It can be very difficult to stay motivated. I find myself going through periods of hard work that inevitably lead to burnout and getting stuck in that burnout mode feeling guilty until it builds up and I go back into a hyper-focus mode. It’s an on-going cycle that I need to get myself out of. Something that I’m working on is how to keep my work/life balanced so that I’m making small steps every day and not trying to do everything all at once.
I’ve spent a lot of this past spring planting small patches of gardens around my house. I’m growing sunflowers, tomatoes, lavender, kale, and lots of herbs scattered about my yard. I spend less than 30 minutes a day watering, weeding, and taking care of the plants to help them grow. Every once in a while, I need to take a few hours to re-plant a bunch of potted plants at once. Many of them, I started from seed in March. It’s crazy how much they’ve grown! After spending a week away in Maryland, I came home to tiny green tomatoes, zinnias, and what were knee-high sunflowers are now about shoulder height! Besides being SO excited about my flowers and produce coming in, the point is that it’s hard to notice progress when you’re so close to it.
I’m trying to avoid saying something along the lines of “In a world where everything is instant blah, blah, blah…” but here we are: you can’t grow a garden in a day. I have a huge jungle painting in my house that is about 3’x4′. I started it in July 2021 and am ready to finally finish it. It’s a big scene and is going to have lot of teeny tiny details- snails, frogs, plus countless green leaves. I’ve already put about 25 hours into this piece but in order to get it finished, I’m going to work on it for 1 hour a day for 75 days (maybe more if needed). It’s a daunting project but one that I’m excited to work on again. Currently, I’m thinking I might title it, “Over 100 Hours Lost in the Jungle“.
I’m going to be strict about only 1 hour of working on the jungle painting a day. This way I’m making progress each day but not over-working myself to the point of burn out. It’s also always helpful to take breaks when painting- something I often forget. I’d like to push myself to complete the 75 hours in 75 days but it’s summer and I have a lot of days where I’ll be out of town. It’s pretty inconvenient to travel with a 3×4′ canvas blocking the rearview in my tiny Honda. I’ll definitely complete the 75 hours of work, it just may take me 100 days to do it.
In addition to painting everyday, I’m going to schedule 1-3 hours a day of each of the other tasks I struggle to keep up with. I need to dedicate time to work on the not-so-fun parts of owning an art business. I’m thinking an hour dedicated to finances, website updates, social media engagement, applying to art shows, etc. Knoxville is a great city with lots of coffee shops and libraries where I can get out of my house and still be productive! But since I primarily work from home, I need to schedule 1 hour of miscellaneous house work to help stay focused. When my house is a mess, it’s very difficult to focus on anything else.
Having a loose schedule like this will ensure that I’m getting important tasks done. But, it will leave time after to either continue working when I feel like it, to make art solely for the fun of it, to complete commissions, or to just do nothing the rest of the day if I want.
The last thing I’m contemplating is deleting my TikTok app (not the account). I’m torn because I know that it can be a great tool for sharing artwork and connecting with other artists. But lately it’s just a time waster. It can be very inspiring to use social media to see other art that people have created from all over the world at any given time. However, when I’m in a burn-out period of time, it just becomes over whelming. I find myself scrolling and scrolling, thinking “That’s smart, I should/could make something like that!” and then scrolling on and on and on.
If you’ve read through to this point, thank you. I hope that you use the rest of your day to gently get some of your daunting tasks out of the way! (The tasks that you’re putting-off usually aren’t as bad as you’re imagining they will be!)