Making Time To Make

I want to craft more. But I work. Pretty soon I’ll be working A Lot. And I know I’ll be a bit disgruntled about not having enough Me time. Or sweater-knitting time. Or learn-to-tapestry-weave time. Or ren-faire-costume-sewing time. Definitely not enough blog time. I find myself day-dreaming about all the makes I want to make, but when I get home from the nine to fiver, I only have energy to sit and veg. Maybe hop on the Internet. Which leads me to Ravelry and to YouTube videos about weaving and to other lovelies that make me want to craft more, but ironically suck my time away from said crafting.

So what’s a girl to do? I have big dreams! Major plans! I did what I always do. I Googled that shit. I typed ‘making time for craft while working full time’ into that big old search bar, and here are some solutions that Google and I came up with.

My Habit Tracker in my planner is coming in pretty handy for jump starting the make habit. If I spend just ten minutes in a day knitting or spinning or purposefully doing anything crafty, I get a check mark in that column for the day. Virgos love check marks almost as much as we love making the lists to check things off from! I’m thinking that as I get further into the habit of making, I will increase the amount of time I should spend crafting each day before I earn that check mark.

One website that I came across mentioned that you should give your passion project the best part of your day. When is the best part of your day? When is your brain the most alive and craving to do things that you aren’t doing right now? Often, that time for me is from 8 or 9am until lunchtime, during my regular working hours. But I do have my weekends! And sometimes long weekends. Maybe that’s the time of day I should be setting aside to craft. Save the other weekend stuff for later in the afternoon.

Do you eat lunch? Lunch time can be a great time to sneak in a half an hour of crafting. I’m lucky enough to live very close to work, so I can pop home at lunch time to grab a bite and knit a bit. And we’re talking about starting up a Friday lunch knit club at work!

Though it may sound counterproductive time-wise, I get a lot done when I attend a workshop or a class or a retreat. Yes, it takes time out of my weekend, but Chris and I love to travel together, and he is usually up for anything I throw his way. So SAFF, Maryland Sheep and Wool, and secret spinning gatherings over long weekends are definitely things in our lives.

I took a local tapestry weaving class recently and loved having the forced artsy time. I’ve made some attempts to recreate that time on a certain weeknight a month, but I get side tracked when Chris is around the house. He’s been doing some podcasting, though, and needs alone time for that. So maybe we can have forced artsy date night once a week. Hrm, good idea!

So how do you do it? When do you find time for your art?