Sunday, January 8th

Not the most enticing photo of food, but trust me; it was delicious.

Sunday was a day of rest work. Does that make sense? I pretty much sat at my desk all day and caught up on things. Started working on sales tax (not late until the 20th, so I still have a few days to beat my head into the desk… 2012 may be the year I go ahead and hire an accountant). Did a lot of things that distracted me from math, such as loading all the Epcot photos from October. Going through old paperwork and throwing things away. Going over my work schedule.

Did I tell you I’m working on a work schedule for myself? (Oh my god, you’re thinking, does this girl ever talk about anything other than work?! And the answer would be yes, and those things are pets and knitting and ice cream.) I’ve spent the last couple of months doing a full-on Muppet arm flail as I try to keep up with things. I hope this next sentence makes sense: I’m organized, but not scheduled. I know where everything is — I have to, in order to be able to make things at the drop of a hat. But at night I plot out what I’m going to do tomorrow and the next day it goes to hell because either I think of a hundred other things that have to be done right now, or things explode, or blargity blarg.

For instance, there are things I’ve wanted to make or bring into the HaldeCraft line that I haven’t had time to, because I’m busy remaking this, or restocking that, or trying to keep stock up in so many different places. That’s one of the reasons I bowed out of the craft market; it was getting too hard to keep making new things for that with a 3-4 week deadline, and keep Wild Iris things new (not to mention the exclusive things I’ve wanted to start making for them), and keep Etsy both restocked and have new things offered, and keep an eye on poor Shake Rag out in Melrose. It’s just getting to be too much, and something had to go. Sorry, craft market. I may do them again in the future (especially yearly events like GLAM, if I get a table again) but it’s too much pressure on me to do a monthly event (and try to help run it, but that’s a different and very long story).

So over my “vacation” (and I love that over on Facebook Swapna was all, “you took a vacation?” Hee!) I did a lot of thinking, and I’ve come to a handful of decisions that will hopefully work for me. I think they will. One is being OK with being sold out of something. Telling myself that just because something sold out on Wednesday doesn’t mean that the world will end by the weekend if I don’t get it restocked. Another is setting a work schedule, designated days that I do something. I’ve wanted to do this for a while but worried I might lose some custom work if I said I couldn’t get whatever to someone for three weeks instead of two. Now I have a custom list for yarn mugs that stretches through the middle of September, so if that doesn’t show me people are willing to wait, I don’t know what will!

So. Sunday is Office Day. Monday is making soap and every other Monday (like today) bisque firing the kiln. Tuesday and Wednesday are for painting and glazing bisque, and Wednesday is also for dyeing yarn. Thursday is for wrapping the soap I made Monday. Friday is glaze firing the kiln, and in the morning winding yarn, and in the afternoon making lip balms and lotions. Saturday is for pouring and cleaning greenware. At any time during any of those days, should there not be anything that needs to be done (for instance, if I’m stocked on balms and lotions and don’t need to make more) or something doesn’t take as long as I thought it would, rather than start something else I will take that time off and read a book, or knit. Or go for a walk. Or daydream. And if I need to set any of those things aside to do something else (like this Wednesday, in the morning, I need to go to Shake Rag and take an inventory) or if a friend needs me or Tim and I go out of town or I just need a day off, I can do that. I tried that last week and let me tell you… it was both easy and hard. I feel like I got a lot done, that I was more productive, but at the same time when I finished something at 4:30 it was really hard to go ahead and knock off rather than start a new project!

So we’ll see how that goes. Hopefully, it will go well and I will both feel productive and more rested, new things will come into the shop, restocks will be farther apart but steady, and all will be well.