Projects in the pipeline...

If you don't already know me, then you also probably don't know what I do, in life. You know, to earn a buck. I'm a teacher that looks like a student. I'm halfway through my second year of teaching college (in Canberra, Australia, that's year 11 & 12. 16-18 year olds). I look about 17. I'm 24. Other teachers come into the classroom and look around for a good minute until they realise that yes, there *is* a teacher in the room supervising these young rapscallions... but really, is she even qualified? Does she really know what she's doing? The answer is yes. But that is actually not the point of the story, and if you come back to read any more of my posts you'll find I probably do this a lot, go off in tangents to stories, come back to the story, forget the point, remember, build it up, then conclude in a dramatically anti-climatic way. You know you want to stick around for that.

So the point of this particular story? Well I'm getting there...

Besides being a teacher, I am also a designer. I studied Graphic Design at Uni for 4 years, then completed a diploma of education so I could teach design. This arrangement allows me to freelance from home when I'm not at work. For the past 7 years I've also been doing a lot of photography, portraits and model portfolios, a couple of weddings, lots of hours editing photos. So this was all ading up to me being in front of the computer A LOT, and feeling guilty that I wasn't doing work, when I'd take an hour out to watch NCIS. Work life balance? Is that a catch phrase?

Some model portfolios I've shot

I also play soccer (as does my husband) so our weekends are taken up with going to games, I train twice a week and he trains once (on different nights). If you can't tell by my internet tone, I'm at the stage where soccer is more of a chore than a hobby.

Action Shot! That's me on the left, looking about 12. In reality I was about 22 here.

To combat my growing stress levels and annoyance at working constantly I decided shortly before the wedding that I would stop doing photography for other people. No more commissioned work or portraits, for at least 6 months, maybe a year.

I also applied to go part time at work, so am now on a .85 load, which means I go in 85% of the time, and get paid 15% less. This in turn has allowed me to work more routine hours from home on my design business (www.danverscreative.com), which means I know I have 3 hours on Tuesday and 3 hours on Thursday to get the work done, and if I want to watch TV on a Wednesday night that's fine and dandy because it's my night off work.Work life balance? Ohhhh yeah I remember what that is now...

I've also found that getting into more of a routine with the business has helped me in my house routines, with keeping the place clean and tidy and doing washing regularly, not letting it all pile up etc. I'm a messy person at heart. When I was a little kid you honestly could not find the floor of my room... I would clear a path to my bed and that was good enough for me, until I'd decide to do a MASSIVE clean up and spend a whole day tidying and sorting, putting everything back away in it's place. As an adult, I do not want to live like that. I've learned that to keep things tidy, you need to have not a lot of junk, and good storage. I've made a concerted effort to chuck a lot of old stuff out (always sending things to St Vinny's or the recycling where possible, of course), and this book is really good inspiration if you're feeling stuck and not sure where to start.

Washing? Check. Colourful undergarments? Check.

Gosh I've gone on another tangent.

What I'm getting around to, is that now I don't feel so burdened with work, I have a few fun little projects in the wings that I will be working on in my actual spare time over the next couple of months that I'm quite excited about. One is jewellery design (which I was heavily into about 5 years ago and really want to start up again), and one is wedding related, with a few different elements that should come together nicely. I'm still trying to find a good name for the jewellery design business, so if you have any good ideas, throw them my way!

Please feel free to leave a comment about how you are dealing with work/life balance, and what the "life" portion of that consists of for you, I'd love to hear from you =)