This past month I decided I wanted to really know how much time I was spending on different activities. I have read Laura Vanderkam's Blog for a few years. She wrote the book  168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think. The idea of 168 hours in a week (24 hours x 7 days) Is intriguing when you realize at the same time it seems like many hours as well as a limited resource. At first it can make you feel a little guilty about how much time you may waste in a day let alone a whole week or month. But then I decided to look at it from another vantage point. You track your time in certain activities and see it as knowing what you actually accomplished during the day which then allows you to relax knowing you have done enough. You get a sense of completion for the day. Then the good news is that the rest of the day is for whatever you feel like doing. 

Some days you feel like you have worked all day with very little to show for it. Other days things just seem to get accomplished with little effort. Everyone wants days like the later. I am thinking tracking my time might help me get some data to help figure out what days feel effortless in their unfolding of productivity and what days feel like a slogfest. Maybe there is a pattern.

In my experience, it can be just as confusing and just as challenging to learn a new skill within an established broader skill set. My dad has played the piano for most of his life. He has a unique style he learned from his second piano teacher when he was in high school. He uses chords to play a rolling rhythm with his left hand and alternates between octaves and chords to play the melody with his right hand. He can play by sight just by reading the melody notes in this way. It has always seemed like a miracle to me because the song sounds like he has practiced the song for weeks when he really is just playing it for the first time. This summer my children asked my dad to teach them all how to play this way. I sat in on the lesson because I always wanted to know how to do it as well. 

I took nine years of piano lessons in my youth. I was taught how to play the notes on the page. It's a logical approach where you are just learning the notes and then putting your own emotion on top of that. This is a whole new approach of playing the piano for me by learning chords and playing different variations of them as you play the melody. Honestly, it was kind of mind-boggling. And a little overwhelming. As I was figuring how to approach this new learning of an old skill, I thought about my tried-and-true method of just putting in the time.  I can do this for a half an hour a day. It takes the pressure off of focusing on how quickly I will learn or if I will understand. I just put in the time. 

I have always been fascinated by artists and their studios. Recently, I saw classic photos of an almost belligerent Pablo Picasso standing in a power pose in his studio and Henri Matisse reclining in a chair with his artwork all around him. I even researched "artists and their studios” in google and found an article 100 Artists and Their Studios. I guess I am not the only one interested in this topic. As I looked at them I thought the people who have the most minimalist abstract art also have the most minimalist studios. Perhaps uncluttered spaces allow for uncluttered ideas to come forth in your art. I know this is a oversimplification but it is an interesting correlation. I love this picture of Helen Frankenthaler with just the tools she needs: canvas, paint, and brushes. But my all-time favorite artist in the studio photo is of Helen Frankenthaler sitting surrounded by her colorful canvases in her bright uplifting color palette. 

So I started down this rabbit hole of looking for images of artists in their studios since I am on a simplification mission in my own studio. I started by asking myself, what do I really need in my studio? It became very simple. I need a sewing machine, fabric for my current project, a rotary cutter, cutting mat, scissors, an iron and ironing board. Just like Frankenthaler’s canvas, paint and brushes. Then I looked at all the other stuff I had around me. I had supplies I only used a few times a year like sewing machine oil, print fabric which I no longer use except for my quilt backings, dozens of spools of thread. All these things can go in storage until I need them.

I thought this physical clutter is affecting my mental clutter. 

I wrote this essay 2 years ago in the Spring of 2015 and published it on the medium.com website. The ideas in this essay are the foundational reasons why I started my Studio Notes in January 2016. I write weekly to inspire others to connect to their creativity and reap the benefits of an active creative practice in their lives.  After writing over 70 weekly Studio Notes, I find the ideas in this essay to still ring true for me and hopefully they do for you as well. 

Explore Your Creative Voice and Speak Up

Imagine your life if you follow your desire to speak up and create more. Ponder this for a minute. Imagine your day, every day, includes some form of creative self expression. Reading the title of this essay, you probably thought this was about singing or acting. Well, maybe, if that is what you are inspired to do. I am referring to any type of creative activity that lights you up. It could be spoken word poetry, singing the blues at an open mic, knitting intricate Norwegian mittens, cooking the best lasagna from your own recipe, sharing photographs on Instagram of your cat, sewing improvisational fabric art like me or creating a body of work for a solo show at an art gallery.

The point is not what you create particularly. It is how you feel when you are creating. This feeling of self expression and speaking from your unique creative voice is the good stuff of life. Creative expression helps us step out of time and enter the creative flow.