Calendar Tetris

“Don't be fooled by the calendar. There are only as many days in the year as you make use of.”

--Someone of questionable internet provenance

I keep digital calendars, including a couple that I need synced with others. Life gets like that. But when life gets truly hectic, I go old-skool. I print out a few months of calendars, and work them out in pencil.

My wife calls this practice "Calendar Tetris," which is funny because I don't know if she's ever played a single game of Tetris in her life. She's just grokked the concept from culture. In Calendar Tetris, you break up your calendar boxes into larger shapes, by project or appointment, and they end up looking like Tetris pieces: straight lines, L-bends, rectangles and so on. Then you try to fit them all together with no gaps.



Once printed, there were some items that were already on the calendar from prior scheduling: appointments, meetings, and so on. From there I start penciling in. There are projects which I have either currently or need to start working on. A couple are recurring projects. These are the tricky parts. Deadlines overlap both which each other as well as with trips, like my upcoming weekend at Spectrum Fantastic Art Live. Reference photos need to be taken, convention supplies ordered, convention prep done. And that takes me only to the end of May. But existing projects continue, others begin after--having been commissioned in advance with long deadlines, for instance. A couple others are more speculative but seemingly require my starting for them to commence, and have fuzzier windows of time when they are due.

All in all, these are good problems to have. The past 6 months have been incredibly busy. It's looking like the next 4 at least won't let up. I'm extraordinarily grateful for the work and the opportunities. It just makes for a professional headache trying to manage everything without letting any balls drop. But, I am a professional....

Chief among the balls not to drop is my domestic life. Being an illustrator who works at home, sharing life with a spouse is always tricky. When you're not busy enough, you feel very accountable, whether it's because you're getting pressure or just have it internally (for me, it's mostly internal). When you are busy, you have to (and want to) maintain domestic tranquility. For instance, as I was sitting there diligently filling out boxes, placing projects into them, I realized I was filling in all my Saturdays. With few exceptions, I take Sundays off. I need a day to recharge, and will work round-the-clock the rest of the week, if necessary, to maintain it. I don't think it's wise, healthy, or sane to burn through my life 7 days a week. And yet, I am always extremely responsible with my deadlines.

But Saturdays are days most of you take for granted as days off (or you at least get 2 days off per week, typically). It is very, very easy for Saturdays to become another weekday for me. Left to my own, maybe that would be ok, although it can certainly get tiring. But with a spouse--shoot, with friends and family alone, even--Saturdays are not to be given over by default to work, either. If it can be helped.

So as I caught myself, I began to erase and reconfigure, trying to leave Saturdays as either open or as float days: if I don't meet my weekday goals, Saturday can be a clean-up day, catching me up. If that happens, hopefully I haven't scheduled so poorly as to have to work a long day. Maybe a few hours might be all that's needed to put me back on the rails.



It's tricky business, and as the calendar got further out, I had to double-up some days depending on which project was a go at the time. Though I could probably already fill out August by now, even July was getting way too tentative to be very reliable, except to tell me I would be able to handle some projects I'd be working on in June.

It was sad to see my hopes dashed about getting in another 2x3' personal piece done before Spectrum Live. In the back of my mind, I've known for a few weeks that it was probably impossible. It took just beginning to pencil in boxes to quickly see that yes, I wouldn't even begin before August, most likely.



The last variable, of course, is new work. Some of these scheduled projects have been accepted, and once accepted I don't back out if something good comes along. A couple, however, haven't yet been formalized, or are part of regularly-scheduled assignments that I could put a hold on with some forewarning. Because you never know when some awesome commission will show up. It's good to be booked ahead of time, but can also lead to the largest tears if you don't have the room to maneuver and you get asked to paint a dream commission. So there is some flexibility like that built in. But barring any surprises, it'll be a very busy few months, and this is a peek into how I manage it.



Included in the calendar, dear reader, is you. I have indicated there the order in which certain art posts will appear. I've kinda got a bi-monthly rhythm for new art reveals, and I'd like to keep that up for the foreseeable future. Not that I only do 2 pieces a month, but those posts take more work and I'd rather have a little backlog than not, in case I go months on work I can't show and need art to show.

via Exit Within: the Gallegos Blog Randy Gallegos http://blog.gallegosart.com/2013/03/calendar-tetris.html