Between DH being retired now, and doing quite a bit of traveling, trying to find a new normal is tough. Since I've been an empty nester, most days I went to the sewing room as soon as DH went to work. Even during the year he was working at home, work started at the same time every day, so when he went to his home office, I went to the sewing room. When he started working from home, I started matching my breaks to his, and we ate lunch together. I jokingly called it "Retirement Lite".
I honestly didn't think it was going to be much of change once he retired, especially since he only retired from nursing, and still runs a business. He still spends a LOT of time in his office, so surely I can sew while he's working, right?
It took me longer to adjust than I expected, and largely because I hate waking up to an alarm. One of the things I was most looking forward to about DH retiring was no more alarms in the morning. It's not like we are sleeping until noon or anything, we usually get up between 6-7 am without an alarm, but now we have leisurely coffee time in the morning, which I love. DH is big on breakfast, but I hate eating as soon as I wake up. In the working days, I went and quilted for an hour, then I came up to eat breakfast. We never eat breakfast together because of my aversion to eating right away. The thing is, our leisurely coffee time, where we are reading the news and discussing everything from what's for dinner to world events, lasts anywhere from 45 minutes to almost two hours. If it's the longer period of time we both end up eating breakfast during that time. I am pretty much a cottage cheese and fruit girl, so not a lot of prep required.
I really enjoy our new morning routine, and it's probably the most retirement-y thing we do. BUT, this new routine completely derailed my sewing routine. I've done the whole, quilt for an hour, eat breakfast on my break, get some household chores started then go back to sewing for years now. This week I finally figured out a way around that!
We eat lunch at noon, pretty much without fail. It's a predictable time. I realized if I switch my quilting time to after lunch, I could get myself into a new routine. This was huge! Why was this such a game changer? I was struggling with getting anything done. I didn't have anything basted and ready to quilt, and I had deadline quilts that needed to be made. I needed to baste something so I could do some quilting, and I needed to sew to get the deadline projects made. The thing is, I wasn't getting anything basted, and when I was sewing I was feeling so guilty about not spending any time quilting, I was distracted and not being as productive as normal.
This week it all clicked. I didn't need to feel bad about not quilting, if I could make a consistent time to quilt. After lunch! Now I am sewing as much as I can in the morning, mostly switching between deadline projects and getting UFO's to the next stage. I'm seeing some real progress now that I'm in a better headspace.
After lunch, I go quilt for an hour, today that is some walking foot quilting, but earlier this week it was FMQ. After that hour, I spend some time either basting a quilt, cutting out other projects (Christmas stuff currently), or tidying up some of the disaster that is my sewing/fabric area.
Now that I'm figuring out the new normal, I actually have a couple finishes!
The quilt for my great-nephew is finished. It's finish #3 for the year.
I made his older sister a doll quilt, and it's finished too! I don't always count small finishes, but this year has been such a lousy year for quilting, I'm counting this as finish #4. I need the encouragement that I am indeed making progress.
I'm feeling more encouraged than I have been in a while. We have quite a bit of traveling planned for the foreseeable future, but now that I figured out how to maximize my time at home, I'm feeling much better!
No comments:
Post a Comment