I've been trying really hard lately to develop a work ritual. When you a) work from home, and b) have little ones running all over the place, it's really easy to feel as though you are doing twenty things at once, and doing all of them kind of half-assed. Especially because my work is of the creative sort, I've been really feeling the stress and consequence lately of not being in a good head space when I actually do sit down to work. I think (maybe) a lot of my fellow artists can relate-- it's really hard to just sit down cold turkey and pick up a project and expect your brain to immediately produce your best work. At least for me, it's as though my brain needs to stretch for a while; it needs a little time to exit the world of cream cheese toast and tiny socks, before it can start focusing in on lines, color, textures--
But here lies the problem: I don't have much time to waste in between these two worlds. I usually have to grab my moments for work as they come, and cram in as much as I can while the baby snoozes... Needless to say, there is not a lot of extra time for sipping tea and journaling for an hour to get the creative juices flowing...
SO, in short, I've been working on a ritual to speed up the process-- kind of a hamstring stretch for the mind, if you will.
Here's how it goes (bear with me, it's a little strange, as are most effective rituals):
The moment Eloise goes to sleep and my work clock begins I do the following:
1) Make sure I'm wearing the right colored shirt. I know, this sounds strange. But seriously, it's such a little-big thing. If I'm wearing the right color, (and that color changes every day), it can make my brain jump faster into where it needs to be in order to start working. If I'm wearing magenta, and I need to be wearing green... it's kind of a big deal for my brain. Nothing good will come out of a magenta shirt that should be green. It's not just that though, something about the simple act of opening the drawer and staring at shirt colors for 20 seconds takes me to a place that is between real life and this other-dimensional world where color reigns highest. I can't explain it more than that-- but somehow it works. 2) Fill up my essential oil bubbler with lemon and peppermint. Changing the air to something sweet and peppy really seems to bring me almost immediately into the space I need to be in. Think what you want about essential oils; This sh*t is real.
3) Water my three hanging plants on the back porch. I cannot, --absolutely cannot-- be sitting there trying to create something if these three plants behind me are begging for water. It becomes all I can think about. And watering them takes me into an earthy warm world; I take a moment and listen to the robins chortling in the plum trees, pull a few dead leaves from the fuchsias, find the space in my lungs to breathe in the day..... and then I can return to my work, and begin.
And, that's it. Other things don't really seem to matter. There can be piles of dishes, toys exploded across the living rug, music on/off-- that really doesn't seem to matter. But the three steps listed above have become this essential ritual, and if I follow them every day, I seem to be able to sit down and immediately begin my work in a good head space usually within 10 minutes of putting the baby down
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So, What are Your work rituals? Do you have any? I'm curious to know if there are others who have to jump through a few hoops to get their brains going :)
