One of the joys of my creative work is sending out new orders. I usually forget to take pictures of new items because I’m just so dern excited to wrap them up, write a note to the buyer, and send them on their happy way! But one of the hassles of my work is that I don’t live or work terribly close to a Post Office. Thus, I have to scramble on “shipping” mornings to get to the Post Office (or trek out after I get home from work). And usually, I’m good at placing my receipts with tracking info into my bag and sending notifications as soon as I get to work. Sometimes, though, that’s not the case. And I get to send out the notification when I’m back home in the evening.

But such is the life, I suppose. I don’t have enough orders to automate my processes (at least, that’s what I tell myself). I enjoy going to the Post Office, printing out a shipping label, and hand-writing the address. Call me silly, that’s just something I love doing. I love the hand-made process of it all.

So this week I’ve had time to meditate on my shipping practices. Should I continue to use USPS Priority Boxes, or should I use my own? Should I start printing labels rather than hand-writing them?

I appeal to you, then. I know you’ve ordered things online before. What do you love most when you get your order in the mail? Has there been a particularly special package that you’ve received? What made it so special?

I’ve written before about how much I love my day job. It’s a really awesome place to work; I get to help people do their jobs better, and in the process, nurture my own helpful and caring personality. Plus, I get to be geeky and tech-savvy in ways I never imagined I’d love being. Long story short: I have no intentions of “quitting my day job.” I just want to sew and create, too.

Maybe this is why I’m so fascinated by the seller’s stories featured on Etsy’s series. As someone who loves  and is fulfilled by her work-a-day life, but who also loves creating, I’m intrigued by the stories of folks who made the decision to go solely for the crafting side. People make decisions about their priorities all the time. Many times, the story is quite different from the ones in the Quit Your Day Job series: people make a decision to shuck their creative side to do the “right” or “correct” thing with their lives, or do do what’s necessary to make ends meet. And that’s one of the points of this series… to show others that it is possible to make ends meet AND delve into creativity full time.

So perhaps I am lucky. But holding on to and loving my day-job presents some interesting challenges:

Working weekends / nights

It may seem like a simple thing, but working 40 hours a week (plus about 2 hours daily commute on the trains) takes up a lot of your waking hours! And especially when the winter months mean shorter days, it can be easy to want to turn in as soon as you get home, and use precious weekend daylight hours for other activities (houses get messy and food needs to be replenished, after all).

This is when creativity starts to feel more like a chore and less like creativity. Best advice: small chunks. It’s easier to do 30 minutes’ worth of work on a project a night than try to cram it in all at once. But don’t fret; yours truly has pulled some all nighters for sewing projects before.

Maintaining email contact with customers

This may not seem like a big deal (especially when your full-time job is at a tech company, and you’re expected to be accessible via email all day), but it’s surprisingly challenging to stay on top of emails and Esty messages with clients when your full time work requires constant email communication, too. This is in large part due to my desire to keep my full-time work separate from my crafting work.

To combat this, I keep a dedicated browser for full-time work items, and a separate browser for crafting work items. My Etsy shop, recent conversations, and any USPS tracking info resides in one browser. I can minimize it (or shuffle it to a different “space” on my screen) and only come to it during lunch. Then, everything is already open and ready to act on.

Now, if I can only remember to take my USPS receipts with me to work… Many is the time I’ve had to follow up from a morning USPS shipment that evening because the tracking number was left in my car at the train station.

But there is a saying about raining, pouring, and somesuch else, and goodness, this week has been a textbook example.

Three orders in one week. Three! That’s a big deal!

It was good to get started on some new things–to get caught up in the excitement of having lots of sewing to do after a while of having just a few projects to work on.

Two orders, strangely enough, were for the exact same design in the same color scheme: “long cross” stoles in white. The third order was for a completely unique idea: a plain white stole (no quilting, no patterns, no designs) that, upon delivery, is to be hand-painted for the recipient. Love this!

I absolutely love that the orders in this week were all monochrome (in a way). I love my “long cross” design because, in part, it lends itself so well to a white color-scheme. Starting out dark at the bottom of the stole and becoming lighter, with a light cross throughout much of the length, is especially lovely when the “dark” of the stole is a medium-tan color, and the “light” is bright white. I find that many customers use this particular design as a “wedding” stole when constructed in all white. And then a plain white stole to be painted? I give up–I just can’t think of a better embodiment of my core conviction: we are ALL creative!

I love and appreciate all the good vibes and positive energy this week. Rain or shine, here’s to another great one.

I typically hear two lines of argument. Yes, you should (because creativity is as much a habit to be cultivated as it is a gift to be shared and enjoyed); and no, you shouldn’t (because what you create reflects the mood in which you create it–joy begets joy, dispair begets dispair).

What do you think? Both have their pros and cons:

Given the above, I’m in favor of a mixed approach.

Yes, you should create even when you’re not in the mood… you can get lifted out of that funk and can start to appreciate your work as work-in-progress (instead of getting into the mindset that all work needs to be completed in one sitting).

But no, you should not push it too hard. If you notice that you are resenting your work, drop it for a few minutes. Take a walk. Make a cup of tea. Write in your journal (or, ahem… blog). You may find that you’re soon more willing to pick up your project and start at it again after you’ve cleared up some headspace to enjoy your work again.

So to you, my consumate procrastinator, the one who only works when she “wants” to, I say, “get over yourself.”

And to you, my workaholic, whose fingers are sore from too much crafting, too much strain–whose eyes are bleary with fatigue… take a break. For the love of goodness, take a break.

Then get back to it.

It’s been about nine months since I was able to just spend time sewing. Shocking, for someone who sells hand-made sewn stoles on Etsy. But, alas, it is true. Working a full-time job that you really love can do that to you. Since January, I’ve been able to sew only when needed. If I had a custom order come through Etsy, I would create time on weekends to make the item and ship it within three weeks of purchase. Wonderful that I still got to sew and create lovely things, but not altogether satisfying. I needed (wanted) time to simply sew.

This week, I got it.

Part of what I love so much about my full time job is that we have a flexible vacation policy: just make sure that you’re not stranding your co-workers or being irresponsible with time away from the office, and you can take it. Given that I’d not had time away from the office since April, I figured it was time.

Like all craft projects, there was a certain effort to get acclimated to the new freedom I had this Monday morning. So I cleaned up my house. Typical procrastination, I’m aware. Then I took a little road trip (because, really, it’s been too long since I’ve been able to just drive somewhere frivolous). Then I got to work.

So far, it’s been miraculous! I didn’t realize just how much I’d been wanting to create new things until I had my hands in fabric again (I’m sure I’ll mention it in greater detail soon, but I’m having a love affair with batiks).  Though I love the designs I currently have for sale on Etsy, I had been craving the opportunity to make things I’ve never made before.

I can’t wait to show you what I’ve been working on. Perhaps some new designs will come out of this week, perhaps not. In either case, I feel so fortunate to be able to take time this week to just create. Simple as that.

Back in November of 2010–before I had this great full time job that takes up so much of my time and energy–a dear friend of mine was ordained to the diaconate of the Independent Catholic Church.  It was my honor to make her vestments that she and her bishop wore at her ordination, and an absolute joy to see them both wearing these vestments during the ordination ceremony.  The ceremony was in Virginia, and it was with a full heart that I loaded up my car early one cold November morning with the vestments I’d made and drove nine hours to her church.

My friend was still in the throes and battles of academia, so after the ceremony concluded she and her partner had to high-tail it back to Tennessee in time for finals.  On a delightful whim, I decided not to drive South to follow my steps back home the way I came, but to drive West with them.  As a result, I had the chance to stay with them longer, and to break up my trip into two days (instead of trying to make it home in the dark of night).

Second only to spending more time with my friends, the highlight of this excursion was stumbling across the Mystical Mandala Coloring Book.

Mandalas are traditional forms of sacred art and prayer found in Hindu and Buddhist traditions, and, somewhat like the icons found in Eastern Orthodox traditions, the creation of mandalas is a sacred activity.  They usually are circular designs, and in many traditions are made of sand.

Yet, here was a coloring book (a most ordinary thing) that is devoted entirely to these wonderful acts of art-making-prayer.  What a strange coloring book to find!

It has provided me with hours of delight.  My older sister and I sat over this coloring book last Christmas and each worked on her own mandala–my father stumbled upon us, and even though we were 26 and 29 (and had long-since given up the nasty habit of back-biting and bickering that we had as children), he couldn’t help but comment how peaceful we were.  Sitting.  Just coloring.  No big deal.  Since then, I’ve turned back to my Mystical Mandala Coloring Book for quietude and inspiration.

Lately, I painted our dining room walls and wanted to put up artwork to fill the now-yellow stretches between windows and corners.  Where else should I turn but this delightful coloring book?  I finished one mandala, cut it out, and pasted it over rich red fabric.  One frame: done.

Now that fall is settling in (or, at the very least, peaking in), I am returning to this coloring book as a way to center myself after a long day.  Just to sit.  And color.  And many times, I think back to my dear friend who was ordained to the diaconate last November–the one whose ordination turned my steps toward the path to this strange, delightful coloring book.  I think of her in her ordinary life, still just as ordained to ministry as she is when she serves in a church service.

In many ways, this coloring book is a reminder to me that it is in the midst of the very ordinary things of life that we see the sacred coming into being.  That we can even pick up a marker, color in a few lines, and sit quietly with a work of art as it comes into existence–that is nothing short of miraculous.

It may not be creative in that you are not crafting something from nothing, but the creativity of choosing colors, dabbing markers onto paper, and glorifying at the simple beauty that you had a hand in creating… well, that’s enough for me.

For now.

When she asked me to reflect on what the liturgical season of Ordinary Time meant to me, I seized the opportunity to write the following.

Enjoy.

Does the church year really mimic the academic year, or has my experience lead me to that conclusion?

For nineteen years of my life, I have had my seasons dictated by the school calendar.  It is hard to suddenly think of the year beginning in November instead of late August (or for that matter, January).  But this isn’t meant to be a reflection on the start of the year, but the middle.  Or rather, the first long stretch.

The Christian year begins with Advent, and then comes Christmas and Epiphany.  Soon after, Lent arrives to mark the road to Easter.  Easter comes and goes, then begins the even longer season of Ordinary Time.  Unlike Lent, Ordinary Time is not marked by a sense of anticipation or special longing.  It is the first long stretch of time in the church year when there is nothing hovering just along the horizon.

In my academic career, Ordinary Time has always coincided with summer–vacations and blissful forgetting of all the lessons learned the previous year.  When I was growing up, this was a season of low attendance at my church.  No one said it aloud, but I got the impression that it was acceptable to miss some church in the summertime because nothing really “important” was happening.  Jesus wasn’t being born, baptized or executed, nor was he rising.  Mary wasn’t waiting patiently, and we weren’t fasting or feasting.  Instead, it was a time for parables and summer reading lists.  Not terribly exciting.

But now that I have been outside of the academic pattern for over a year–and I haven’t had the ending and beginning of a school year to approximate Ordinary Time–it’s starting to sink in just how odd this understanding of this season really is.  Ordinary Time is by no means unexciting (as a time devoid of other more thrilling things) but this popular perception fails to recognize just how exceptionally ordinary the rest of the year is, too.  This is the first season of Ordinary Time in which I’m not gearing up for some new beginning: I’ve just been chugging along in my life at the intersection of love, worry, work, and food.

How much of my life really is wrapped up in those four things: love, worry, work, and food–even and especially in those other more exciting seasons of the church (even in those other more exciting semesters of schooling).  And now that I don’t have a new semester or a new thrill to look forward to, I’m beginning to fully realize it.

So perhaps this is more a reflection on how much my life’s seasons have been dictated by the school year rather than the church year.  Or perhaps this was a chance to muse over how much I love Ordinary Time’s insistence that the everyday matters just as much as the exceptional (otherwise, why devote a whole season to it)?  I rejoice in the ebb and flow of daily life… in the knowledge that this first long stretch of the church year is in many ways more like our everyday lives than the other seasons: the long quiet stretches when we get to practice life without glamour or pretense or any other “event” to make life meaningful.  It just is.  And that’s the wonder of it.

In a way, this is a season for me to regret all the past seasons of Ordinary Time that were nothing more than filler between things that I thought were more exciting.  It is a time to give thanks that–despite all the imbued glamour we give to other seasons of the church–life itself is fantastically (miraculously) ordinary.

In the end, it was a pretty good season.  We made it to the championships but fell short of league victory.  And better yet–I actually made it on base during one game!  This had never happened to me before (seriously).

I bunted and just ran.  I almost had to knock down the first baseman to make it, but in the end I was called “safe” by the umpire.  Then began the awful waiting–for the next kick, for a kick that wasn’t a pop fly.  My adrenaline was up so high, I could hardly listen to the first base coach’s advice!  It had made it on base!

That inning ended with me still on first base, but I walked back to the dugout with a happy sense of satisfaction in myself and pride in my team.

I’m still not convinced that I’m an athletic superstar, but this kickball league was a small example that I am in fact [somewhat] athletic.  It goes to show you just how much the stories we tell ourselves shape us.  I’ve held off joining athletic teams and trying sporty things because I’ve always had this story running in the back of my mind: “I’m not that athletic; I’d just be an embarrassment.”  I’m not saying that I was the star of the team by any means, but I do know that I would never have made a base-kick if I listened to the story I had been telling myself all my life.

What about you?  What stories do you tell yourself that stop you from trying something new?

Yep… there it is: my big news is that I single-handedly bought a brand new car this weekend.  It was a strange thing, walking into the showroom (a woman all by herself), knowing that for the first time in my life I had the financial power to buy a car.

Just think of how extraordinary that is.  A car.  A huge piece of machinery that we Americans associate with prosperity, independence and position, and we don’t often realize is an incredible luxury.  In a world when millions have to walk over a mile to get to fresh water, just having a car is a bit ludicrous (much less a new one).

And still, I bought one.  So what does that say about me?

It was a struggle to come to this decision.  For months now, I’ve wanted a new car.  Not “needed,” mind you: wanted.  My old car was eight years old, and though still running well (enough), she was threatening needing some big repairs that I doubted would add more than a few years of life to her.  It was more likely that I could get a good trade-in value for her if I bought a new car now than if I waited another six months.  I knew that if there was any time for me to buy a new car, it would be soon.

But there wasn’t some lightening strike that pushed me to buy a car yesterday.  My old car was still in good enough condition, and there weren’t any crazy “end of the model year” sales going on.  But I knew it would be a good decision that I happened to be in the position to make.  I would have called it an impulse buy if I hadn’t spent months researching vehicles, budgeting out monthly payments, and wrestling with what it means to be able to afford a new car.

I shy away from language such as “I’m blessed to be able to afford this,” because it’s theologically unsound.  What does that statement say about all the people who can’t go out and buy a new car… are they somehow less “blessed” than I?  Surely not.

No, it was just a good decision for the stage of life in which I find myself.  Twenty seven years old and gainfully employed, getting a new car that will be in excellent condition and under warranty until I am at least thirty three is a good idea (so long as I could afford it).  I also chose a fuel-efficient car (can’t quite afford a hybrid at this stage in my life) that is small and practical.

It’s still utterly strange to me that I could afford this big new purchase.  Given that I waited for months and months to decide to buy a new car, I’m settled that it was a wise decision.

For better or worse, I bought a car this weekend.

Indeed, I worked from home on Thursday just so I could bake fresh bread and get groceries for our meal that evening.  Though not everyone could make it, it was a delightful affair.

On the menu: fresh baked bread, gazborscht, hummus, eggplant spread, and olives.

What an experience–cooking!  The bread is a tried and true (utterly delicious) recipe, and the hummus, eggplant spread and olives were pre-packaged… but the gazborscht was an exercise in flying by the seat of my pants.  I’d only discovered the recipe in The Veganomicon that morning, dashed to the store for the necessary ingredients in the first half of my lunch break, and spent the second half of my break shredding and food-processing the heck out of this chilled gazpacho/borscht edible portmanteau.

I won’t divulge the recipe here (you gotta buy this cookbook!), but my oh my.  Sweet, tangy, cool, refreshing soup for a hot late summer’s night.

And what a fabulous idea this Dinner Co-Op is!  I’m too forgetful and lazy for my own good sometimes, so it’s only a good thing to get yourself together with friends.  And if you have to schedule it for two evenings a month, so be it.