…one step back.

As I promised myself last week, I’ve spent this week concentrating on The Beany. It’s surprising just how difficult it can be to carve out time to do just one thing. I’m sure if I was working in an office, or at least somewhere with formal hours then I wouldn’t have the feelings of guilt I have over not answering the phone when I’m home working, or saying “no” to people’s invitations to meet up during the day. Even more difficult is being firm about other work related projects, or requests for help that quickly come swooping into view just as I’m settling down to do some Beanying. Why do I find it so difficult to be firm about what I want to give priority to? I strongly suspect I’m not alone here.

By the end of Monday I was feeling VERY proud of myself. Not only had I managed to be (reasonably) single-minded about work, I’d also taken the time to have an afternoon nap, and finished more Beany pages than I’d planned. Imagine how loudly I screamed then, when just before bed, I opened up my day’s work on my Mac only to discover that all I’d done had mysteriously disappeared from the In Design file. A very ho hum moment.

I’d like to say I quickly pulled myself together and just got on with making good on what I’d lost. I didn’t. I moped around, hiding under my duvet and eating lots of Green and Black’s cherry chocolate instead. Eventually I did backtrack on my vows never to draw anything again, never to touch my computer again, and never to ever, ever work on The Beany again. I’ve plodded on quite happily the rest of this week. I haven’t done as much as I would have liked, but I think that’s okay. After Monday’s disaster I’ve been reminded that I need to lighten up on myself a lot (nothing new there). I definitely was forgetting to enjoy working. I do still want to be firm about carving out time to concentrate on my work, but I also want to remember to enjoy it.

This morning I found a drawing I made whilst I was in Barcelona. I’ve had fun working on it today, it’s all I’ve done, probably all I’m going to do. That’s okay. The complete drawing will be on page 48 of Beany #3, a section of it is here. I particularly loved being reminded of the intricate, wallpaper-like patterns that were on the walls of some of the balconies I could see from my hotel room…

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