009: Mornings In My Studio

One of the reasons I'm doing this little bit of blogging is to process my thoughts around a couple of changes I'd like to make in the next year. I'm calling one project "Mornings in my Studio". I'm exceptionally fortunate to have my own studio, but due to overwhelm, avoidance, procrastination, and all the other everyday distractions, I've barely used it for much more than storage for the last two years. After 10 years at home with kids, I went back to a day job, and well, the studio has more or less languished ever since.

Every time I try to come in here to do something– anything– I have to clean first. But I'm not just picking up piles of things. Everything is a Silent To Do List of all the projects I've never gotten to, or the collections of supplies and tools to do a project that's waiting for one last thing, or (and perhaps this is the most important) I've just lost all interest in the project itself. I not only don't have the space prepared, I don't have the mental energy to deal with all of it.

Mornings in my Studio is meant to be dedicated time to do many things, including discard, donate, and throw away all the superfluous crap in order to make physical and emotional space to be creative. The parameters are simple: get up at 5:30 am in order to spend time in here for 30 minutes to an hour. I'm starting with creating the mental space by clearing the cluttered physical space. Which will take a while.

I've learned after a whole 9 days of doing this, though, that I don't want to dedicate any of that time in the morning to blogging about it, so the times when I will sit down to do this will be sporadic. Oh well.