The Studio Battle: The work / studio / life balance

"Time is precious- make the most of it"- everyone, ever. 

These are the kind of sentences that can send my brain into over-drive, panic and ultimately staring at the wall. 

When I first moved into my studio, I was working full time. It was going to be my 'evenings and weekends' project space. Then winter happened and all of a sudden I became tired and it was dark and raining outside, it became very difficult to motivate myself to spend all evening by myself drawing. 

When I first joined the pub job I'm currently in, I very rarely had two days off together, as well as working late the night before or working long hours or split shifts. This made it difficult to follow projects and remember what I was doing the last time I was at my desk. Or worse, when I did get two days off together there would be such a panic to get something, ANYTHING made. "I must be productive this week!" Trying to produce a fully working business in two days was never going to happen- but a tired Molly assumed it would. 

When I eventually got to my studio, a lot of the time was spent sitting and staring at the wall. I was tired, I didn't plan and I wasn't being very kind to myself. I'd turn up with a sandwich in my lunch box and hope that inspiration would just follow me into the room. When in fact, it might have been more productive to go home and nap.

I felt that the hours staring at the wall or shuffling things around on my desk, were hours wasted- I hate that word so much, "wasted." The things I did make, I felt weren't social media worthy, that everything I made was 'wrong' and would get more frustrated with myself for 'wasting time.' When in fact, I just didn't have a plan. The drawings I had made were absolutely fine.

I did feel like I was under an immense pressure. 
Pressure from my day job to not be working there until I'm 98, to learn something new. I felt pressure from my peers that were going off and having children, buying houses and buying new cars etc. And a pressure from social media to earn the most from every second, from those picture perfect businesses that I wanted to be like. What I didn't realise was that it had taken them years to get to that point, I was just expecting it to happen overnight.

I had a word with myself. I sat down and worked out how many hours I actually needed to work to pay the bills. I cut back on my spending and I currently work in my studio full time. I am not currently making many sales but I can see from the effort I put into my social media and Etsy page that it is paying off and more people are visiting my sites. The goal is to to one day make enough sales to live off just my studio work but I now realise it will take me some time to get there. 

Now i've relaxed and don't feel the pressure to build a business overnight, I am producing more work that I'm happy with. I am planning my time, to be more efficient and making targets to aim at to stretch myself. Spending more time in the studio has allowed me to feel more like me again, creative and silly.