Catching up and the Fear of Missing Out

It’s Spring.  The garden is waking up and the deciduous trees are putting on lovely new growth. If it’s not too windy, early spring is one of my favourite times of the year.  This year, with the drought that has gripped this area for 2 years now, it’s a brief respite before the summer heat.
In the studio, I am trying to finish a piece for out T.arts Exhibition, “About Place”, which opens on the 1stof November 2018.  It’s a bit of a move away from my work to date, and requires a lot of doing. 
There is hours of hand stitching in it, so I have to make mini goals of stitching every day to try and get it across the line.
While stitching I think about the other projects that have deadlines as well, but much further out, and find this contemplative time some how makes decisions during process easier.  It’s almost like sleeping on a decision.  The mind is an amazing landscape.
As we track closer to Christmas, the events start piling up on each other, and it can be difficult to try and spread myself across these things.  The fear of missing out, characterized by social media addiction is a real thing in other aspects of life. It takes a bit of discipline to say “No, I simply cant make that opening/workshop/artist talk/meeting/gathering/hanging day/group show.”
I encourage you all to consider factoring moments of unstructured play in the studio, as time well spent, as the frenzied period of getting things done before Christmas starts to manifest itself.  
As I stitch, I see the value of no distractions, of reviewing the year, of thinking of further possibilities to express the themes that I am exploring.  All of a sudden, I’m not missing out.