Getting Down to Business

This year, I'm trying something new.

One of the interesting things about being self-employed (as well as being an online student) is handling your schedule. I've had people say to me, "I'd never have the self-discipline!" and I also know there's just as many envying the fact I can (or could!) pretty much get up whenever I want to and never be held to a work schedule set by someone else. One of my good friends is a retail manager who sometimes has to get up at 5AM and be stuck at his store for the next 12 hours. I also think of my mother, who got up at 6AM to go to her classroom until 4PM every single weekday from September until June. That kind of set schedule and routine is incredibly intimidating to me, so hats off to everyone who does the 9-5 thing!

That said, there's also something really important about that kind of schedule, and it's not just the assured work-time. That's the obvious part - that here you've got time set aside to *work*. The less obvious part is that scheduled work days also give a person scheduled time *off*. Sure there are sometimes extra things to bring home now and then, but a lot of folks when they leave work, they leave work.

Working for yourself, you never leave work. It's always there. Prodding you. Poking you. Telling you you'd better look at this or do that. Maybe it comes up in the morning; sometimes it comes up at night. Days set aside to be specifically taken "off" end up with this background static of stress because of all the little work things buzzing at you to be done. Sometimes there just are no days off, and it goes on and on and gets more and more stressful and really unpleasant overall.

So before New Year's - actually, on New Year's eve - I had a long long talk with my buddy the retail manager. I have been worn out, stressed out, not getting enough done and not getting good rest, and wanted to change. He explained to me the *reward* of keeping to a schedule - how if you work 6 hours or whatever, you can then walk away and *reward* yourself with absolutely free relaxation time. That sounded awfully good to me, since because most of my efforts go into schoolwork, I see very little reward from it all (A's are nice and all, but they can't pay for a movie!) So together we worked out a viable schedule which *gasp* included me getting up at a respectable hour, doing nothing but *work* (no breaks for Cheezburger sites!!), taking a lunch break, working some more, then having the evening off.

The evenings are the important bits. During the semester I'd often be working very hard until 9 or 9:30, then it would take me forever to wind down to be able to sleep, then I'd be tired the next day.

So I installed a site-blocker addon for Firefox, made up some schedule spreadsheets and printed them up, and set my alarm for 7:40. This week has been fantastic so far.

I've scheduled two hours a day for drawing exercises. Simple things like drawing a bunch of hands....



Or doing a quick master copy...



Or just experimenting with Painter and Photoshop (that's scheduled for this afternoon!)

In between those two exercise hours I have "project time" - which could be anything. This week it's updating and redesigning my website, dekraus.com. I've learned some Flash to build some custom galleries, and will hopefully get it up and running by next week.

Tuesday is a day off, since that's grocery day! I also took Sunday off, since my mom and I often have brunch that day. On Tuesday I just relaxed, played games, did some chores, but then in the evening I ended up drawing just for my own pleasure, a little sketch of my WoW goblin, Elli:




I don't know how often I've *wanted* to do little sketches like that but never had the time, because there was always work to do. Drawing for fun on my days off?? What a concept!

So my New Year's resolution is to stick to this schedule. I'm really curious how it will work for school, and really hopeful it will help prevent some of the exhausting 12-hour painting marathons I had last semester. At very least I feel like I'm really working, and not just *trying* to work, which is a subtle thing but very good for my whole mentality.

The other good thing is that I've got in the schedule to update this blog once a week. No more months between updates! I promise!