All my adult life I\u2019ve been bad at taking a break. That\u2019s a break to rest, not a break to do alternative work. I\u2019m pretty good at displacement: I\u2019m writing this very blog at the time when I should be checking everything is ready to open my doors for the last day of my Open Studio. I realise that I sound immensely smug, but I\u2019d like to suggest that soldiering on is weakness on my part, not strength, and that a relentless attention to work is nothing to be proud about.<\/p>\n
Self employment as a creative is tough. In a world where there is no holiday pay, pension or sick pay, it is very easy to feel that most waking time should be spent either creating new work, doing paid work or seeking work. It\u2019s easy to agree to taking on too much in case people suddenly decide to stop buying, learning or commissioning. Then there\u2019s the personal need to move forward, experiment and develop which drives all artists (we are only as good as our last project after all). Add in the pressure of competition. I\u2019m sure we\u2019ve all had the \u2018I stayed up all night to finish my project\u2019 \u2018All night? You were lucky! I worked 72 hours straight for mine\u2019 conversation. Finally there is the subtle niggle of \u2018what do artists do all day?\u2019 (thanks for that snappy title BBC4) from those who just can\u2019t see that putting ink on paper is really proper work.<\/p>\n
Frankly I\u2019m not sure you even have time to read this blog.<\/p>\n
Recently I have been so busy that I\u2019ve scared myself a little: mistakes creep in, things get missed, items lost and my goodwill and enthusiasm seeps sadly away. It\u2019s not fair on my students, my clients and most of all my family. Nobody wants to work with a scatterbrain, even if the scattering is more to do with tiredness than charming creative eccentricity. The morning I found myself applying deodorant to my toothbrush I decided enough was enough and started booking in rest days among the work days. I\u2019ve also decided that if I really can\u2019t stop, I will have a power nap. Not sure where the power comes in, but the cat and I are working on it together during busy periods. I don\u2019t feel guilty: I\u2019m being professional and, believe me, the alternative isn\u2019t big and it isn\u2019t clever…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
All my adult life I\u2019ve been bad at taking a break. That\u2019s a break to rest, not a break to do alternative work. I\u2019m pretty good at displacement: I\u2019m writing this very blog at the time when I should be checking everything is ready to open my doors for the last day of my Open … Continue reading “The Big Sleep”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-216","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lauraboswell.co.uk\/studiodiary\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lauraboswell.co.uk\/studiodiary\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lauraboswell.co.uk\/studiodiary\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lauraboswell.co.uk\/studiodiary\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lauraboswell.co.uk\/studiodiary\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=216"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lauraboswell.co.uk\/studiodiary\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lauraboswell.co.uk\/studiodiary\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lauraboswell.co.uk\/studiodiary\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lauraboswell.co.uk\/studiodiary\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}