Time Management and Relaxation

Slinky Red Necklace

As I've been talking a lot about time management there's one thing I've said several times and, I realized today I wasn't listening to myself! That is, it's important to find time to relax.  If you let yourself get to stressed out, then you will lose your creative edge.  Besides, it's just plain not healthy in general!

I've had a really long couple of days, and I was really tired by the time my dear hubby and I got home today!  The good news is that we're pretty sure we've found an apartment :) Which is really exciting! We're going in tomorrow to do paper work :)

So as I sat down this afternoon I had a million projects that needed to be worked on, and I wasn't too motivated to start working on them, I was just too tired! So instead of catching up with my dear etsy bloggers team, instead of turning on my twitter deck and chatting, instead of writing, I simply turned on a Firefly episode and pulled out a weaving project.

Wait! I'm sure you see the inconsistency in this.  Yes, I know, I'm a work-a-holic. I've been told that many times. You don't need to remind me!

The plain and simple truth is that I find bead weaving really relaxing.  Well, as long as everything is going well with the project and I don't get too many thread tangles that is :P That's one of the reasons I fell in love with it in the first place.  I have many health problems and beading allows me to spend hours sitting still, relaxing, and letting go of my stress.

My usual problem, though, is that I usually work on my projects while sitting at the computer.  Which means I'm constantly getting interrupted because I get distracted by e-mail notifications, the forums, and twitter! As you can imagine that can be highly unproductive.  I'm working on this because I think it's a bad habit.  So I'm doing a lot more of ignoring e-mail and twitter for a period of time to work on a project.  Usually, though, it's been work for 15-20 mins, check everything, work again :P  I get a LOT more done that way, but it's not that relaxing.

Today I left a note for my etsy blogger friends so they'd know why I was gone, put up a quick comment on twitter, and simply bead wove and watched Firefly! I even had my laptop pushed far enough away that I wouldn't be very tempted to try and type!

It was sooooo relaxing! And I'm loving my project :) It's a combination of two goals I have for myself.  I spoke in an earlier post about my goal to try and complete one bead weaving project a week.  The necklace at the top of this post was my successful completion of that goal this last week :D

I've also had an idea for doing a line of bracelets that will fall under the "Geekery" section of Etsy! I have a LOT of ideas for this line, which is why I'm simply heading it under Geekery and not by the different shows ect.  The very first piece in this line is the bracelet I designed with the God Send symbol from the hit TV show Heroes.

I've also been working a series of other designs, but I needed to buy more seed beads before I could start. Today I finally got the last piece I needed to start on my first bracelet based off of a vidoe game! I should have it ready to show by next week.  No pictures tonight, I'm just too tired! I will tell you it's going to feature the character Link, from the Legenda of Zelda series.  It's an early version of Link, and my geeky brother helped me make sure that I had the details right.  I may be a geek - but he's and uber-geek and way better at the precise details than I am! Plus it's fun to involve him :) He's my geek consultant! 

I also have ideas for bracelets based off of Mario, Spiderman, Batman, Star Trek, Star Wars, and eventually, moving into the realm of dragons and faeiries :D That will take time though! Especially because these take a LOT more work to design and I'll probably alternate week by week doing a geek design with doing "pretty" or something else design that takes a little bit less planning!

Oh yes, and I'm also working on my first project for Team Big Damn Crafters, my team dedicated to the memory of the show Firefly (that I'm watching at the moment), and those will also end up listed under Geekery. :) And anything else that ends up being appropriate...

Can anyone say crafting ADHD? LOL

I'm also planning on learning an entirely new technique for me this week :P

For all those who've signed up for the newletter, I was planning on sending it out tonight, but I forgot my notes over at my parents house.  So I should be sending it out tomorrow.  Not signed up yet? There's a widget at the top of the blog! Make sure you go through the confirmation process so I get the notification! If you'd rather not do that, simply e-mail me at jedimarri@gmail.com, and I'll add you to the list! Incedentily, that's the e-mail address these will be coming from :P

Ok, off to chat some more with my Geek Consultant and work on my Link bracelet :)