Yesterday, the Seattle Schools District teachers walked out (as they should) to demand the money that was voted to be allocated to K-12 schools and has yet to appear.  Please don’t get me started on this.  I worked at a community college for long enough to understand the politics of this travesty.  Political excuses aside,  it is a travesty that the United States literally values its public education with a minimal budget, resources and outright condescension.  Our under-funded school system may be the root of the demise of this country  in the long run.

The point is that the kids were home all day.

Thankfully, we are reaching a parenting milestone and turning point.  The kids are old enough to entertain themselves especially with the neighborhood kids over.

And I could work.

I love that I have a studio but it is located in a far away corner of the house.  For all their independence, I feel better being able to hear my kids chattering, thumping and screaming.  I just can’t do that in my studio.

So I brought my laptop into the dining room and dedicated the day to getting sh*t done.  Literally, the stuff on my list I really don’t want to do – the dreggy, non-creative, linear, detail oriented shi*t.  This is what grading is to teaching.  Generally, yucky. And though many of these items have been on the list forever, I have not been able to focus on it.  My records are a mess, my mailing list is scattered everywhere, my website is not cohesive and makes no sense for e-commerce.  I have no idea what I’ve posted anywhere.

Usually, when I sit down to address this problem, I space out and forget what I’m doing.

But not yesterday.

Yesterday, I got sh*t done.  I got a lot of it done.  More than I have in a long time.  I felt so productive it was like I was back at my old job, cranking out the high volume grading and lesson plans.

And the difference?  The dining room.  Or more specifically, not being in my studio.

My studio, is my haven; my place to forget words, hear my heart, listen to pictures, lose time.  It is a place where I  don’t look at where I am, but what is inside. It is a place that lures me.  My most recent work-in-progresses whisper at me, they work at me subliminally.  When I’m still, I’m working in my studio.  When I’m staring at my database, I’m working on a painting.

The studio is not a place to get sh*t done.

A lesson well-learned.

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