New Year, New Journey

 

    Hello everyone! Yes I, like many of you, have managed to survive 2020 with a bit of my sanity still intact. A bit wavery, but considering all things, I'll take it. So, what are my plans for 2021? Considering that at the beginning of last year, I had declared that it was my experimental year, I feel that this year should be my year of organization. For those who have no idea what I mean, let me explain. My “Experimental Year” was meant for me to be open to trying new things (i.e. new products, styles/subject matters of art never tried before) along with working on things that I've been struggling to depict properly. It was meant to be a learning experience to see what worked for me, what didn't and see how potential customers reacted. This year would continue that idea but also would be my “Organizational Year”, in which my goal is to not only clean and organize my work/studio space but to do the same for my life both on the personal side and business side.

So What to do First

Work in Progress

    Making a game plan and clean. The plan is to slightly separate my work/studio space from the rest of the room without making the whole place feel closed off. A little difficult to do when my area is in our bedroom and we have a private patio area. What does this mean? Though the section of room that I'm using is about 74inx136in (6ft2inx11ft4in), the space I basically reside in the most is 74inx81in (6ft2inx6ft7in). What makes this a smidge more complicated in reclaiming a bit more space so that things are a bit more streamline and such is my equipment being so large. Discussing things with my wonderful father, we've been able to come up with a plan where my scanner will be getting moved to where my printer is currently being housed on top of my filing cabinets and we'll be building a stand so things can be stacked a little. Of course this move may cause me to have to move where things are computer wise and have me do some cable maintenance but that is to be expected.

    Cleaning so far has been the most time consuming part since I haven't really had a decent chance to do some serious deep cleaning. I would often just start cleaning and then a deadline would pop up so I would stop to get work done. The result is things just being pushed to the side with the thought of “I'll take care of this later”. Of course this turned into piles of debris or either laundry or recyclables and trash I need to sort through along with dust. So much dust. Thankfully the start of the year is usually slow for me work wise so I'm having the chance to tackle things I've been needing to pay attention to for a great while. Up to this point I've managed to clean and rearrange 2 of the 3 bookcases I have. I still have several piles of recyclables and supplies to sort through but so far so good. However, I have the distinct feeling that my vacuum cleaner is forming a hatred for me because of all of the fine dirt and such I've been cleaning up.

There is much more to come in the future as I continue this journey so if you'd like to follow along and perhaps get inspired or just be amused at my flailing and problem solving. I still have so much more to do as I transform my workspace into a place I can work freely in without it looking like I'm trapped behind a wall of random junk.