Switching Gears

Very slowly, I’m trying to switch gears. It takes a while to get the brain off that big-ass 163-hour project that has consumed me from the end of July (well except for the break in the middle when I let another giant project consume my brain, right?). Being an artistic vegetable for two whole days isn’t that dramatic. It FELT dramatic, but it’s really not.

Sunday night, I did manage to pull out a couple of big sketchbooks and run through them…a little bit. I liked this one and another two for the next bigger quilt. I need one done by the end of January, and then another smaller one by the end of February.

I can do that, but I’m going to need to think about it now. I’m not ready for a big project yet, though. My brain is really fried by the crazy overlapping projects I just did. I have other work to do. I can’t just make art all the time nonstop, however much I’d like to. I would really like to. Yup. I would.

But not an option. I need money to pay for college. I need to stay semi-caught-up at my job (as much as any teacher is ever caught up). I need to clean my damn house.

But I did find the pile of little quilts that got put in this container sometime in July and have not seen the light of day since then. They used to each have their own container, but I needed like 20 of them for the big quilt, so they got co-opted. Under each drawing is the cut-out Wonder Under for that little quilt…this one has a whopping 23 pieces in it. After doing one with 1800+, it’s a relief.

But my studio is still an absolute disaster area. I can’t start a new project without making some attempt to clean up in here. Probably that’s what’s slowed me down the last few days…the thought of cleaning.

Sometimes cleaning is like a mind cleanser. It gives me the mental space from one project that I need to start the next one. Thirty minutes to an hour spent straightening up, putting stuff away, making a home for everything. I can be quite obsessive about that at times. Things sorted in boxes by color or number. It helps me get a handle on the crazy flip flops my art brain does.

Then I found enough bins for all those baby quilts and laid them out with their pieces of Wonder Under. See…now I feel organized.

Shhh. I didn’t finish cleaning up the fabric. Don’t tell anyone. Maybe after back-to-school night I’ll find the energy. Ha! Yeah. Survival week. Sad but true. But I did come to realize there are two hearts with hands, there is one owl, and there are six cats of varying size and complexity and, honestly, weirdness. One is really weird. I don’t care. I want to make it anyway.

And I made it to the gym finally yesterday. I spent most of my time there texting my team about a demanding parent, my daughter about her essay thesis, and remembering at the last minute that I still had a clan attack I had to make (failed that one big time). Luckily, I had dinner leftovers in the fridge, because that would have been the end of it. I should have planned better for tonight, because coming home and cooking is gonna be a hard sell after being at work for 10 hours or so. Parents expect you to be highly functional, but I will have spent all day with your kids! Seriously, your expectations are crazy. I will need a serious caffeine fix and probably a donut. Which isn’t good for me. But I haven’t had a donut since…June? So I’m feeling OK about it.

OK. Work. The one that pays the bills. Gotta go there. Then maybe some cute little weird quilts will start happening. In between grades and copyediting. Yes, I’m grinding my teeth. Why do you ask?