to make to make room for your art? How critical is it that you make money from your business right away? How much support can you expect from family and friends as you pursue your dream? It is your dream afterall. Not theirs. And they will be impacted by it. These are the hard questions we all have to face at times, and the answers are not always clear, nor are they universal. The answers are found deep inside ourselves, and may take time to work out. And the answer may be, not right now. The desire may be there, but the timing may be wrong. This doesn't mean we have to close the door forever. Just for right now, if need be.

So, if you read the last two posts, and thought,
"sure, sure....she just doesn't get it. I can't do that right now, not with my life."

I do get it. But sometimes we have to look at the utopian view, and then overlay the reality. But we can still hold onto the dream, no matter how much the current reality may hold us back. Postponing is different than walking away forever. Or slowing down, rather than going full speed ahead. We each need to measure our own pace. But still mindful of where we want to be.