Facebook is the devil. I'm not gonna lie. It is the hulking heavyweight in a long list of distractions that permeate my day. And, to be honest, I sometimes invite these distractions in a self-sabotaging, fear-based montage of "imposter syndrome". You know what I'm talking about.... all those icky self-doubt shadows that ride the shoulder of every creative individual ever, throughout the entire history of creative individuals.

But it's not just Facebook that throws my work and productivity off balance. It's suddenly needing to clean my oven at 4pm on a Thursday, when it was just cleaned on Tuesday. It's re-organizing my bead trays for the umpteenth time this month. It's paying bills and grocery shopping and visiting the in-laws and birthday parties and graduations. And it's also every other hobby I can conceive of, with which to procrastinate.

Finding balance when working from home is, to say the least, challenging. So here are some tips I've learned during my five years in business for myself:

• Minimize distractions. Don't give yourself an excuse to procrastinate!
  
  • Turn off the computer! Yes, we all want to check our email and, as business owners, it's important to address customer inquiries. But schedule a time to do so (see the next tip). Check your phone, email and social media accounts once before work begins and once when it ends, but otherwise turn the endless distractions of the World Wide Web off while working.
    
  • Work space is for work! Don't eat at your desk. Don't play World of Warcraft at your desk. And, conversely, don't work while in bed! Keep work separate from "play", and you're bound to see productivity improve.
    
  • A clean home is a happy home. Once a week, schedule just three hours to clean your home or, at the very least, the area immediately surrounding your work space. Don't allow a pile of laundry on the kitchen table to distract you from creating!
    
  • Clear the work space when you've "clocked out". At the end of my work day, clearing my desk of tools, wire and completed or in-progress projects allows me to focus on personal time and interactions with family and friends, without a mess of wire on the desk catching my eye while discussing my niece's graduation party with my spouse. What was that you were saying about needing a "Congrats" card? Because all I heard was "blah blah blah... wire on the table... blah blah blah." This habit also establishes a clean palette for a new work day and allows me to approach projects from a fresh or unbiased perspective.
    
• Schedule, schedule, schedule. And stick to it! I'd be lost without my trusty Filofax planner, though I don't exactly "plan" in the conventional sense. I don't itemize my tasks by hour, nor keep a calendar of important dates. But I do list my daily goals if for no other reason than the satisfaction of ticking them off. I've found a scheduling and planning system that works for me, so I encourage you to experiment. Try the hourly daily planner spreads, or the list keeping, or the master monthly calendar. Give the bullet journal a try, which is also useful for personal creative expression! Find what works for your lifestyle and your own personal expectations and goals. But stick to it! Examples of things to schedule:
  
  • Days off. Even if you love your job, schedule time away from it.
    
  • Meal breaks and exercise (important for sedentary business owners).
    
  • Bill paying, grocery shopping and household chores.
    
  • Daily or monthly work goals and the actions steps required for completion.
    
  • Custom orders: dates placed, completion promise dates, shipping days.
    
  • Business reporting: budgeting, inventory, taxes or mileage, for instance.
    
• Routine! Creating routine is the cornerstone of a productive work day.
  
  • Reset your internal clock! Wake up and go to bed the same time each day.
    
  • Get dressed! Don't work in your pajamas, as delightful as that might sound. Getting dressed says "I mean business" and increases productivity.
    
  • Breaks! Break for meals and exercise regularly, but do so routinely... the same time (or as close to the same time as possible) each day, to re-establish the mental mindset for work.
    
• Do not OVER schedule! This one is so important. And it was one of the traps I set for myself when I began to experiment with scheduling my day. I'd fill each hour of those daily planner pages with a chore or task, for business or home, and when I'd under-estimated the time needed to complete these tasks, I found myself disappointed in my lack of "completion" at the end of each day. It was, to say the least, a motivation-killer. So keep your daily and monthly goals realistic!
  

If you have tips or tricks for balancing your business and home life, I'd love to hear them in the comments below!

In those rare in-between moments when I'm not making jewelry, or organizing my work space or re-arranging my website, or... ahem... Facebook, I am usually doing one of two things: photographing my cats or sketching. Perhaps I should try sketching my cats!

Lately, I've been obsessed with hands. Perhaps because it's one of the few things I can draw fairly well, quickly and still find meaning in the process. It's not just about the act of sketching, though that certainly has it's purpose, but about the process of considering the art before I begin. It's about the entire experience, and taking from that some sort of introspection, hopefully, and growth. Perhaps I'm obsessed with hands because I work with mine every day, because they give life to creative expression. They can soothe and conceive, they can be stricken with pain and even cause it, they can fabricate, construct and actualize. Hands are a rare, but often unrecognized, gift which we take for granted more than we appreciate them.

I spent most of the month of April photographing my own hands, and then using them as a reference in my art. In the first image is a fist, gripping a pair of holy beads with the strength and determination of the self-assured. By drawing that strength, I was also absorbing it. In the next is a forward-facing fist with wings and a bright crescent moon halo above it. Here I was, for lack of a better word, evoking action and momentum during a time in which I had none. And in the last is a gentle and relaxed pose, a tranquil finger on which a butterfly has perched. This.... this was to invite serenity.

Hands are one gateway to the soul. How gentle we are with them, or fierce when the call for such has been made, is a statement about our self-worth, self-reflection and self-expression. Our hands can represent the journey we take with others and the journey we experience alone, through our creative endeavors or personal labors.

Appreciate their role in your life.

I saw we all go get a manicure!

Time is finite. While it evolves independent of the individual, our experience with it is limited. Every moment is a gift, and every time we chose to express ourselves and share the stories of our experiences, we are gifting that moment to others.

As such, I'm always saddened to see artists undervalue their time. The five years it took to perfect that crotchet crocodile stitch has value. The semester of bench skills jewelry classes to learn the soldering of prongs has value. And that spool of wire you mangled last night while learning the channel setting.... yep.... it has value. Not just the wire, but the night itself! Just imagine you'd decided to spend those finite moments binge-watching Netflix instead (I'm not saying that's what I did last night, but.....). Those Netflix moments can't be as easily gifted to others as sharing with pride that very first bezel setting, for instance. And think of the inspiration the sharing of that accomplishment offers to others!

So, when pricing your work, consider more than your materials. Consider more than the overhead of your electric and cable costs, marketing expenses or website maintenance. Let's abolish the abhorrently insufficient "materials x 3" pricing model and use a structure that recognizes the value of time. You are worth it. Your time is worth something. Choosing to share the gift of those moments with others should be recognized, so let's charge for our handcrafted goods according to the value of that time.

Here are some resources to help you value your time:

• Auntie's Beads Jewelry Pricing Calculator
• Blue Buddha Boutique: Pricing Your Crafts
• Creative Hive Pricing Guide
• Jewelry Designer Manager
• 10 Things To Avoid

Some of you may know that I am an unapologetic, self-professed geek. I wouldn't dare use that word in a disparaging way, but as a badge of pride and honor. The idea of being a "geek" has come along way in the last decade, and I'm glad for its evolution. We all geek about something, right? Whether we like Renaissance Festivals or comics or video games or TV shows or even the Eukenuba dog show, if we are excited about it, we geek about it. 

And I geek about more things than I have the energy to dedicate to them: photography, poetry, Harlequin romance novels (and I don't even apologize for that!), all things cinema, jewelry (of course) and..... medieval history. Several years ago, I was invited to join a group involved with the Society for Creative Anachronism. This isn't the first time I've mentioned my involvement with the SCA and it surely wont be the last. But the reason I mention it here is to discuss the idea of drawing inspiration for our creative endeavors from things we wouldn't normally associate with it.

speaking, it was my involvement in this group that turned me on to the idea. Now how cool is that, right? I'd always been a wire wrapper, so turning to bead embroidery was an adventure laid bare at my feet for discovery, all thanks to the combat archery, medieval feasts and arts and sciences of the SCA!

So now I encourage each of you to consider one of your activities or hobbies from a fresh perspective, and see how it can be utilized in a creative project. Like fishing? How can that translate to, say, jewelry or pottery or poetry even. Is Wonder Woman your obsession (and why wouldn't she be, am I right)? Then how can her headdress or lasso of truth be translated into wire wrapping, for instance?

Explore the world with new eyes and you're bound to see wonders.