I Am My Own Doomsday Device

It could be said that 2012 started off with a bang for me. Or rather the sound of body parts busting a cog at Christmas. The short version is this: I overworked myself during Christmas production and the bod and brain went on strike in protest. But I also have to say that 2011 was a very difficult year on a personal level. I guess everything just came to a head. That said, however, suffering near complete physical and psychological exhaustion is an interesting experience, and it's one I never wish to repeat.

Being of the same mind, my doctor put me on prescribed "pasture rest" though I'm slowly making my way back in the studio with welcome help from Mom and Ham. All in all, it's taken nearly two weeks of total rest—of doing absolutely nothing—to recover. Wow. Let it not be said I don't work hard or don't suffer for my art! And in the same breath, let it said I'm a total smeghead.

Cuz hey, I admit it: I did it to myself. It's a curse and a blessing to love what you do so much, you literally cannot stop doing it. Add in bad nutrition (apparently eggnog and Christmas cookies aren't found on the food pyramid), hosed up sleep patterns, barely any sleep on top of that and then constant, grinding stress, and well...after two months it catches up to you. Especially when you're 43!

Now my cheeky life's philosophy has been, "let my life serve as a warning to others" (and I surely need this poster in my studio), yet never before has that come to bear so profoundly than during this past Christmas. It was our worst on record. 

On the upside, though, the whole silly escapade inspired resolutions designed to ensure it never happens again (one hopes). So in that spirit, let me share new wisdom gleaned from my own private chartered whitewater rafting trip into my own personal Apocalypse Now. "The horror. The horror." Grab a paddle. 

First: Dreams Need Schemes My mind is in creative overdrive pretty much all the time. That's just the way it works. Ideas instantly spawn new ones and set me chasing after them in a Lamborghini, wheels a–squealin'. And that's a problem. 

What I learned then is that immediately springing on new project ideas full bore can actually be counter–productive so, instead, the first impulse should be to jot them down for future reference. Stay on target. That is to say there's an important difference between perceived creativity and actual creativity, and the distinction between the two is critical for a working artist.

Anyone can have lots of ideas, but the real trick is managing them. Actual productivity requires a plan. Flipping it over then, choosing not to act on new ideas right at this very moment doesn't mean they won't ever materialize. Quite the opposite really, as learning how to delay, prioritize and schedule them actually improves their chance of materializing, and often in smarter ways, and better still, without me dying in the process. A studio can be a mad place, but there should be method, too!

This may be old news for far wiser folks, but for me it's a bit of a revelation. See, in the past, my creative options were limited: realistic equine sculptures destined for resin casting. That kind of work created its own pace because of the logistical nature of the work. However, introducing ceramics into the studio changed everything, literally overnight, and in two fundamental ways.

First, the previously limited, narrow options were instantly transformed into infinite, myriad possibilities. Before I realized what had happened then, the pace of my creativity exponentially increased and took my body with it because I forgot to pace myself in the process. It never occurred to me that a new media would usher in new ideas about effort and progression. At the time it was just a new media, not a new way of working.

Second, the process of creating ceramics is markedly different than that of oil or epoxy clay sculptures. Ceramics are created in a sequence that requires a fair bit of preplanned scheduling that also includes long lag times (such as those for drying and cooling)...and therein lie two traps. For one, the timing of those deadlines is really important. Miss or miscalculate one, and the finish date for the entire project can go wildly astray. Now if other projects are timed too closely, what you then end up with is a bottleneck of work requiring very very long, hard hours of ceaseless work to meet the deadline. 

Secondly, there exist mad flurries of intense activity nestled within long periods of down time in ceramic production. It's in the down times where peril lies because it's so incredibly seductive to cram more projects into these "empty" time spans. And similar to the first situation, if all this work has similar deadlines, you can imagine the compounded workload at the tail end of the process. Imagine having two months to plan your giant wedding, a funeral, a surprise birthday and preparing to give birth, with all of them occurring on the same day. Yeah.

So this year, I'm instituting a production schedule for each project, with strict, suitably staggered deadlines. And I will not over schedule! There's always next year, despite what the 2012 doomsayers say.

Second: The Theory of Seasonality My giftware lines are sensitive to seasonal buying patterns. As you can imagine, the holiday season is the busiest time, but things also pick up in summer. When you play your cards right, collectors come to expect specialty items at certain seasonal times as well, and so the whole mechanism takes on a life of its own. This is really exciting and super inspiring, but...

It's really quite new to me. 2011 was only the second year of active selling through my Etsy store. In the past, selling my realistic equine sculpture has been more or less a rather steady endeavor throughout the year, with it actually dropping off around the holiday season.

But this new cycle of intense production and selling in very short bursts—during an already busy holiday time—is one I've only started to understand properly. Indeed, I only discovered how not to do so just last month! Considering how the giftware lines are expanding so quickly, and with jewelry quick on its heels, careful production management is going to be pivotal for keeping my sanity.

Altogether then, I learned that if I'm going to deal with the crazy holiday time in my personal life, I must start holiday production much earlier in my professional life. The two cannot coexist. For that, the production schedule will be designed with seasonality in mind. Sure, pressing Christmas ornaments in July will feel weird, but I clearly see now it's necessary. 

Third: Health is Wealth Your art depends on your well–being, simple as that. So take care of yourself first—physically and emotionally—because if you collapse, your art will collapse right alongside you. Learned that the hard way! Identify what stresses and drains you, and minimize them. Then identify what replenishes and rejuvenates you, and seek those situations whenever possible. You owe it to yourself and your art.

For a working artist, in particular, this is really important. I mean, let's face it, I don't get paid for sick days or personal days, and there's no one to fill in for me if I can't make it into work. I'm all I've got, and I only get paid for what I create—and all of that depends on my well–being. 

I realize now that I must become far more protective of myself because I'm the only one who can. What did surprise me, though, was just how quickly I reached my limits because now hard work and stress are cumulative. Age does matter! Each hour of running on empty adds up nowadays, and when the inevitable vapor lock comes, it takes a lot more than a good night's rest to bounce back. Point taken.

The fact of the matter is that now "taking care of myself" applies to each day because an aging body and stressed psyche have a harder time compensating. There's nothing wrong with that, of course—it's a part of life—but it occurs to me now that I'm a young person in a middle–aged body wondering what the heck happened!

But I'm also reminded of Tony Bennett's comment about "sinning against one's talent." That idea resonates with me. I've come to realize that my life isn't entirely my own—I share it with family and friends, yes, but also with my art. I live a symbiotic life in more ways than one. For my work to flourish then, so must I. 

Me thinks the old adage applies here as well, that even "too much of a good thing is bad for you." If I want to reach my artistic goals during my lifetime then, I can't be the hare anymore, I gotta be the tortoise. I gotta work smarter.

But it's also no coincidence that my other favorite chestnut is, "the only way around it is through it." If you're in my house for any length of time, you'll probably hear my husband's daily mantra of, "why don't you listen to me?" followed by mine, "Oh, I do listen, I just disregard what you say." So there he was, warning me for weeks about my pace and there I was, blithely ignoring him and augering headlong into my very own custom–made crater. Mom just rolled her eyes. She knows all to well the howl of futility when faced with my bullheadedness.

 

And what a crater it was! So at this stage in my life, I need to strike a new balance because not only is my art changing, I am too. Never thought that how I created my art would evolve as a function of how I'm evolving, but, well...live and learn!  

 

Fourth: KISS of Life This whole ridiculous debacle finally proves to my inner OCD workaholic that I cannot do it all, all the time. The clock just isn't that flexible anymore because I'm becoming far less tolerant to stress. 

 

So to minimize stresses, my life must be simplified, at least until I figure out this new balance. So I decided this year to focus on getting my business back on track via immediate strides, both for financial and psychological reasons. Keeping my eyes on one prize, while also minimizing disruptions, will (hopefully) inspire a more reasonable pace, keeping bottlenecks at bay and not piling my plate quite so high. "Manageable bites" will be my motto in 2012.

 

So for one, my book is on hold until these transitions even out. For another, workshops and field trips I planned for this year are now off the calendar. More still, certain projects must be completed before I start new ones. How I run my studio will be streamlined, too, with some rather long–delayed changes now moved up on the priority list. Travel will be greatly limited because I cannot afford the stress. Award commissions and donations will be suspended, and I'm only going to focus on three new R&D projects rather than dozens.

In the end, I hope these temporary sacrifices will pay off and I'll come back stronger than ever this year. I'm also happy to report that all the chaos in my personal life appears to have leveled off (knock on wood), so I only have to really focus on my professional life. Lemme tell ya, that's a relief in and of itself!

So in that light, creating a disaster like Christmas 2011 isn't so foolish. Hey, we all do really dumb things with the best of intentions! The foolishness is not learning from our implosions to doom ourselves to repeating them over and over. What did Einstein say? Oh yes, "Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."

So my greatest challenge this year will be sculpting myself into a better, updated version. It won't be easy—I know how stubborn and dismissive I can be. It'll be interesting to be my own Inquisitor, but I suspect Mom and Ham will carry concealed cattle prods to motivate me along the right path. So yes Ham...yes Mom—I'm listening now! Regardless, though, I suspect more Hammies will be born in the process, so I suppose it's all good in the end.

"The reward of suffering is experience." ~Aeschylus

I Am My Own Doomsday Device

Three Little Hammies

The image above pretty much sums up the ongoing Cold War in our house. I mean that literally. My husband is a rather stocky, muscular man, a Tolkien dwarf come to life. I swear if I got pregnant, I'd give birth to a 12 lbs pot roast. Anyway, all that muscle mass generates a lot of heat and so he's always hot. So up (or down?) the AC goes. Indeed, a Ham in his natural environment would probably be during the last Ice Age, in "balmy" sub-zero "shorts" weather. In contrast, I'm constantly cold because of my freakishly low blood pressure. Since Ham doesn't appreciate, as I do, the hand-warming properties of his warm body for frosty fingers, I bundle up in my own house just to keep my core temperature up. 

Anyway, in the whirlwind of activity, I've neglected posting about three more Hammies that were born recently. I've been taken by surprise with the popularity of these little guys - they may outsell my regular work! While they started as a ode to my husband, they've transformed into a shared ode to those loved ones who endure our quirks, and it's such a treat to hear of your stories relating to a Hammie. So for these three new ones, let me set the stage...

I'm not the type to vigilantly maintain my computer in lean, mean racing condition. As long as it goes well enough, I'm satisfied. I'm also not the type to fanatically stay current with an operating system. I tend to stick with one, get comfortable, and drive it into the ground, so to speak.

So here I was cruising along for years, doing all my records, articles, Boat publishing, photo editing - everything - and all while blithely neglecting to clean out my computer or update my OS. It could be said I just didn't run Tiger into the ground, I augered it in. 

This would have gone on for many more years had Paypal shipping not become a thorn in my side. My version of Tiger became so outdated that Paypal shipping, among other things, became increasingly incompatible and inefficient to use. Even the USPS site became quirky. But being so spoiled by online shipping, the thought of waiting in line at the PO was (gasp) unthinkable. To rectify this I had to (finally) update my OS to Snow Leopard, and then to Lion.

To do that though meant some house cleaning on my forlorn Mac. Now my IT-guru husband religiously keeps his machines in fine shape, de-fragging and de-thising and de-thating like a proper, devout geek. So while his machines sing, my Mac sobs. Trust me - only a Mac could tolerate my shameful treatment! So. All this meant I had to empty the trash can. 

For the first time in, oh...five years!

I clicked on that little magic trash can and lo and behold - over 13,000 items sat there, having patiently waited for their destiny with oblivion. Wow. That's impressive even by my incompetent standards. So I click "delete trash" and off it goes, finally doing what it's waited so long to do. It takes 30 minutes to delete the trash can. 

I saunter back to Ham's mancave and nonchalantly quip that I'm currently deleting 13,000+ items from my trash can. He looks up at me with a blank stare...then this erupts:

Hammie #6: "You HAVE HOW MANY ITEMS TO DELETE?! HOW MANIEEEEEEE?!!"

But it doesn't end there. Of course not. In the process of deleting the trash can, I somehow managed to delete my browser. One that he'd spent some bit of time setting up for me months earlier. I still don't know how I did it, but it apparently had to do with icons and hard drives. Upon hearing the familiar plaintive, "Hey....Haaaaam?...", he knew I had another gem of trouble just for him.

Hammie #7: "How...how...did you delete your browser? Seriously? How."

But wait - there's more! I also happen to be of the (futile) belief that if you click on something enough times it'll speed up the function of the command. That the amount of clicks actually is like circuit board accelerator. Ham has scolded me more times than I care to admit about my astute practice of this technique, but well...let's just say when electronic impulses "take too long," off I go clicking like a mad woman.

And so I managed to lock up some sort of function that was necessary for the upgrade, and what would have taken 15 seconds had I waited required a reboot. He suffered in silence, standing behind me, with his facing saying everything that needed saying:

Hammie #8: (thought bubble) --> "Yes, she did it again. I've told her a million times and yes...she did it. Again." (rolling eyes)

So there ya have it folks. Three fresh new Hammies. Suffice to say, I got upgraded just fine and everything is working like a charm now, ready to get slogged down by another five years of chaff. All I can say is this: Mac had better not come out with another OS upgrade anytime soon because Ham may not survive it.

"I was an accomplice in my own frustration." ~ Peter Shaffer

Three Little Hammies

Into the Darkness...

As expected with any Ham-induced sweeping overhaul that entailed my participation, events that ensued  over Memorial Day Weekend inspired Hammies.

As I've mentioned already, entwined in our office revamp was a new Internet home network. I don't understand a single bit of it, other than the concept of "cable," so let's just say it was a major production.

 

Here's a Hammie with hubby's expression as he untangled the thick matte of computer cables I'd woven together over the years. The phrases, "Dear God!," and "How can you live like this?!" were heard repeatedly throughout the process.

But to construct this upgraded system, hubby had to crawl around in the crawlspace - under the house. This isn't something he's prone to do and, in fact, he dreads it so much, he's never done it before.

You see, his ancient and infernal nemesis resides there in vast, seething colonies, just waiting for the opportune moment to lurch forward and deflesh him.

Spiders.

The sheer loathing and revulsion he bears for these creatures is nothing short of astonishing. If I had a dime for every time I've had to leap to the defense of a tiny eight-legged creature, I'd have bought us a trip to Antarctica where there are no spiders.

This is what a spider looks like to me.

This is what a spider looks like to Ham.

Now I should mention that I have this annoying tendency to blurt out highly inappropriate comments that just pop into my head. Apparently if a moment is amusing (to me), my internal filter spontaneously malfunctions and out the comment comes. And believe me when I tell you that these thoughts are truly funny - but only to me.

So as my dear hubby had spent a goodly amount of the morning psychologically preparing himself for his real-world worst nightmare, and taking a deep breath with braced trepidation in his eyes, steadying himself to enter The Den Of The Beast, out of my mouth blurts, "I wonder if you'll run into Shelob down there."

"Fear has many eyes and can see things underground." ~ Miguel De Cervantes

Into the Darkness...

Muddy Mischief

You did...wha...WHAT?!

When making sundry clay items there’s always leftover clay. Not quite enough to make another tile or magnet, but too much to just hang onto indefinitely. So a couple of weeks ago, as I was fiddling with a leftover blob, this little guy took shape (above).

My husband, whom I call "Ham," has a very expressive face with an equally expressive voice to go with it. The combined effect drives me dizzy with delight, to the point that even when he’s - shall we say - excessively perturbed, I’m giddy with internal glee. Not that I don’t take him seriously, of course, but those expressions of his are just too priceless to toss aside. And one of the hazards of being married to an artist is that it’s just as easy to become the hapless victim subject as it is to be the innocent bystander spousal support.

So as this little clay guy materialized in my fingers, an idea popped into my head, as ideas invariably do, "Why not capture a Hammy-moment?" 

What I mean by "Hammy-moment" is a snapshot of one of hubby's mercurial expressions in response to my seemingly-endless shenanigans. It seems I have a knack for eliciting a barrage of expressions from him because - apparently - I do things that invite all sorts of incredulous reactions. Indeed, the man is a pillar of patience because, I do admit, I'm a bit of a whirlwind of catastrophic unpredictability. And thus a win-win situation was born: I'd use up the extra clay and have fun to boot. And I shall call them Hammies.

The first Hammie is pictured above, wearing hubby’s expression when he’d discovered I’d opened up the house to the beautiful spring day, but left the central heating on. All day.

And here are Hammies #2 and #3 - I gleaned two Hammies from one incident! I couldn't get Netflix to work on the tube all day and asked hubby to "make it go" when he got home (him being an IT guy). He fiddled with the machine, and then the settings and then finally called our Internet-provider tech support, spending about 45 minutes hashing things out with them to no avail... 

This is his expression when he'd discovered - after all that trouble - that the problem was that the wall switch had been turned off. By me. After he'd told me about a million times never to turn off the wall switch. There's some highly technical reason why the wall switch controls the TV hook-ups, but I promptly forgot and, of course, flipped it off. I couldn't even remember the reason why...I just remembered the wall switch was important so I flipped it off. Note to self: don't work in a nuclear power plant.

And here's his expression immediately after the initial shock of the unfortunate discovery. A grumble went with it as well as a reminder, for the one-millionth-and-one time, not to turn off the wall light switch.

Look for gaggles of Hammies popping up for sale in my Etsy store from time to time, an ode to an endlessly suffering and infinitely lovable man.

“We have an infinite number of reasons to be happy, and a serious responsibility not to be serious.” ~ Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

Muddy Mischief