Bah humbug. Okay, maybe not quite. But my holiday season so far has been fraught with setbacks and a deplorable lack of sleep. Which I can blame almost entirely on the baby. Truth.
Now, he's never been a great sleeper, mind you. But a normal night for him includes two or three wakeups and I can manage that. With a weekend to recover each week thanks to my very patient husband. Without that? Or with more than three wakeups? Or hour plus wakeups? Zombie mom.
The week after Thanksgiving was like the zombie apocalypse in our house.
The week before that I tried three different times to film another Skillshare class and didn't manage to accomplish it until Grammy and Granddad came to visit. Even then it still took me two days.
The week before that I was frantically trying to get my creative space set up, which meant I was wading through a sea of moving boxes. I still am, in fact, but I managed to take it from this:
to this:
Still a wreck everywhere else, but tolerable. It's a much more manageable work in progress now at least.
Of course, I didn't realize until I was ready to try to start filming that the outside light coming through the dormers was not only not enough, but also at the wrong angle for how I have to set up my cameras. Which looks something like this:
I still need to be sort of facing the dormers so my face isn't completely cast in shadow, but then I'm dealing with the short wall behind me instead of the long pretty wall of yarn, which was disappointing. I probably fiddled with camera and desk angles for over an hour. It was a frustrating expenditure of time, which has become much more precious to me than it used to be!
I did eventually get an acceptable amount of light in there thanks to some daylight bulbs, but it's still not quite as good as I'd like. I'm thinking maybe I need some lights along the top of my shelves behind me, too. Anyone have a handful of battery operated desk lamps I can try out??
Trying to film an entire class in one day with an infant around is much more difficult than I anticipated. I may, in fact, have the loudest baby of all time. I blame my husband for this... Of course, I also didn't anticipate that he'd hate sleeping and that I'd be perpetually exhausted for the first year. Sleep wins over hair and makeup and planning and filming and editing about 98% of the time. Crocheting does occasionally win over sleep, but not often.
The problem is that they compete with each other even after one or the other has won! I'll be in bed trying to go to sleep and I can't stop thinking about a new design idea I have. Or class idea. Or the script I've been working on for a class I'm about to film. Or a blog post I want to write. Or maybe I'll have decided to stay up and crochet for a little bit and all I can think about is going to bed. Sometimes I sit there and just stare at my yarn and crochet hook and just feel sad because I just don't have the energy to actually crochet.
It seems like anytime I choose to do something I WANT to do, I'm electing to not do something I SHOULD do. Like housework. Or sleep. Or work on our Christmas cards.... oops.
And then I got a call for submissions for a crochet magazine a couple days ago and I'm itching to work up a pattern idea I had for that. It's always something!
But I have to admit that despite all the difficulties and frustrations I've faced recently, my passion for my craft has only grown stronger. Ultimately, I'm immensely grateful to be able to walk away from my work and play in the floor with my son if I choose to. Or rather, when he insists that I do. :) It's just a matter of finding balance. And occasionally letting him "help" me:
So this has been quite a journey for me, to say the least! I've learned a lot, though, and I have a lot of great ideas for future classes. It's just a matter of finding the time and energy to produce them. Now that I have my space set up, that will help a lot. I hope. We just need to work on our sleep habits now... O.o
Wish me lots of luck, y'all, because I sure do need it some days!