Coping Day to Day
How are you all? I hope you are all managing with the lockdown and taking care of your physical and mental health. Both are as important as each other in these unprecidented times.
Many of us have had our world turned upside down in so many ways by Covid-19. All we can do is take it day by day, hour by hour. I know I have had to reach deep and pull all my tricks out of the hat to keep my mental health of a reasonable level, but it has not been easy.
Things that have helped me immensly have been my gratitudes. Each day writing down what I feel grateful for, the postives I have in my life. It really helps refocus your mind which if it is anything like mine keeps want to gravitating to the negatives, fear and the unknown.
Walking, I can’t go far as my foot hurts and not every day, but exercise in any form is great for mental health. Be it yoga on a mat in your living room or a run or 20 minute walk, do it! Honestly, you will feel so much better for it.
My art! Well what can I say about my art. It is my constant, always there for me and so theraputic. I couldn’t manage without it. It doesn’t haven’t have to be art. Anything creative, baking, making, doing. Learn something new, give yourself a focus and a project. I know it can be hard for a lot of us as we have home schooling to do and other things, but I think being creative is a valuable form of self care. I am still doing and accepting pet portraits, but I am also making time for my art. Experimenting further with my acrylics and coloured pencils, taking time to try things I normally wouldn’t.
Setting Challenges
I have also set myself a challenge, to get my facebook live up and running properly so I can do a facebook live. I am making do with not the best equipment as I didn’t have a chance to order it, but my challenge is not only to find a way and achieve it! I will let you know the date of my facebook live when I am confident my set up will work as well as it possibly can.
4/4/20
I thought I would come back and update on my little challenges I have set myself and let you know how they are going.
I have been trailing my facebook lives with some spontaneous filming over the last week. I certainly didn’t want to set a date and time and get everyone ready for technology to fail me. That’s not to say it won’t happen but you can’t say I haven’t prepared.
I have had mixed success. My biggest hurdle to overcome is my wifi signal. I have a booster for the wifi as my studio is the opposite end to the router and in a different building all together. It has still been tricky and signal intermittent, but I figured it having to go through two lots of glass isn’t helping so I stuck it on extension lead and out of the kitchen window. It seems better. I am hoping it stays that way tomorrow. I shall let you know.
If I can get that sorted then the filming won’t be so intermittent and I will be able to see the comments which is obviously fairly essential when live streaming as people like to ask questions and I will run out of things to say otherwise. I am sure my chitter chatter would get tiresome after a while!
I think I have the comments sussed pretty much as I watch my live feed on a tablet or my old phone. I seem to be missing some, but that could be any reason, including a facebook glitch. I shall keep perservering.
The thing that has surprised me or pleased me the most is I thought it would be scary doing them, but it hasn’t been! I have loved it. I am very shy and thought I would find it daunting but I really have enjoyed myself and can’t wait to do more.
If you would like to see some of them or see the photo options for my official live event pop over to my facebook page.
Pet Portrait Commissions
So as far as my commissions are going, I am still doing them, I am catching up from my son having a sick bug, but since we are going nowhere that shouldn’t take too long. My only tricky part is the framing. My usual framers also run a shop so they have had to close due to being a non esstial business, but I do have another option. So essantially it is business as usual. I obviously can’t guarantee anything at this time, as I am sure you will understand. All I can do is take it day by day, week by week. However I will be completing every piece of artwork even if we have to wait a bit longer for delivery.
Thank you for your understanding
Sarah 🙂