Last time I wrote something in the blog was two months ago, my last post was a desperate plea of a vacation.
After closing my shop I had to spend some days trying hard to change the rhythm of my day to day and carefully planning what I was going to do with my time off, to be surprised with the fact that I had no idea what to do.
Which brought me face to face with the original problem, ALL swirls around my work, which is not healthy of course.
So a little soul searching began, what do I really want? do you ever ask yourself that question?, it’s hard to clearly live according to what you really, really want, so first I had to figure it out, we are built of layers, there is our body,mind,spirit and so much more, there is the side of us we share with others, there is you as a friend, you as a partner, as a daughter,mother, worker, etc
I decided to focus on myself first and what I wanted most, some of the things that first came to mind where:
-Finding the time to read more, in these 2 last months I’ve recovered my reading habit, carrying a book and devouring it, actually stopping in a park, coffee shop anywhere and sit down to read for an hour or more, I had not done this in such a long time, always worrying about the million things that had to be done.
-Not tormenting myself about silly things, sometimes the dishes can wait and the world will not stop turning.
- Closing chapters and dealing with the past I want to keep beautiful memories and clearing my mind using bad things as lessons, what a difference when you switch “Why did this happen to me ?” to “What did that teach me?”, might sound corny to some of you but hey! it really gave me a peace of mind,sent some emails, said what I had to say and voila! weight started coming off, I think every so often we should stop and look back to reflect on the past, to help us along in the future.
-Seeing more of Spain, I did get to see a lot of new places and it was so exciting! being lost in a little town really makes me happy, now that I am back I will be blogging more about this in the next weeks.
Oh! and I spent a lot of time like this… I love my sombrero
Work.
I am kind of proud of what happened, same thing I asked myself : “What are some changes I have to do with the way I work?”
I made a little map of concepts, open to everything I would ever want with my business, some of the simple things like:
-Planning jewelry ahead, drawing a proper sketch before making anything.
-Changing my camera to take better photos.
- Think seriously and learn about the proper pricing of my work ( living in Europe and the price of silver has made such a big difference)
- Have a work schedule and respect it.
And many other things..
What happened is I created a schedule which will allow me to work on new items and custom work, I’ve had two weeks using it and so far so good.
Monday and Tuesday I work only on custom pieces.
Wednesday to Friday, are open to work on new designs or concepts but that alone.
Saturdays will be for photos, editing and listing.
Sundays are off unless I want to write a blog post.
This is what my bag currently looks like:
( This and a massive folder for drawings, divided into different sections )
And every single morning I get up, shower , grab this bag and leave my house to have breakfast outside, this stops me from having coffee in front of the computer , potentially getting lost in cyberspace, pinterest and pretty blogs and ending up working on my sweatpants.
My breakfast is about an hour long, there I am building the habit of drawing, which is really important, even though I am not that good , having the ideas on paper kills two birds at the same time, I clear my head from ideas and when you see an image more ideas come your way (((( Ohhhh I could add a stone over here as well..etc))) and at the same time, I plan ahead what to make which is certainly something I have wanted to do for so long.
When I come back home after the breakfast out, work officially begins, which helps me so much since working from home you sometimes really don’t know when you begin and sometimes you don’t know when to stop, and keeping exact track of time is important because is part of the pricing for your work.
All these little changes have made a significant difference and have taken a huge weight off my shoulders, each morning I used to start the day with : “What to do today?”, now I start with choosing a coffee shop, grabbing some stones, my books and heading out the door.
As for the pricing it’s so clear now, for a while there I was losing money this deserves a whole blog post of it’s own but I can’t stop recommending Designing an MBA.
Well this kind of got long, but as you can see I have been busy and hope to officially open the shop this Sunday.
It’s been nice, it took two months, the first month and a half was the hardest not touching my tools very much, a lot of very long hard days, judging myself , asking a lot of questions as you can see and ending up being forgiving and peaceful with myself, I have the right to get overwhelmed and annoyed it is part of life, but the great thing is that if you spot the problems, they can be fixed, I feel I am back and things look a lot clearer right now, after having time alone and unplugging and of really thinking of my goals in all aspects and what changes have to be made, how can we work towards something if we are not clear of what it is?
Thank you for reading, and I hope to be sharing some new jewelry and posts soon!
-Nat
