I am so tired of being asked what I do, since closing my store. Like that defined me and without it I have no worth because I don’t ‘work outside the home’ now. People (family included) constantly ask me to list my daily tasks for them – what?- I don’t ask you what you do all day long. When I closed the store (studio) everyone was so suportive of me to pursue my art as a career, well now that I am they have lost all respect for me I guess, because now that I have all this “free time”, I apprently don’t do anything all day now, except “play”. So for those of you keeping score of my tasks… here is how I spent the past 2 days:
Friday
7am-put finishing touches on art for the juried art sale that will run all summer
8am-hopped in the shower to get ready for the day
9am-went to have my art evaluated by the jury committee (I made it in)
10:30am-drove Pat to work then drove up the coast to Newport to buy more papers and collage stuff
12:30pm-wandered around the nursery at Walmart deciding wether to buy plants for the front door or not (decided not to do it yet – will wait for the day I have time to replant them)
2:30pm-stopped off at some beaches on the way home for inspiration and to enjoy the day
5pm-replied to emails including writing 2 tutorials (I really need to work on my tutorial downloads for the future)
7:30pm-puttered around doing house stuff because a fairy doesn’t dosn’t fly in in and do the cleaning for me
9pm-made dinner 9:30pm-picked up hubby frome work-worked on collages
10pm-watched Pride & Predjuduce on dvd
12:30am-went to bed
Saturday
10:30am-had coffee with my husband & drove him to work
11am-went to post office
11:30am-went to work at my ‘out of home job’ (every Saturday) doing office work for an artist
3pm-returned home to do my own office work because I can’t afford to hire someone and it doesn’t do itself. (retrieved online orders, filled the order, packaged them for mailing, printed postage and put them in Monday’s mail bucket)
5:30pm-layed down with a major migrane
7pm-made dinner (2 days in row – wow!)
7:30pm-made a game plan for new art to submit to a nationwide catalog
8:15pm-worked on my business plan
9pm-wrote up orders for new product
9:30pm-picked up hubby from work
10pm-dinner and movie on HBO
12:30am-went to bed
1:45am-couldn’t sleep so I got up and worked on some emails and worked on my site
2:30am-downloaded pics off camera of latest art work and started to crop
3:30am-madey myself go back to bed
OK, so there you have it. All the little details that I didn’t bother to ‘clock’ like feed the cats & turtle, answer phone calls, wash dishes, water plants, deal with family issues, deal with leacky plumbing, grocery shopping, etc are in there too. I’m hardly a slacker. Yes, I look forward to my ‘jammie days’ when I can stay in my jammies all day long and watch a good movie on tv, do whatever I want or don’t want, but I’m lucky if I get that once a week, like everyone else. I work from home, but the keyword is work. I’m not ‘plyaing’ all day like some people think. I’m not sitting here eating bon bons while someone is fannying me.
I didn’t have to justify that question with response, but I am in hopes of elimnating some doubt and being asked that over and over again. At the very least, it releases my fustrations to write it out.