Last year, the East Coast was hit with a hurricane and we lost power for three days. I was (and still am) in school full time, with kids in school, a husband who was having some medical issues, and I had just been asked to come back to teaching Sunday school at my church. I was freaking out, overwhelmed, and worn out.
The storm taught me something. When I was forced to unplug from the internet, I actually got more work done in a shorter amount of time (I know, it seems simple), but I also noticed that my boys were getting along better. I started dinner earlier and we ate at the table together as a family. It only took them about 12 hours to unplug and they were good. They played outside, in their rooms, or with each other. We went to bed early (because it was dark and there wasn't anything else to do). We woke up early. I cooked from scratch. I was happy. That was when I realized that burning the midnight oil trying to get it all done wasn't actually working. Sometimes I needed to rest so my brain could run at full speed (see Saturday's post for another lesson on sleep, lol). I needed
Balance.
This year, I've decided that
balance was going to be my goal. I'm still working on it, but yesterday I took the day off from school and I'm feeling more refreshed. I'm still working on going to sleep earlier (I've tried every day for the last three night in a row, and failed). But I've remembered to make dinner earlier and I've been creating a menu every week so that I can make a grocery shopping list for the week. I'm hoping that if I can bring balance to my day-to-day life, I'll be able to carry that over to my creative life.
Now, about the photos, lol. This is a pile of my current Works In Progress (commonly known as WIP's). I struggled to come up with a way to express balance in my chosen creative form, so I decided instead to show my total lack of balance, and why I chose to go with it this year. I have in this pile, 15 current works in progress (4 pairs of socks, two stockings, 1 sweater to repair, 1 blanket, 1 almost-finished shawl. 1 commissioned pair of pink children's mittens, fiber to be spun on my Turkish drop spindle, 2 sweaters, and a bag of sample yarns for design ideas). This is typical of the way that I work, and I'm hoping to streamline a little this year. And I'll admit, for the sake of full disclosure, that this large pile doesn't even represent a quarter of my current yarn stash. I need some balance in my stash too :)
Now, I hope you enjoyed my post on balance, and I hope you'll hop on over to the
Fly Tribe blog to read posts from other talented artists.
