More Than a Little Tired: The State of the Place

Here’s where I am right now. 

I wanted to take two weeks off at Christmas to have a little physical (and mental) down-time and be able to spend a good five or six days doing an extreme clean on my studio, without having to post bland social media pretending to do things when I was really resting and nesting. 

Spoiler: I did not get those two weeks off. 

I thought I could maybe make that up (I don’t know why I thought that) by doing things a little slow in January - but with a giant shop update the second week of January and an idea to have one big update a month going forward, instead of a small handful of things every week or two… so I felt I had to push push push myself to have a goodly number of things to list the second week of February. 

Turnaround on things is usually 6-8 weeks, so starting stuff mid January for release in mid February was… not my finest idea. Especially with a lot of other things going on.

I have 3400 unread emails, and roughly the same number that have at least been opened but I haven’t done anything with yet. I have Christmas cards I haven’t even opened yet!

In the next four days I need to fire the kiln twice; one mid-fire and one low-fire. I only have half a kilns worth of pieces for each firing, so I’m scrambling to finish things to pad out both. 

My studio is a straight-up disaster. I have about two-thirds of a flat space available, which means to get a whole flat space, I have to move things from the work space over here to somewhere over there. But the next day I need to work on the other station, so before I get started I need to move everything from over there, to somewhere else. Why don’t I just go through and clean/put away/toss the stuff I keep moving? Because it takes an hour during the day to move stuff around as I need to work, but it would take a good nine to ten hours to go through everything - possibly more than that. And I have too much work I need to get done to take a day or two off to clean. 

Do I get days off? Somewhat; I’ve had some medical things going on that I’ve needed to take… let me check my calendar… four. I’ve taken four days off from work in the last twenty-one days in order to take care of things like a hearing test and massages and meeting with my primary care physician. Not to mention hours here and there on the phone or at Walgreens trying to get two new medications approved because of some weird pre-authorization bullshit. I’ve also started late work or cut out early at least once a week because I’m just so tired. 

Three big things have happened in the last… eight days? Ten? One: I got the results from a CT scan on some ongoing things in my lungs that my doctor has been keeping an eye on, and everything she was looking at (and sent me to a specialist for) has disappeared (also my new asthma medication is already working!). Two: The friend who was staying with me (supposed to be for three months, turned into three years) is in the process of moving out. Three: I’ve won an almost four-year game of chicken with Wells Fargo and have paid off my mortgage so I now own my 15 acres and house free and clear. Those are all great things, but they’re a lot. 

What else do I have to do in January? Which ends in like… five days? Six? 

I still have to finish making and send out January Patreon ceramics, which I just remembered about last week, so that’s getting to be a rush. I have one piece that’s low fire, and two that are high-fire, and all three are too big to put in Little Geek. But I don’t have enough glazed pieces for either temperature to justify firing Big Geek… so I need to find some things that are bisque that I can glaze and fire within days. But those things also need to be things that need to be restocked or things that I’d already made and were planning on bringing in at some point. 

I want to finish up a chapter to post on Patreon. 

I have videos I want to edit. 

I have blog posts I want to write, both for work (about recent new items and things that are happening) and for personal (me, blah blah blah ramble ramble). 

I really really really want to clear out those 3400 emails, and the rest of them that also deserve an answer. 

I want to update many of the category photos on my website, take photos that I have written down I meant to have updated by the end of 2024, make new ads for Ravelry to get the word out about my yarn club, check for broken links and update some pages with some new things Shopify has come out with that I just haven’t had time to implement. 

And I want to clean - really, deeply - clean my studio. It’s truly gotten to the point that I have to take those eight to ten hours (or longer) and really get everything in order. This weekend I had to order a new little bluetooth clicker thing to control the camera on my cellphone so that I can take photos for stop-motion videos without touching and jostling the camera. Somehow in the… five or six weeks since I ordered the original one, I’ve lost it. 

Sunday, my friends Dov and Dacia, who were visiting me over the weekend, helped me get started on the studio - getting it to a place where I am happy to step in and feel inspired to clean, rather than overwhelmed by everything. I started cleaning up around the laser engraver, and discovered that I’ve ordered both types of cutting boards I burn, twice, because I’d ordered a box of each and then those boxes got buried under things and I either forgot I ordered them or gave up on trying to find them, and ordered more. 

Ordering more things because I’ve lost the original or it’s buried under stuff  is… not sustainable. I have GOT to get my studio under control. 

So, y’all, I’m going to take a week off. Maybe even two weeks. I’m going to work on my sleep (a plan I’m implementing with my primary care physician, because my sleep has been poor since Tim died). I’m going to work on eating the right thing (I’m working with the same doctor on improving my protein intake which is SUPER embarrassing to say out loud because I do NOT want to sound like one of those gym bros who’s super into unseasoned chicken). I’m going to open and read all of my Christmas cards. I’m going to meet friends for lunches. I’m going to whittle down that email count. I’m going to work on a system for all of my in-process videos (it’s a challenge to make one video showing the whole process when the whole process takes eight weeks and you forget what you’re doing after about three days). 

And I’m going to clean my studio (thank you, Dov and Dacia!).