Welcome to Retreat Week!
As I’ve worked on more art objects than jewelry this year, I’ve been paying closer attention to the varied ways I accomplish creative projects. 2024 was an entire year of hyperfocus as I worked on both the exhibition Radiant Echoes and its monograph. I fully admit it, sitting at my desk, clicking my Mac mouse for what felt like months on end was flat out brutal, though the projects were definitely worth all I poured into them!
Whether by intention or necessity, I’ve spent much of 2025 redressing the balance, letting my wild, idea-generating brain swing completely the other direction and operate more like the mind of a butterfly on steroids, flitting from one interesting project to another.
One way I’ve supported my re-balancing act is by scheduling retreat weeks here in the studio. They function like being on an artist’s retreat without the agony of packing (or unpacking). The main goal is to work only on tangible, rather than digital, creative projects with as little admin work as possible. – Normal weeks require around 20 hours of admin work, which is not why anyone becomes a professional artist! – I still fill orders and answer students’ questions in current courses, but there are no extra Zooms or appointments, and no hard stop-times.
Some of my guardrails include:
- Plan a bunch of things to look forward to each morning way in advance. It cuts the spiraling “which project do I work on???” overwhelm that hits me around 10 am most mornings.
- Change projects the minute I get bored or stressed so I don’t make disastrous mistakes like melting things.
- Remind my family what my expectations are in order to reduce distractions and interruptions.
- Plan meals ahead and have high protein snacks on hand.
- Plan something fun out of the studio/house for the following week so I don’t feel so isolated while deep in retreat.
- Take tea breaks outside with my dogs to rest and recharge.
- If I get tempted to doomscroll news, I pick up a children’s book instead. As one colleague put it, “Rabbits and mice have much more emotional maturity than most of the people we see on the news.”
My Key Takeaway and My New Mantra:
These days are about the pleasure of process not the pressure of progress!
If this all sounds wildly indulgent, especially right now, I invite you to think again.
Resting and creating are not rewards for doing enough work that is deemed worthy by others. Resting and creating are quite simply part of being human. To be human in the face of rampant inhumanity is itself an act of resistance.
My first retreat week in April was shockingly easy. By lunch the first day it was incredibly straightforward to keep my focus on creative work and stay off the computer. Despite my over-developed sense of responsibility, it turns out that I am perfectly able to procrastinate on admin stuff with no guilt! I worked like a maniac on an Eastern repoussé perfume bottle, the chess set that had been mostly in my head for a decade – some of the pieces now exist in reality! – and the forged and Eastern repoussé tray I began with Rauni Higson, MBE in Wales last December. I was completely exhausted by the end of the week, but it was an exhilarating exhaustion rather than the soul-sucking, fingers-glued-to-a-keyboard fatigue.
May’s retreat week was more difficult. I learned that I can’t work like a maniac at my computer until 7 PM the Friday before, getting done everything that I won’t work on the following week. This month I had a built-in guardrail with my birthday on the 14th (when I protected my sanity by NOT scrolling news!) and the baking of the traditional chocolate cake – now in dairy-free form because older age has brought yet another allergy, but mercifully it’s not to chocolate.
I do love hearing from you when my newsletters resinate, so if you ping me, I promise to answer when I’m back next week!