TL;DR: No action items for you. I've given you another chapter to read. I'm still working through the last edits and layout. The blank, dot grid, and lined journals are on their way to me. Your next update will be the week of June 2-6.
I really wanted to arrive at this update being able to say that everything was off to print. Instead I am mired in too many projects all at once and all of the projects are stealing time from each other. The project with the largest footprint in May is the fundraiser for Locus Magazine. I'm deep in admin tasks to keep that running smoothly and help them raise the funds they need. (If you like gorgeous limited editions, you should definitely go look. They've got a pile of them listed.)
Another of my projects is shipping packages for a Kickstarter out of my warehouse space. A third is ordering merchandise which I need to make space for in my warehouse. Both of those lead to my fourth project which is making sense out of the terrible jumble which has rendered my warehouse difficult to use. Here is one room of the warehouse jumble: There is merchandise stacked on top of convention signage. Scratch and Dent books on the shelf and the floor. Old art, old prototypes, random stacks. It is several layers deep in things that I needed to get out of the way so that I could have space to work on something else. I've been using this same warehouse for twelve years now and the accumulation of unconsidered objects is... impressive. I've reached the point where I have to consider them. Everything needs official homes. Or it needs to be banished. In order to do that I have to stop making use of the random shelving I already have on hand and instead scour the spaces bare so that I can begin planning a set up that make sense. Today we took this complete mess of a nook: And ripped out the weird, constructed-from-scrap-wood shelving on both sides. We now have this bare space: Next we'll instill some of that deep shelving from the first photo and actually organize the random piles of shipping boxes that are currently stacked in random spots all over the warehouse.
What does this warehouse project have to do with Structuring Life to Support Creativity? One of the things I need to make space to receive are the books, notebooks, and journals associated with this project. On a more meta level, the process I'm going through with my jumble of a warehouse feels important and useful. Because it is so easy for my life (and yours) to accumulate patterns and habits that made sense at one time, but no longer serve me. It happens so slowly that I don't realize how convoluted my process has become until the day that shipping a single package requires walking to one room for the box, a different room for the keychain, a third location for the books, and a fourth location for the packing paper. Oh, and all of those locations require either walking a narrow path between other stuff, or literally stepping over other stuff.
Sometimes I have to clean up, even though I'm already over booked. Which is where I'm at right now. I'm in the middle of book edits, and warehouse clean up, and fundraiser support, and shipping, and project management, all at once.
It makes sense that I haven't gotten as much done on SLSC as I wanted to. But I still feel guilty about it. And I'm making plans to shuffle the priorities a bit so that SLSC lands list first thing in the morning every day.
I'll report back on my progress in a few weeks. I'll have another update and another chapter for you the week of June 2-6. Thank you so much for your patience while I wrestle my way out of being so jumbled. All the best, Sandra
