I just looked up the lyrics of that song, to see if there was a good stanza or something I could use in this post, something to tie my topic and title together, and… the lyrics of that song are… well, they’re mostly just “back to life, back to reality” repeated about twelve times in a row, so I guess I’ll stick with that. Sorry, Soul II Soul. When I looked at the bottom and saw the list of people who wrote this song, I was like… it really took eight people to write this? Good lord.
ANYWAY.
About a year ago, I don’t know exactly when… it must have been when I found a planner that I liked everything about other than it started on a Monday instead of a Sunday. I’m a Sunday First kind of girl. For almost all of HaldeCraft (14 years in August!) I’ve used Sunday as my office day. The day I try to get most of my social media done for the next week. The day I try to finish up anything that didn’t get done last week, and set things up for the next week. An office day. A day to work on paperwork, plan out blog posts, take stock of anything I need.
When I switched to Monday, that went flyyyyyyyyyyyyyyying out the window. It seemed as if almost every Monday, I had something to do in Gainesville, which meant at least half (if not all) of my work day was spent in the car. Which meant I spent the rest of the week falling behind, because I hadn’t had a proper day of winding down the week before and winding up for the new week.
Before we went to Scotland, I decided something I wanted to do was get all of the old HaldeCraft social media posts in one place, and sort them. Not every product picture I had taken, mind you… just the stuff I posted on social media outlets. I didn’t start doing that until…. 2012? 2013? So it was a lot to go through. I’m pretty much done now… at least as far as sorting into main categories goes. I have a lot to do still with subcategories (like sorting into “mugs” or “planters” from “ceramics”) but it has already had the desired intention.
I wanted to get a good idea of what I’d posted in the past to think about what worked and what didn’t, what was responded to and what wasn’t, and how I used to stage things. I got a bonus result, too, in that in doing all that, it reminded me of how I used to post – how many times a day, what sort of non-work subjects I would sprinkle in, and how I used to pace out my social media.
One of the changes I’m going to make / ways I’m going to revert to what used to work, is going back to Sunday being an office day. My day to close out the last week, plan for the next week, and spend the day not making art but making space in my schedule for the next week for making art by taking care of business things that might otherwise occupy my head during that time.
Also, after a week of hurricane watching, prepping for, waiting for, experiencing, and waiting for power to get back on… I’m ready to work! I’m ready to get into that studio office and get some things done that will free up time next week for me to write and make art!
… that’s if the cat that’s making biscuits on my lap right now will let me up so I can shower, get more coffee, and walk over to the studio….
Could Newt be any more photogenic?!
Newt looks positively intellectual . . . is he named after Newton? Of the Figge Newtons?
Neither! She’s named after the child in Aliens who screamed all the time. As a kitten, she didn’t meow as much as she just let out this high-pitched squeal, and it reminded us of Newt, from Aliens, who had much the same scream. Thus, the name!