Work Life Balance (Is it a Myth?)

Work/Life balance seems to have become the buzz word for working professionals.  To be happy we need to find a way to balance work and home.  The theory is sound.  Life should not be all about work. But it can't be all about play and/or home.  As adults we have the responsibility to provide for ourselves and our children. To do so we must work. But all work and no play makes for a dull life. So we find activities to keep from being bored.  Activities which generally cost money, so we work longer hours, which takes away time from our activities, and so on and so forth. It can be a vicious cycle.  

Since my promotion at work, I have been swamped.  Prior to my promotion I had made a goal to only work 8 hours a day unless absolutely necessary.  I was starting to make head way on that goal.  Then I was promoted. Since then I have averaged 9-10 hours a day.  Add the hour each way commute and I am gone from home approximately 12 hours a day. Take out another 8 hours for sleep and that leaves 4 hours for eating, bathing, cleaning, and quilting.  Guess which one suffers. 

To be honest, it's both the cleaning and quilting.  My house has never been immaculate but now it is a nightmare.  I have too much stuff and not enough storage. As number of people living here went down, the amount of belongings has gone up. Not to mention the number of animals. I swear my husband is replacing kids with livestock.  

Last week as I was catching up on some odds and ends, I was listening to the Quilter on Fire podcast, the one where she interviewed Karen Brown of Just Get It Done Quilts. I don't normally listen to this podcast but she was interviewing Karen Brown and any one who has read my blog knows that She is one of my Gurus. 

Karen was talking about how busy and over whelming this your-tube and blogging has become and how she had to get extra help to do it all. She said that she needed to schedule time to quilt. She also said that she thought some women feel guilty about taking the time to quilt when the house is not clean or there are other family obligations needing tending too. At which point, my son Killian said "Mom, don't ever feel guilty for quilting. It makes you happy and we want you to be happy."  Perigrine, my daughter, echoed his sentiments. Truth be told these two have been taking care of me instead of the other way around. I know I am very blessed.

So back to the work/life balance.  Does it exist?  I have gotten to the age where overtime pay isn't worth the time I have to give up.  Of course now overtime isn't even an option.  I get straight salary now so it's definitely not worth the extra hours.

I have decided that there are times when I will need to put more time in at work. I am still learning my new job. That is going to take time. So a little less time at home has to happen right now.  And Quilting is going to have to be in small doses.

With much encouragement from Killian and Perigrine, I've started yet another flimsy.  I am trying to sew a little each night.  Some nights I do it and some nights I come home and flop. Lately it's been the later.  It wouldn't be so bad if I came home and read or looked at the quilt magazines but I don't.  I watch tv or play Sudoku on my phone or just watch my son play on his Xbox. Basically falling into the time buster trap. But I am hoping to change that.  

My goal is to come home and either stitch for 30 minutes, study for 30 minutes, or work in the studio for 30 minutes. Any thing over and above that is great. Any thing less is a start.  I'm not going to beat myself up over it though.  I am too old to be making myself feel guilty for being human.

So is Work/Life Balance real or is it a Myth.  I guess it is up to you.  I would say if you are getting up in the morning dreading going to work for no other reason that you just don't want to be there, then I would say your life is out of balance.  If you are not finding joy in your activities because work is on your mind, then your life is probably out of balance.  

There are going to be times when our lives are out of balance.  Fate likes to throw us some curve balls now and again. Some times the balance has to be more skewed to work. Sometimes it will have to be skewed more to home. The trick is to find a way to get all those skewed times to average out in balance.

Since my promotion, I am feeling challenged again and so going to work is not as foreboding as it once was.  But I do miss spending time creating and there is so much I need to do in the studio. Eventually work will settle down and I will be able to work a little less. In the meantime to get that balance back I am planning on taking a few days off just to work on my long arm and get some quilts done.  Not sure when yet, but soon.

How is your work/life balance?  How can you get it back?

Life Getting in the Way

 So this past two weeks was crazy at work.  First there was the lighting strike that hit the plant.  At first we thought it only took down the servers.  We were wrong. As we tried to bring different lines back up over the next week, we found more and more problems.  Then there was the commissioning of the new roaster.  That involved running quality tests. then bringing in an outside lab to get it validated for at least a 5 log kill. Which basically means the roasting step kills off salmonella so our peanuts are safe. That took a whole weekend plus.  To top it all off, the window for our unannounced audit is swiftly closing.  So there has been all sorts of stress and finger pointing at work.  There is also a lot of extra hours that need to be worked.

I am exhausted.  I have been putting 10-12 hour days. When I get home all I want to do is just go to my room to chill and then sleep.  I don't know what I would do without the support of the Kids.  They have been waiting on me hand and foot.  

Add to all of that, we are spending our weekends canning.  We have put up so much produce and I really don't know where I am going to put it.  The thing is I am feeling compelled to do this canning.  It is almost as if I am being driven to build a year supply.  So I am.  We may have to stack the boxes of jars in the closets like we did when we lived in married student housing.

But I have at least been working on getting my scraps cut up.  I've tried to spend 15-30 minutes just cutting up scraps.  I now have way more 3-1/4 inch blocks cut for the double wedding ring pattern than I need.  I am thinking it was a throw size so I can just make it larger. Or I can just sew the extras into a simple patch work.  

I really don't know why cutting fabric is so cathartic for me but it is.  Hopefully this weekend I will get around to figuring out how to better use my journal.  That is after I go get peaches and can them.

Do you ever wish you could just stay home and quilt all day?  My sister once commented that I need to quilt my job so I can do all the quilts I want to do.  She's probably right. 

Is life getting in your way? How do you fit in your quilting? Do you have more quilts planned than you can do?

Quilting Journal Regroup

I have been rather depressed. It's been a rather difficult month. I am finding excuses for not doing things I need to do. Part of this, I am sure, is do to the fact that Kim is gone so much.  I find I tend to work longer hours when Kim is out of town.  Kim is struggling with work and has been rather depressed as well. Which since we tend to be very emotionally connected, that tends to bring me down even further.  As a result, I have been very lax in meeting my creative needs. I tend to come home and bury myself in my room.

This month I have tried to break that cycle.  As a family, we have put up green beans, pickles, and apples.  We certainly have built up our larder for the winter. Our fruit trees are producing and we are enjoying the literal fruits of our labors. Plus we have taken to going to Long Farms and picking produce to put up. So while I am tired, I am also fairly content with some progress.

I also decided to do something about my lack of creative progress.  So I grabbed the scrap bin and started cutting it into 5 inch squares and 2-1/2 inch squares.  While doing this I got to thinking about how many 5 inch squares I have.  I really don't need more 5 inch squares.  I have cut enough print fabrics for the lattice quilt. So I decided to find another scrap quilt pattern to do.  I remembered a quilt pattern I have called Twizzle that I wanted to make. When I looked up the pattern, I realized that it was made from Jolly Bars. Jolly Bars are 5 inch by 10 inch rectangles. Not really scrap size. I flipped to the next pattern and that was a paper pieced double wedding ring.  It's definitely a quilt I want to do. So I started cutting my print scraps into the size needed for it.

After cutting scraps for a bit, I decided it was time to pull out the quilt journal.  I hadn't made an entry since the end of March. Obviously, I haven't made any entries since I haven't accomplished anything.  I had kept writing the same thing down every week.  So I just stopped. Today, I decided to regroup.  In fact, today's entry is titled Regrouping. I expect it will be the entries for a few days. I focused on some realities that I have to face today.  I think I may start making daily plans and stop trying to plan out the week.  I am toying with the idea of taking the journal with me to work. If I make my daily plan at work I might work harder at coming home.

Tomorrow, I think I may have to set some priorities.  It is easy to just distract myself with cutting up scraps but I can't just keep making flimsies and letting them pile up.

What do you get back on track?

Road Blocks and Stumbling Stones

 What keeps you from doing what you want to do?  Do you ever make excuses for not going for your goals? Have you lost your inspiration? What is standing in the way of you reaching your goals?

I've been triggered to think about this a few times over the past month.  Some of the triggers have actually been on Facebook. On particular post was simply the question "What is keeping you from finishing your quilts?"  On this particular occasion instead of giving my pat answer of "no time" I actually thought about it.  My answer was honest and accurate. I responded "Insecurity and lack of confidence in my skills".  My sister, ever my champion, commented "in what". When I told her my Quilting she responded "knock it off"

She is correct of course.  I can't expect to be quilting with the proficiency of someone who has been practicing everyday for four years.  Or someone who has taken lessons.  I am basically self taught and I have not taken the time to watch the videos and read the manuals.  My pat "lack of time" answer is still valid. I work full time and commute an hour each way.  I do have limited time and lots of demands on my time.  My progress will be slow but it will happen.  I need to get it in my head that my best is good enough. I need to find a detour around this road block.

Other road blocks I have found are:

• Machine maintenance - I have needed to do a WD40 bath on Millie for some time.  Plus the rails need cleaned and the leaders need straightened.  I am not sure that I got the leaders on straight or even when I took them off to sew the leader grip pockets. I need to get a laser level and check on that.
• Space - laying out quilts is difficult without a large surface.  I did find that I can pull my bed away from the wall and hang my design wall on it.  That has helped a little bit.
• Work - I have found that I tend to be a workaholic.  I am especially bad about it when my husband is out of town. I need to find a work/life balance
• Health - As I get older I find I don't have the energy I used to. This is due in part to Asthma and Diabetes.  Both of which I've developed in the last 6 years. I have the diabetes under control but I am struggling with the asthma still.  I am still getting bronchitis way too frequently. But I am working on it.
• Family - I usually use my weekends to sew and work in the studio.  But when family is in town or grandkids come over, my sewing time is eaten up being with them. Also when my husband is in town (not very often as of late) I tend to be with him and not in my studio.  This year he estimates he will be home 100 days.  So I want to spend as much time with him as possible.
• Church -  I have actually been falling down on the job here.  Quarantining due to Covid the past year has limited my attendance and responsibilities. I need to spend more time in this area.  Not sure what I am going to do about it though.  It's another area where I am lacking enthusiasm and inspiration.
• Comradery - I don't have any quilting friends at least not close by.  I don't have a place where I can go and take a class, at least not that works with my work schedule. I am a social creature and could really use a group to sew with or even one person.  I should join a guild but they meet on Thursday night an hour and half away. I get up early for work.
• Time Busters - I spend too much time on useless activities. I get on face book or play a game on my phone and the next thing I know 2 hours are gone. Even reading is a time buster for me. I can't seem to put books down.  I have been know to lose sleep because I had to finish the book.

I am in a rut and I need to get out of it.  I need to start putting my time to use in the areas that are important to my frame of mind.  I believe that I am struggling a little bit with depression.  Not suicidal mind you just rather apathetic.  That can be dangerous.

I need to get back to using my quilt journal.  I need to start doing the 30-30-30 schedule again. And I definitely need to make some hard decisions.  More thought, lots of prayers and hopefully some inspiration are needed.

What are your stumbling blocks?  What is holding you back?  Naming the beast is a step closer to taming it.  Hopefully I can start taming my beasts.

Time Flying BY

 It's been a month already.  I am not sure where the times goes nor what I am doing with my time.  It seems that the day is over all too quickly. Next thing you know it's the weekend which flies by like it's never even been here.  And poof the month has gone by.  I have been fairly good at keeping my Quilting Journal.  I just haven't made much progress with it.  

I did finally get the shelf up for my Brother's flag.  I have a little memorial corner in my studio for him. I am quite pleased with it and I think Steven would be pleased with it as well.

I have managed to get a couple of pictures put up and am slowly clearing up surfaces that will make it easier to work.  I also got the roll of batting put on the batting bar, clearing up the area behind the long arm.  

As for quilting I have managed to sew together some of the rows of the Windmills and Cobble Stones quilt.  I still over half the rows to sew but it's progress.

My biggest hang up this month has been my health.  My asthma turned into a rather severe case of bronchitis. That in turn has messed up my blood sugar.  I am exhausted constantly.  Then I've been short handed at work so putting in long hours to boot.  I am just going to have to take a day and go to the Doctor and get my A1C checked.  We will probably have to up the doses on the diabetes meds.  I am going to ask for a referral to the endocrinology center at TMH.

I am hoping to do some maintenance on the long arm this week after work. I figure I can probably clean the hook area in an evening. Then clean the rails another evening. Check around the needle bar on a third evening.  I should have Friday off so hopefully I can straighten the leaders then.  It all depends on how I feel after work.

Not a very productive month. Still a little progress is better than no progress.  

Did you have a productive month?  How are your projects coming along?

Time Flying By, Priorities and/or Procrastination, Staying Busy

Here it is the end of February already.  I know it's a short month but it's gone by awfully fast.  I don't feel like I am getting anything done. I guess that is why time seems to go by faster when you are older.  You have so much you want to do and more responsibilities than ever.  It just seems you can't do everything and so you prioritize or you don't do anything. I tend to do the later.  I feel so overwhelmed that I kind of shut down.  

But that hasn't been the case lately.  I've been busy. I just haven't been doing what I planned to do.  I seem to have side tracked myself with worthwhile activities. I am also procrastinating what I need to do to move forward. 

I have not done the maintenance on the long arm. It's not even a very onerous thing. I just haven't settled down to do it. Largely because I then have no excuse to put off quilting the Flimsies I have completed.  Is it because I am afraid that I won't be able to do a good enough job on them?

I haven't gotten the shelf up for Steven's flag.  Is it because I am afraid that seeing his picture will make me sad?  

I haven't gotten the dressers and cupboards cleaned out and organized.  Is it because I am afraid that I can't find a place for everything? Is it because I won't be willing to get rid of my excess?  

I know that I am still working on things but not the things I need to and I need to get the incentive to do it.  I also need to do things around the house and quit coming home and collapsing.  I guess I will just have to take more vitamins. 

As for my worthwhile projects. I've cut up a bunch of scraps.  In fact I got a little carried away with cutting scraps for the basket weave quilt. I still need a lot more of the 3 inch white squares. But I have way more of the 3 inch print squares and 3x8 inch print strips than I need.  I could probably do 4 quilts with what I have cut.  I am going to probably do a larger quilt than the pattern is for. Well, that is once I get the 3 inch squares cut.  In the mean time I have switched to 5 inch squares and 2-1/2 inch squares for scrap management. I am thinking of finding another pattern to cut pieces for in the meantime.  

I also worked on a UFO. I dug out the Windmills and Cobblestones quilt. I have sewn all thirteen rows together.  I plan on finishing up sewing the flimsy together this week. I have an idea of how I want to quilt it as well.  I am really pleased with how it is coming together.  I just need to get to my stash and pull out some backing fabric.

This week I tried my wool pressing mat.  I love it! No steam and a really crisp press.  I actually ended up with two of them, a square one and a rectangle one.  One was given to me because the person didn't like the "smell" when using it. The other one, Tatianna and Zach gave me for Christmas.  For the record, I don't notice a smell but again I am not using steam.  I got a bonus with the mat that the kids gave me, a silicon iron rest. I can leave the iron on the silicon rest, it stays hot and nothing gets burned. So definitely worth getting if you don't have one.

Well that's it for this week.  Time to get out my quilt journal and plan the next month and week.  Not that I have to plan much, I just need to copy over from last week and month.  But there will be a few minor changes. Maybe a little less emphasis on declutter/organization and a little more on sewing.

Fabric Hoarding

 Hi, My name is Amy and I am a fabric hoarder. Now I don't know many quilters who don't have a stash. But I am beginning to think my stash is a little out of control.  Today while looking for a particular bin, I found another bin of scraps. How on earth could I not know it was there. I just cleaned under the long arm the day after New Years.  Yet here it is a bin full of scraps of all sizes.

This bin was stuffed full. so I decided I would start pressing some of the scraps and get them ready for trimming this week.  What I discovered was I had a lot of rather small pieces.  Less than 2.5 inches and that is the cut off for scrap sizes for me right now.  I only got about a quarter of the way into the bin and I had this little pile that was just going into the trash. Some of theses were the ends of strips sets that weren't even an inch wide. Some were bits left over from cutting blocks out of fat quarters and were only about 1.5 inches.  I don't know what possessed me to save these little bits.

I did get a few scraps prepped for trimming this week.  I took them out of the bin and pressed them, then put them in my scrap basket. I probably have more than I can do in a week. But I do enjoy cutting fabric and this will go a long way to getting my basket weave fabrics cut.  My son is actually excited by my find because he thinks scrap quilts are the best quilts. I do enjoy making scrappy quilts.

If you recall I just went through a scrap bin a few weeks ago.  I had the larger scraps to cut still. So I put those scraps in with these scraps and now I only have one full bin to process. Well, after I do the ones in my scrap basket.  I will just have to set my timer and work on these a little every night until they are done and then get more out of the bin.  Of course, as I create more quilts the scrap pile will grow, so it's important to stay on top of it.  Any new scraps, I will continue to put in the scrap basket for processing that week. Old scraps will be processed as the basket is emptied.  

Before I know it, I will have this bin emptied too.  I already have 2 empty bins set aside.  I can easily fill them with stuff I have on hand. But that will wait until I decide how to organize things.  One thing I know is that I don't want to be buying any more bins.  I just fill them up and I don't even know what I have. This is not going to be a quick and easy project.

I may be in denial but I've decided that I don't like the term Fabric Hoarder. Instead of calling ourselves fabric hoarders, let's call ourselves fabric dragons.  Fabric Dragons sounds a lot more romantic and fanciful than Fabric Hoarder.  Fabric Hoarder has negative connotations.  I am a Fabric Dragon and my hoard is made up of fabric.

So are you a Fabric Dragon?  Is your stash out of control? How do you organize it?