Years ago I went to a motivational seminar put on by Tony Robbins. As part of the pile of books I purchased, I came home with “Organizing for the Creative Person”, complete with audio tape in case I wanted to draw and learn at the same time. I have since lost (and re-found) it at least 3 times but have yet to read it. True story!

This, is, the heart of the flaws in my organizational skill set.

I spent my entire day today trying to find a software package or website service focused on helping me organize my thinking processes. Yes, I want digital version of my brain so I can keep track of my thoughts and ideas and cross reference them with thing’s I’ve actually created and things I’ve seen and notes I’ve made. I go through this hunt every year. If i were more organized, I would write myself a note to remember there is no such software. Once again, I ended up finding nothing to help me out so I ended up laying out my own plan of how I would organizing an organizing program. Sound ridiculous? That’s why I suppose I keep looking… my thoughts tend to go in so many directions I forget what I was thinking before I have started working on the thought. It’s awful!

I’m a bit overly obsessed with how the world should be organized and cataloged, yet I’m a wreck if you actually look at my surroundings. I always have been. I always want all my potential ideas and current projects and potential future thoughts of ideas of projects to be at my fingertips so I can jump on them as soon as they cross my conscience.

I like to blame this unfocused mental state on not enough sleep or the kids’ abilities to continually distract, but really I think it is one of the few drawbacks of being an idea person with a color palette for a brain. I think we are doomed to appear disorganized and unfocused… really we have it all figured out, just no one else can see what we see, the way we see it.

I kind of like that.

Side note: You can get a hold of the updated version of this book from Amazon: Organizing for the Creative Person: Right-Brain Styles for Conquering Clutter, Mastering Time, and Reaching Your Goals I think it would be fabulous for any creative type… Unfortunately I can not help you out as far as a book review goes.. my copy is missing again.

Over on Facebook people are being ‘tagged’ to write 25 random facts about themselves in a note. After my third ‘tag’ I gave in and started writing my own list of 25 facts about myself. In the middle of writing it, I realized it might be interesting to do a list here as well, as it applies to being an artist and mom. So here’s my list:

1. There are never enough hours in the day.
2. Getting up from the computer and dancing with my toddler to the Imagination Movers is a good way to get the blood flowing and recharge a numb brain and stiff legs and wrists.
3. When my husband watches my son, I try to make the most of my alone time and get work done — too often I waste it on Facebook games.
4. I love working from home and being with my son, but being a stay-at-home-mom can be surprisingly lonely.
5. Caffeine, caffeine, caffeine.
6. It’s still surprising how watching one little boy can be so mentally exhausting.
7. Even though I can get some work done while my son is playing in the room with me or watching an educational DVD it’s amazing how often I’m interrupted. This is not such a problem when I’m actually creating art, but it makes writing anything almost impossible.
8. I always feel guilty when I’m working while my son’s in the room with me. I worry that I’m neglecting him, but the work has to get done.
9. I can’t wait until my son’s older and we can do art together.
10. Even though it’s hard to juggle all this, I love being at home with my son and I hope I can continue to be so.

A successful day, a little more achieved.

In the last few weeks our house has been riddled with sick bugs.  Working on this project has been a real challenge as evenings are my prime drawing time and unless it’s absolutely, absolutely necessary I don’t like to short-change the children on cuddles when they need them if they are poorly.  The sick cuddles of course led to me also catching an impressive sickness bug and I spent a huge portion of Friday night on the bathroom floor and unable to work for another evening.  Thankfully I was back up and bouncing by Saturday and the house is relatively bug-free for a change.  I’m stocking the children up with lots of fresh fruit, vegetables and pro-biotic yoghurts in an attempt to keep them in optimum health for February so that I can make my deadline of the 27^th.

So, today was successful because I managed to draw out another final black and white image for the book.  My client approved the thumb sketches during the week so I have two finals to work on currently and another thumb in process to approve.  

Now I just have to hit this deadline so must put my nose back to the grindstone!  My husband is helping by cooking dinner and the children are all asleep.  Baby O will probably wake around ten o’clock for a feed so I have an hour, then a couple more after settling him if I can stay awake.  My poor husband will be glad when this project is over so that I can give him some attention again.  He works from home so I am his social life and it suffers somewhat when I’m busy in the evenings.