Opportunity doesn’t knock, it breaks down your door

For the past few months, I’ve been plan­ning and plot­ting and get­ting myself excited about the pro­spect of another big trip. Those who know me are well aware of my fond­ness for travel, and I haven’t gone any­where inter­esting (Ottawa doesn’t count) for some time. I had big plans (South America, Death Valley, Mexico) that never mater­i­al­ized, for one reason or another, and I was sure that this was the one I’d be able to do.

As it turns out, it’s not. Due to a variety of factors, I’m staying home. While this was a little crushing at first to realize (I was so excited!), I am choosing instead to approach it as an oppor­tunity to enjoy the nice Hal­ifax weather that’s been hap­pening lately (must be a cosmic fluke and/or the uni­verse con­spiring to send me thou­sands of tiny little signs that I should abandon my plans of aban­don­ment) and to spend more time doing fun pro­jects, which I almost invari­ably wouldn’t be doing if I were on the road.

For starters, I’m finally going to invest the time and floor­space into set­ting up a proper work­space for myself, rather than just loun­ging on the couch all the time–I do miss having cre­ative space (why oh why did I sell my drafting table at a yard sale for $15?) and things stuck all over my walls, and some­times the entire upstairs of my apart­ment looks like it’s been hit by a cyc­lone that car­ries nothing but paper scraps, bottles of ink, and empty cans of energy drinks.

At the begin­ning of the year, I made a list of things I’d like to learn and try and exper­i­ment with. I’ve lost steam a little bit of late, but I’ve already starting playing with a good number of these things: I took a screen­printing class; I learned cal­li­graphy basics and pro­duced a series of Valentines’ cards; I learned how to make books (although I still need to refine the pro­cess a touch before I’m genu­inely happy with the res­ults). I’ve also started on a number of new pro­jects that are exciting and inter­esting, which is keeping me feeling fulfilled.

My first (imper­fect) hand-bound book. They’ll be better next round–I’m plan­ning to use mat­board en lieu of old cor­rug­ated card from shoe boxes, and using a more com­plex spine design, and I need to work out a better way of punching holes (a drill leaves rather eaten-up edges.)

What I’d like to add to the list: more new and exciting pro­jects, of course, and more self-directed work. I’d like to make an actual book–Can­dide will prob­ably be my first can­didate (hardy har)–which I’m rather excited about. I’d like to start designing some pat­terns again (I rather like designing my own damask) and applying them to fabrics/stationary products. I’d like to start doing reg­ular typo­graphy assign­ments, just because I like playing with type. I’d like to work more with screen­printing and various hands-on methods of making stuff, and I’m looking into building my own let­ter­press, which I’ve wanted to do for ages. Ulti­mately, spending time doing the sort of work that doesn’t neces­sarily gen­erate money, but keeps me feeling cre­at­ively stim­u­lated, will lead to me doing better work down the line.

So, while I was a touch crushed when I real­ized I wouldn’t be able to go, I’m determ­ined to turn it into a pos­itive event in my life.

Spain, Morocco, and Ice­land will prob­ably still be there in the fall (right?). And in the mean­time, per­haps I’ll treat myself to a nice pair of shoes.

Like these bad boys. Only $650! (That’s half off, and still far, far too expensive for my tastes. So, prob­ably not THIS nice pair of shoes. But they’re pretty!)

Tags: business, handmade, life, productivity