Abra Staffin-Wiebe (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
abracanabra) wrote2008-06-03 09:54 am
abracanabra) wrote2008-06-03 09:54 am
Entry tags:
Work, Scheduling, and Discipline vs. Creativity
Downtime at work lets me write long, rambling posts about the imbalanced balancing act that is my life.
My retrenched job position (more about that later, after a meeting* I'm having tomorrow) has given me back some writing time--sort of. I work mornings only at NgithOwl (and not weekends**)when there's work there, and when there's not work there, I go and work*** the morning at the on-site in the IDS Building. I work full-time to fill in for other managers or to supervise coding projects, as needed. This means that on the one hand, most days I have the afternoons free. I eat lunch at work, bus home, unpack my work bag, and handle paperwork--usually I can start working on other projects by about 2 PM, which gives me 2 1/2 hrs. before I have to start cleaning/cooking/fulfilling my half of the "you mostly support me, and I'll mostly handle the domestic shit" deal. On the other hand, the on-site job means I no longer have whole days--or weeks!--off to work on creative projects. This is good for my bank account but means I need to rethink/create a set schedule/work pattern. And my evenings are mostly booked for (knee physical therapy) exercises, so I can't shuffle other things around into that time.
As you can tell, I've been gnashing my teeth some about this.
I have some difficulty getting myself into the writing groove, which is a separate time-consuming annoyance. It's a matter of will, and the annoyingly useless, craven wailing beast cowering in my mind.
My weekends are set aside for editing, managing submissions, researching markets, critiquing, and other necessary miscellaneous writing-related tasks. My days are filled with work, household maintenance, paperwork, and knee exercises. If I'm to get any writing done, I have to discipline myself to sit down and write and write and write, regardless of hesitation, fear, or impulse, during the specific time that is allotted for it. I don't have time to follow my whimsy, to wander, to explore an intriguing side path, to stumble over a strange shop or gallery and decide to go inside, to try learning a new skill or picking up a new hobby. Or at least, this is how it feels.
Therein lies the crux of the matter.
Without small ventures down the detours less traveled, the new things, the strange things, the unknown, I feel the restlessness growing, the urge to change it all, to just pack a suitcase and vanish on the next Greyhound to anywhere. To abandon my job. To move to another city. To quit things that I've worked and worked at, just so that I can do something new.
Don't worry, I won't. There's too much I value here, and I have too many ties to be able to float away without injuring those I care about (my husband, for one, would be *most* displeased if I up and vanished!). But it makes me snappish and trapped-feeling and desperate to avoid boredom and routine at any cost at all.
Of course, then I'm not productive, and that sends me plunging into a different dark.
It's very annoying, and I don't have a solution, but I really want/need one. I'm not even sure how to map my way to a solution down the road. Scheduling is a lot of it. Maximizing monetary return on my creative abilities (ha!). Irregular projects? I'm not sure. Some of the answer is in GTD, some of it is in Flylady, some of it is probably in more discipline within my writing time, and some of it may be in scheduling "allowable" whimsy, contradictory though that idea is. I don't know. But I do know that I need to figure it out.
This is even without considering my need to do something about my photography to try and take it to the/a next level. Exhibits, a fancy DSLR, professional photo shoots, bizarre mixed-media artworks that float through my brain...let's just say this is a frustration the resolution of which I have temporarily deferred to more pressing concerns.
* A meeting to rehash something that I thought had been discussed and settled at a meeting a month ago. I'd talked to higher-ups about responsibilities/pay/hours, then talked to my immediate supervisor about implementing some changes. A month later, the reminder on my calendar popped up to check back about the status of that if I'd seen no change. So I talked to him, and was told that he'd just been to busy to even talk about it with anybody. So then he talked to somebody, and now I have another meeting. It's quite frustrating, actually.
** There has been some difficulty processing this. There seems to be a logic disconnect where "they" have accepted I only work mornings, but still think I should be able to come in and work full-time days on the weekends.
*** Frequently this work involves lots of down-time, during which I do things like make this post!
My retrenched job position (more about that later, after a meeting* I'm having tomorrow) has given me back some writing time--sort of. I work mornings only at NgithOwl (and not weekends**)when there's work there, and when there's not work there, I go and work*** the morning at the on-site in the IDS Building. I work full-time to fill in for other managers or to supervise coding projects, as needed. This means that on the one hand, most days I have the afternoons free. I eat lunch at work, bus home, unpack my work bag, and handle paperwork--usually I can start working on other projects by about 2 PM, which gives me 2 1/2 hrs. before I have to start cleaning/cooking/fulfilling my half of the "you mostly support me, and I'll mostly handle the domestic shit" deal. On the other hand, the on-site job means I no longer have whole days--or weeks!--off to work on creative projects. This is good for my bank account but means I need to rethink/create a set schedule/work pattern. And my evenings are mostly booked for (knee physical therapy) exercises, so I can't shuffle other things around into that time.
As you can tell, I've been gnashing my teeth some about this.
I have some difficulty getting myself into the writing groove, which is a separate time-consuming annoyance. It's a matter of will, and the annoyingly useless, craven wailing beast cowering in my mind.
My weekends are set aside for editing, managing submissions, researching markets, critiquing, and other necessary miscellaneous writing-related tasks. My days are filled with work, household maintenance, paperwork, and knee exercises. If I'm to get any writing done, I have to discipline myself to sit down and write and write and write, regardless of hesitation, fear, or impulse, during the specific time that is allotted for it. I don't have time to follow my whimsy, to wander, to explore an intriguing side path, to stumble over a strange shop or gallery and decide to go inside, to try learning a new skill or picking up a new hobby. Or at least, this is how it feels.
Therein lies the crux of the matter.
Without small ventures down the detours less traveled, the new things, the strange things, the unknown, I feel the restlessness growing, the urge to change it all, to just pack a suitcase and vanish on the next Greyhound to anywhere. To abandon my job. To move to another city. To quit things that I've worked and worked at, just so that I can do something new.
Don't worry, I won't. There's too much I value here, and I have too many ties to be able to float away without injuring those I care about (my husband, for one, would be *most* displeased if I up and vanished!). But it makes me snappish and trapped-feeling and desperate to avoid boredom and routine at any cost at all.
Of course, then I'm not productive, and that sends me plunging into a different dark.
It's very annoying, and I don't have a solution, but I really want/need one. I'm not even sure how to map my way to a solution down the road. Scheduling is a lot of it. Maximizing monetary return on my creative abilities (ha!). Irregular projects? I'm not sure. Some of the answer is in GTD, some of it is in Flylady, some of it is probably in more discipline within my writing time, and some of it may be in scheduling "allowable" whimsy, contradictory though that idea is. I don't know. But I do know that I need to figure it out.
This is even without considering my need to do something about my photography to try and take it to the/a next level. Exhibits, a fancy DSLR, professional photo shoots, bizarre mixed-media artworks that float through my brain...let's just say this is a frustration the resolution of which I have temporarily deferred to more pressing concerns.
* A meeting to rehash something that I thought had been discussed and settled at a meeting a month ago. I'd talked to higher-ups about responsibilities/pay/hours, then talked to my immediate supervisor about implementing some changes. A month later, the reminder on my calendar popped up to check back about the status of that if I'd seen no change. So I talked to him, and was told that he'd just been to busy to even talk about it with anybody. So then he talked to somebody, and now I have another meeting. It's quite frustrating, actually.
** There has been some difficulty processing this. There seems to be a logic disconnect where "they" have accepted I only work mornings, but still think I should be able to come in and work full-time days on the weekends.
*** Frequently this work involves lots of down-time, during which I do things like make this post!
Believe it or not
Every part of your work to pay the bills vs. doing what you want to do, and to simply not have enough time to get everything done thing is so in tune with how I have felt so many times in my life.
My endeavors certainly aren't as creative in an artistic sense as yours, but the depth of what I have desired and the work involved to get there I feel has been just as great.
For unnrealted reasons to this internal tug-of-war, I went on meds. For anxiety. Related to insomnia, among other things. These meds have definitely relaxed me. They have literally changed how I perceive time. I don't know quite how to explain it, but time passes much more easily now.
The down side, naturally, is that I don't get nearly as much done as I used to....but due to the meds, this doesn't really bother me. So I no longer have the tug of war, at least, not usually, but then again, I have let a lot of the passions go, and relegated them to the status of hobby.
I am certainly not recommending you go down that path; I know that you'd reject it if I was, and I like to see you work your ass off towards your passions, I'd hate to see otherwise; I'm simply telling you what happened to me.
Re: Believe it or not
no subject
I need to learn new skills, to try new things, to find new places, to taste new foods or I get restless and it becomes time to change something bigger. I also get restless when I don't write. I don't write when I'm upset because it all turns out like verbal diarrhea (or my annoyance makes me think it does.) This is a bad, bad spiral.
So far for me the things that have pulled me out of it are enforcing gym time (I know you can only kind of do that one, but I'm going to be going back to Blaisdell if you are interested in being workout buddies of the kind that call and say, "where is your lazy behind?"), really scheduling time to do nothing, and trying over and over to force myself to sit down and write.
I know you know all these things because you have told me them. But I'm hoping being reminded of them will help, like it does for me.
no subject
The writing, yes, it must get done.
I don't know if I told you to schedule time to do nothing. Sounds smart but not like something I'm any good at doing!