Life In Lockdown, Procrastination and getting things done
After weeks of spinning my wheels and getting nowhere fast our country went into lockdown. This created somewhat of a dilemma for this project. It was all coming along perfectly, my first miniature was nearly complete and one fateful decision completely threw my project into a nose-dive.
The Monday before we went into lockdown I made the decision to work. We had a couple of very expensive weeks, our Son turned 21 and we had a family weekend away. As a student these can take a while to recover from, so I decided to take a day to recover some of those expenses. This meant I was unable to get to Miniature Club to progress my project. It was a tough call because I love Miniature Club and would have preferred to be there. At the time I had to weigh up three and a half hours work on my project vs filling the coffers.
The coffers won, but what I didn’t realise was on Thursday we would be forced into a lockdown which would mean I wouldn’t have access to my project for several weeks — so far 3 weeks and counting. This posed a major dilemma because 3 weeks out of a 12 week project is significant. To make matters worse stores locked down meaning I was limited to buying essential items only — and as essential as getting items for my project was, in the big scheme of things these items are not considered essential to my country.
Time for Plan B — working on another miniature build or progressing the sketches in my book.
It took me a week to decide on what my second project should be — my Nanas chair, great with that sorted I leapt into action. I measured and cut the pieces to discover that the largest pieces in the chair were so tiny my eyesight was struggling. I needed a magnifying mirror to be able to work on something so small.
The project was suddenly a rollercoaster ride similar to this image, and the lows were “I cant do this”, I want to give up, I will never get it done in time, I was supposed to have 15 projects and now I can’t even do two!
Rising to the challenge I decided to pummel myself further into the darkness by attempting something I could control.
Perspective drawing had been the bane of my existence through my degree, and it was something I wanted to conquer, so with my birthday coming up I decided to shout myself a copy of SolidWorks to help render the drawings for my book. The problem with this was the second bane of my existence was getting my head around the 3D space. No pressure, we are in lockdown, I have time on my side to learn this new tool.
As an IT person software usually is the one thing that I can pick up really quickly. SolidWorks however has challenged me in ways I never could have imagined. I found a tutorial and it was wonderful, I started drawing the components I needed and it was coming together nicely…. Until I wanted mitered corners.
The first thing I did was scan YouTube for a tutorial on how to do this. I found the perfect tutorial for a planter box which had all of the components I needed for my bench seat. Excitement once more.
As I watched the video the excitement turned to despair. The process he used was so different to the process I was learning and he was going so fast that I could not figure out how he created the bits he did. I was thrown back to the lowest point of the graph.
The tutorial made me realise how little I had learned from the hours I had poured into video training. My virtual model was as incomplete as the real one, we were still in lockdown, the second project I chose was unworkable for me and the class was steaming ahead making amazing progress while I felt like I was spinning my wheels going nowhere fast. It wasn’t a time issue — it was a headspace issue.
So how do we fix it — we reach out. I spoke to my tutors about the issues I was having and they suggested I work on the chair in Balsawood which was easier to carve, trace the difficult angles so I could make them small and continue that way.
The plan had possibilities. I went online and ordered magnifying craft glasses and proceeded to an online store to order the balsa. Lockdown has eased slightly so we are able to order click and collect. I proceeded to our hardware store website (recommended by my tutors), searched for Balsa and nothing. Changed my search terms and discovered all of their listings describe their wood as “Craft Wood”. mmmm Craft wood covers everything from Balsa, Basswood, plywood and from their website there was not enough detail for me to find balsa. I don’t know balsa well enough to know what sizes I need, or whether what I am trying to order is right — I need to be in the store choosing the pieces I need. Arrrrrgggggghhhhhh
I didn’t know it was possible to get lower than the low point in the graph but I found it
Time for a reality check and a walk in the sun. If the path you are walking on is hard or difficult, it is time to change the path. The scary realisation was that I had reached the time in my degree when I had to get this done. This paper is a major project paper and worth 3/4 of this semesters study. If I give up then it will be impossible to recover from and could cost me my degree. I have come too far to falter at the last hurdle, so time to figure out how to recover from this.
It is not insurmountable, I just need to reframe my head, get stuck in, work harder than I ever have before. It reminds me of a story I once heard about gold miners in Australia. The miners had been working their patch for months only getting little bits of return for their effort. They threw everything they had at mining the gold but finally hit the point where they could no longer afford to continue, their funds exhausted, their equipment failing they gave up.
Their plot was purchased by another miner who dug a further 2cm and found the biggest gold deposit ever found.
The moral of the story — don’t give up, focus on the reason you started in the first place, put one step in front of the other and carry on.
As a side note — It is easy to get swamped in the darkness when things aren’t going well, but there is a way out. One little unrelated thing can pull you out. For me it was the discovery of an unexpected email from Medium saying they had paid me for August. WOW — the cool thing is I wasn’t expecting it, but even better — I have been trying several things for a number of years to make money online. This is the first payment I have ever received, and it is exciting because it shows that it works.
I was dabbling because I wasn’t sure it would work, but now I have proof it does. This glimmer of sunshine has turned my perspective back around. Now that I have been paid I feel worthy of the title “Blogger” — time to own it. Now to dig in, build consistency and complete my next goal — getting to 100 articles.
Set a goal and go for it, the rewards will come. I will complete my project, I will complete my degree and I will become a writer …oh yeah I can call myself that too now I have been paid.
Celebrate the wins, no matter how small and use the wins to guide you to your next success.