Coffee in the Montreal skyline mug, "Cloudy This Morning" by George Winston on iTunes. Yep, back to the melancholy music. It is January after all, and I can't keep having upbeat posts that scare Bill. I think I'm mentally a couple of weeks behind of where the calendar is--probably because I fired daily all the way through Christmas and New Year's. Right now I feel reflective, nostalgic, wistful, content, slow and at peace--all at the same time. It was 54 degrees F this morning when I took Jessie to school. The morning is grey-blue and moist (it rained last night--again... what's this drought thing I keep hearing about?), and the squirrels are all busy chewing through our front porch screens (to get to the pond for water), and rooting around in my flower pots for tender shoots or forgotten nuts (crash! crash!). Winter in the south. Forsythia and some camellias in bloom. Taking J through the heavily tree-lined streets to the forested campus of the Waldorf School I can almost pretend I'm in Montana... except for the lack of snow and cold.
But this is not the time of year to to be contemplative! This is the time for forceful action and confident planning. It is time to forge into the marketing stream and grab all those fat gallery fish in my bare hands.... *sigh* I sit and diddle my feet in the water and ponder the colors of the scales of the fish swimming past. Maybe new tech will perk me up. I got a 7-port hub yesterday so I can hook up my scanner and back-up drives again. I have slides from Bart of recent work still unscanned, and I have all the images of my work to organize on a big drive (and back-up) preparatory to creating the new website and digital catalog. Ah, now that's better! Concrete, unachievable planning always makes me feel good.
Did you ever read Martha Stewart Living? The front of each issue had Martha's calendar of everything she had going for that month on the day it was scheduled (and all tasks were only allocated one day--HOW DID SHE DO THAT?!?): winterize the ponds, clean the rust off the metal garden furniture and repaint, stake the roses, fertilize the orchids, prune the fruit trees, disembowel the hedgehogs... I feel a bit like that right now--not the hedgehog-disemboweling part. I feel like I need to create a calendar of annual tasks and then I need to weave all the one-offs into it. Every year I need to create new marketing materials and revisit pricing in January--before the BMAC in February. I need to factor in the cost increases from my suppliers and shippers and my own inflationary needs. I also need to review the state of my materials inventory and tools and order new pieces as appropriate--I already know I need new diamond hand pads and lap wheels.
This year for one-off tasks I need to finish painting, moving and setting up the studio. Still ahead are acquiring the new big kiln, a shed, and a water recycling system for the lap grinder--and putting together a financial plan to pay for all of them. Time to get my feet out of the water and start grabbing fish or it's never going to happen. Two fish (orders) came in yesterday. I am going to turn them into 5000--or maybe 500.
2 comments:
Martha Stewart makes up that list, and then hires enough staff to do it all for her.
It's called "make-believe".
LOL bill. AND martha doesn't have to schedule in child taxi duty, parent, studio worker, sales, etc etc. and the water recycling system for the lap grinder is easy ;) i can email you what i use for the tile saw overflow, you just have to figure out how much tubing you need for where you want to the water to end up flowing...
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