Time gentlemen please

I feel like I got back from Scotland yesterday, but it's almost a week already... I don't know where the time has gone, or what on earth I've been doing since then. I certainly haven't been down to my studio - although I have finally bought some metal modelling tools, which are a bit more appropriate than the red plastic ones I borrowed from Kim's Fimo modelling kit!

I seem to be all over the place and just can't settle into a routine. Having my work days changed about, first due to Scotland and now half term, doesn't help, but I think it's more than that. Of course I've been reflecting on my time at the Scottish Sculpture Workshop, but I've also been reading a book How to be Free by Tom Hodgkinson (see The Idler), which I think is making me question everything. I realised in Scotland that I just don't make enough work, and if I want to change that, which I have to, then I have to carve out more time from somewhere. Two five-hour days a week for art, that are often compromised, are just not enough if I want to get anywhere. And by that I mean make work that I regularly exhibit. What my experience really taught me was that I just don't make time to play and experiment, not just with materials, but with ideas as well.

Reading How to Be Free is making me see that work rules my life, even though I only work part-time, that and school hours; it's a pain in the backside having to conform to someone else's idea of when I should work or when Kim should learn. I never had more difficulty than when Kim started school and I had to fit in with hours imposed on my life by authority. In Scotland I found that my natural rythm was to begin work around 9.30, then to take a longish lunch break of an hour and a half to two hours and then continue working to 9 or 10pm. Not having a tv helped. I'd sit in my room and draw, which was much more fun, more creative and will of course eventually be more fruitful. I hate television; it has a way of sucking you in to being lazy. I actually found myself regretting that I'd missed the BBC's last two episodes of Jane Eyre whilst I was in Scotland. It was the only thing I did miss. But why? I had to remind myself that I have the book on the shelf and if I wanted to read it again, I could do it anytime in my own time, not on someone else's schedule. The trouble with tv at home is that the rest of the family gravitate to it in the evenings and I have a natural urge to gravitate towards them for a bit of company. Persuading them to give it up will be worse than pulling teeth; I know because I've tried. I can stop Kim watching it without trouble, but trying to impose my rules on other adults is pointless, of course.

So, the only solution, as I see it, is to remove myself from the situation, to find another room in the house where I can leave my 'play equipment' (art stuff) and go and have a bit of fun of my own, however antisocial. Going down to my studio in the evenings is a non-statrter with a young child; he needs feeding, washing and putting to bed for one thing. And he doesn't go to bed until 9pm. So from 3 - 9pm each day I'm more or less actively parenting. Being an only child he demands more adult time than children with siblings seem to do. For three days a week I work at the dreaded social services from when I drop him off at school to when I pick him up. Then of course there are the weekends... To be able to sit and think, which is what this is, I've had to get up at 6 this morning (unnatural!) to guarantee myself an hour and a half of peace and quiet. Well, I hear you cry why don't you go and do some art instead? Because although an hour and a half is ample for me for writing or reading, running, practicing guitar or whatever, it just doesn't seem to be enough for making work; it's barely enough time to clear my head before I can pick up a pencil...

So, that's it. My trouble, my dilemma: how do I make more time? If you have any ideas or practical advice I'd really like to know. In the mean time, I can hear the radio alarm clock coming somewhere from upstairs, which means my hour and a half is up and I have to go and get myself showered and breakfast on the go...