Working Whilst Exhausted

I haven’t always been this exhausted, but my body feels like lead most days, my limbs weigh me down, I know I can only work a couple of days a week if I have to socialise.

To counter this, I researched wages for an artist, so now I use the Artists Union England pricing structure for my workshops.

This means when I have quoted work that people have said is too much money, but if this is the case, I do recommend other people from the same space that can quote for the job. But I always come from a place of value added and what the project will achieve.

Pricing my work is similar it is working out what I can charge and finding as many instances of similar work as I can find. I usually ignore Etsy prices as they are rarely indicative of the market. And seeing what the market bears.

I work quickly so I don’t like doing it by time taken to make things, because although one day I might manage 3 to 4 paintings or many more pieces of ceramics, most days I won’t manage much outside my daily sketchbook and notebook. The wobbly nature of my energy means that as of writing this, I have only managed three finished paintings this year, and they are all 3D pieces that I need to edit and write about. At the same point last year, I had forty to fifty finished pieces.

I have always wished I earned enough to pay a member of staff to do all the communications for the business as I find that side mentally exhausting. So often, instead, I save up energy to try and do as many emails in a day as possible. The only problem is if someone replies near instantly because I don’t know if I will have enough energy to chase it. I have also scheduled emails to go out at other times because being perceived is an energy drain.

Scones the Cornish Way

I used to bake a lot; in fact, my first attempt at a business was my grandparents encouraging me to have a cake baking (not decorating) way back in the 1990s. They wanted me to gain confidence, but even then, I found the selling side exhausting. I just liked making cakes and hoping people enjoyed them. After that, I delivered a couple hundred of the free papers every week, for which the pay was about £2.60, and 20-30p for each individual leaflet I delivered. It was back-breaking work; making cakes was much easier. But I just don’t bake as much anymore, it means being on my feet for long times, and spending time getting everything perfect is too much.

There is something fascinating about the texture of canvas on the clay it looks like it is pixelated

Before Christmas, I was trying to go Clay Club at UCLan (Preston University) and I was spending Mondays there working, but I found I was then burnt out without energy till the Thursday/Friday, then going out with my youngest Saturday, and then starting over. And this was because I was considering a return to ceramics, with the hopes I could do some production runs of new work through the kilns. But the Kilns are smaller than when I studied there (No I’m not older and have grown they are new kilns and they are smaller) so half a days work can’t fit in their gas kilns, and they only fire the gas kiln at most a day a week and you have to share, and I didn’t like how my test pieces turned out and I was tired of being tired.

Finished test piece after reduction firing

And some of it is that idea that unless you are in control the firing isn’t going to turn out how you want it and there is a level of disappointment, in my head I know how this clay should look after reduction firing, as I fired with it exclusively for the years I studied at the university. And this isn’t it. And making the 3D work in clay takes so much longer than making it from paper and card, and I prefer my results in just card with ink or pencil. So not only was I working harder, to exhaustion, pushing myself week on week, it was for worse results than I made in an hour or so. And then, with taking on an additional course in January, I was too burnt out. Because of the disappointment of the test firings, I then didn’t apply to Potfest, which had been my intention.

The same clay reduction fired in 2008

For years, I have been locked in this worry of having so little energy I have to choose between where I spend my energy and the truth is that is usually worrying rather than actually working. People say not to make for your audience, but to make the work you want to see, but the work I want to make tends towards making the work that only a parent could love, and worry that I can’t sell it. I don’t know what to do to make a living at all. After all these years, it is a struggle. And the older I get I the less energy I have to push forward.

My question is how do I find my routes to market after my previous attempts to do so have continuously failed and I have always struggled to build a audience too I get to certain numbers and then things stall for years on end. I don’t know what to do, but I am exhausted, and my back hurts so I am going to go listen to music and try and thumbnail some ideas.