C is for cabinet

I have a love of shallow drawers. I work with tiny little pieces-parts when I’m creating, and shallow drawers are great for storing all of them. One thing I’ve learned about myself over the years is that I need my supplies to be in at most two layers for me to be efficient and — more important — to be able to put things away properly when I’m done with them. Stuff piled in front of other stuff and tottering piles of boxes are the kiss of death for my already tenuous grip on organization.

A couple of years ago, I lucked into a 50-drawer library card catalog at a ridiculously low price — as in, I thought the price marked on it was for one of the sections, not all three sections plus the pull-out shelves, base, and top. Score! I pulled out all the card rods (stored away in case I ever decide to sell it) and cut foam core to line the bottom of each drawer. All of my beads and related supplies that fit in that drawer size live in there, and those things are always well organized and easily found and returned.

Last Wednesday, that little voice in the back of my head told me I should stop at a couple of antique stores along my errand route. I like to listen to that little voice, because she often has some really good ideas. I explored a couple of shops I hadn’t been in before, then stopped at a few more I hadn’t been to in years. At the last place I went, I found this cute aqua green cabinet.

Isn’t she pretty?

After a little bit of back-and-forth, she was mine, and then the proprietor and I tried to wrestle the cabinet into my car, which is kind of like a clown car in that I can get a lot more stuff in there than anyone might think possible (like the library card catalog — take that, skeptical antique mall guy!). This time, though, even with the help of two orange-haired skateboarders and the guy who parked in front of me, it just wasn’t going to happen.

So, I called my cousin, and he helped me pick it up with his big SUV on Thursday. It took about half a day to clean it up and get the drawers lubricated and put some drawer liners in, but it’s in good shape now.

I spent a bit of time rearranging up in the studio and populating her drawers with tools and supplies that were formerly in plastic boxes on that shelf you can barely see to the right. I’m not sure this will be her final location, since one of my goals this year is complete renovation of my studio, but for now it’s a good spot.

I’m still drooling over printer cabinets, though. I’ve been wanting one for years, but ones that are in good shape tend to be expensive. There’s a gorgeous one on eBay right now that is very, very tempting, even though it’s almost as much as I paid for my sec0nd car.

However, I do other creative work too, and the supplies for some of my other projects aren’t quite so petite. So, I’m thinking I need to recalibrate my drool toward something with some deeper — although still sort of shallow — drawers, now that I have my super-shallow-drawer needs covered. I’d love to get rid of all the plastic boxes and get the open shelving down to a minimum. I have my eye on a piece that just might do the trick, but it’s two days’ drive away, and I’m waiting on a shipping quote to see if it’s worth even thinking about.

B is for blocks

What is it about the blank page, the empty workbench that brings up so many blocks? Here I am, with a free afternoon to get ahead on some posts and a blank page, and my mind goes blank as well. Saturday, when I finished cleaning up my studio and had some time to play, same thing. No clue what to start working on, how to start to create something out of all that void.

(Aren’t these awesome?
They’re from my dear friend Alex’s Etsy vintage shop.
She has some cool stuff — check it out.)

This is why I like these loosely structured challenges: There’s enough structure here to lead to a start, but enough leeway that it doesn’t feel like a chore. That lovely letter B up there is a mark on the page, taking it from blank (another B word!) to started, a nudge along the road to filling it out, adding to it, weaving it into something. (Maybe not something great, or even useful, but something nonetheless.)

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Freedom within structure is the way I arrange my time. I’m self-employed and loving it, primarily for that reason. I have never been very happy within rigid structures, having to certain places at certain times day after day after day. The illogic of having to sit at a desk from eight in the morning until five (or six, or seven, or eight) in the evening, whether or not your work for the day was done, of rewarding the efficient with more work (but no more salary), never made any damn sense to me at all. [Omit long rant about the stupidities of corporate culture. Not that there’s anything wrong with you if you enjoy that sort of thing; I just don’t.]

I start each day, week, and month with a quick review of the things that need to be done, and then, based on what’s on the calendar, how I’m feeling, and what the weather is like, I make a plan. For example, last Thursday, my to-do list looked like this:

• project A: edit chapter 7
• project A: edit chapter 8
• project A: edit chapter 9
• project B: final correx
• pick up library reserve
• bank deposit
• pick up purchase from antique store
• write intro post for A–Z challenge

That’s a normal list for a Thursday. Here’s how the daily processing went in my head:

Okay, the antique store trip is time-dependent, since Cousin Jim is going to bring his truck to help me this afternoon, so that goes in the afternoon at 3 p.m. or so. 

I can knock out the final correx on project B pretty quickly and that project is due tomorrow, so I’ll get those out of the way first, then write the blog post. I don’t want to get behind on the challenge before I’ve even started, and it won’t take long.

After that, I’ll go to the library and the bank, then come home and work on the project A chapters for a while. 

The weather looks to be pretty nice today, and since those stupid early season weeds in the herb garden have been bugging me, when I need a break from editing, I’ll take twenty minutes to go outside and pull those. 

Then back inside to work on more project A chapters until Jim gets here. 

We’ll pick up the cabinet, which should take about an hour. If I have enough done on project A and he has the time, I’ll take him out for an ice cream or a beer (another bonus of self-employment — the boss doesn’t care if you take an ice cream or [small] wine break in the late afternoon). If not, we’ll raincheck it. 

Project A isn’t due until the end of next week, and I’m ahead of where I need to be on that project anyway, so when I get back home, I can fiddle with setting up my new cabinet or just relax until it’s time to start dinner. Or, if I feel like it, I can get even further ahead on project A. Or, do something else entirely. 

That’s pretty close to how it went down, except that I elected to deposit the check into the bank that has the electronic deposit option (love that!) and was in the zone with writing/editing after my blog post, so I plowed right into project A and put off the library until after the antique store outing. (We ended up rainchecking the thank-you.)

See? Flexibility within structure.

How do you structure your days?
Do you like all of your work days to have the same structure?
Or do you go with the flow day to day?

A is for Alchemary

Meet Alchemary.

After ten years of muddling along as a side business with no formal organization and operating under my own name, which I also use for my editing business, my creative business finally has its own name and identity: Alchemary.

Why Alchemary?

The concept of alchemy has always intrigued me. The idea of turning ordinary materials into the extraordinary has drawn the human imagination for centuries. For the most part, I work with humble materials, and I like to think that my creations are more than the sum of their parts when I’m done with them.

My home studio is on the second floor, overlooking a wooded ravine and among the birds. An aerie is a high nest, a place of shelter while at the same time being a place from which one can look out over a vast expanse and drink it all in. I’ve been playing with this word for a while, combining it with different words to find a combination that appealed.

the view from my studio (summer, obviously)

I don’t often have trouble getting to sleep or staying asleep, but one morning this winter I awakened around four (ungodly early for me) and just could not get back to sound sleep. I floated around for a few hours in that place that’s mostly awake but also sort of dozing, playing with words and thoughts and dreams. Formalizing my business had been on my mind, and the last piece I needed before I could start taking action to push it to the next level was a name. I was thinking about the qualities that I want my work to embody, what I want the name to say about my work, and then it struck me: Alchemaerie.

It’s a lovely name, and says exactly what I want it to say.

I fired up the Notes app on my phone and entered it, bleary-eyed and half-asleep.

However.

It’s just about impossible for normal people to spell. Even I kept typoing it, and I work with words for my living. So, into the simplification hopper it went, where the “aerie” came out “ary.” Which still works, because “-ary” as a suffix means “belonging to or connected with.” Perfect.

And I know that the secret (or maybe not-so-secret now) origin of the “ary” is “aerie,” which gives the whole exercise a sense of mystery and a bit of play, which really appeals to me.

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So, that’s the name. I still have quite a bit of work to do: finalizing paperwork, deciding on my logo, opening a bank account and other accounts, updating my sales tax account, finalizing the new website, new business cards, and so on, and so on. But the biggest psychological hurdle is out of the way, so look out, world!

April A to Z project

Next month I’ll be participating in the Blogging from A to Z Challenge. The framework is a post every day except Sundays for the entire month of April, writing about a subject starting with the letter A on the first day, B on the second day, and so on.

I love this idea, because it provides some flexibility within the structure — one of the things I love best. I’ve decided not to work on any particular overarching theme, but just write as it comes to me. While I like the challenge of having to write something nearly every day, I think being able to go with the flow will be important for me so that I can stick with it.

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March has flown by. What started out to be what I thought would be a light month workwise didn’t end up that way.  I’m ending the month with a full schedule of work projects, and good ones at that. Still, I’ve managed to take a day off here and there, and have been making some progress on some personal projects I have simmering on the burner. Stay tuned.