Pretend you are on a boat at sea.

Resourcefulness while making art plus my failed residency-at-home plan.

With my mother-in-law in town for two weeks, my plan was to treat myself to a Residency-at-Home™ for seven days. In my imagination, I would have nearly eight uninterrupted hours each day to dive into a flow state on my project and luxuriate in my work. I thought I would be bathing in extra time.

LOL.

I can’t even explain to you what’s happening each day and why all of the hours are getting away from me, but they are. Each day this week included some sort of appointment or task that kept me in my regular responsibilities: a pediatric dental appointment (which took less than 10 minutes, but somehow also took up over an hour of my time), trips to Costco, attempts at setting up a toddler play time at the local community center (bureaucracy), dinner (we still gotta eat), and the act of delegating child care takes up time or at least emotional energy. 

This experience is not new to me and I don’t know why I expected this visit to be any different. The universe loves to remind you who’s in charge. 

All of that plus a bout of unwelcome rage that keeps pulsing through me. The rage started at the YMCA swimming pool the day after the election when an old white dude refused to share his lane. SHARING IS THE RULE, SIR. The interaction sent me spiraling in anger and I can’t get off the ride.

The whole week has been a not-gentle reminder that 99.9% of life happens in the day-to-day so you might as well set up your days to serve your priorities. After two days of failed Residency-at-Home™, I went back to my old tried and true method of working just 30 minutes a day on the project. I will note here that the extra childcare is very helpful and my 30 minutes often turned into 2 hours (but never into 8 hours).

In the planning stages, I made a couple of rules for myself.

Residency-at-Home™ rules

1. Pretend you are on a boat at sea (aka, use only what you already have, there is no overnight shipping to the middle of the ocean)

2. Resist the urge to go back and fix imperfections (mistakes that would affect the function of the item are allowed to be fixed, but small visual imperfections remain)

3. Go slowly, it does not matter when you finish

4. Addendum: Do a minimum of 30 minutes every day 

A list of notes I took during the week

• Trying to sew quickly on a sewing machine stressed me out. My shoulders hunched up and my upper back crunched over, just slow down.

• Taking it slow is more pleasurable. 

• Leave the ironing board as far away as possible from the sewing machine to prevent too much sitting in one place. This setup forces me to get up and walk a few steps every five or so minutes.

• 30 minutes a day is great, but having a full two consecutive hours gives a lot of opportunity to find your flow

• Not having to clean up is helpful, but sometimes unavoidable

• Work on your personal project for 30 minutes before you start on work you are being paid to do.

• Fantasy audiobooks really take you out of this world.

• During the day in your studio, set yourself up with something small for hand stitching during your Netflix time at night.

• Not being able to buy new supplies is a delightful challenge.

• Experiment and play before deciding ahead of time what “it should look like”

• Write everyday about the experience

• Residency at home is all I can do with a toddler at home right now. Perhaps in the next couple of years I will be able to go to a multi-week residency program alone. 

• Life exists in the everyday anyway so might as well make a habit of it and not wait for “the perfect time” to get your art practice in

• Eat snacks with chopsticks to keep your hands clean.

• I keep going back to Practical Boat Owner to see the solutions they come up with for problems one might face on a sailing trip. Resourcefulness is art!

• Hand care: switch tasks at least every 20 minutes or so to give them a break from repetitive motions.

• No action is wasted. Every experiment (even failed ones) leads us to the place we want to go. Look at this little piece that I ended up not loving for this project, I would not call this a failure, it’s just not the right thing for this project.

• There’s something magical about doing things the long, hard, stupid way.

Oh! You probably want to know what I was working on! It’s from my project wishlist last week: a cushion cover for my found piece of foam. 

Additionally, I worked on a project basket/bag combination during the evening while watching TV.

Plus, my current book pile.

And my “needs to be mended” pile.

Other things from the week

• We watched Buy Now on Netflix - some of the generated imagery was a bit cheesy to me, but the overall message overrides the cheesiness. On one hand it makes me want to stop buying… anything new. But also angry that we are not holding Congress over the fire to pass laws to slow down these corporations from creating SO MUCH CRAP. A very timely film for us to watch since we are entering the Black Friday Hell Season and also related to my project above where I use only what I already have.

• This furikake snack mix from Hana Asbrink is so so so yummy. It’s my new go-to party trick and you should totally try it! 

• Related reading: Practical Boat Owner, Repairs at Sea in case you want some inspiration on being resourceful.

See you next week!

Bekka