Creative Overload

So I've got this deadline.  It is approaching rapidly as these things tend to do when you've stepped out on a limb.  I'm working at a pace that seems fast for me...that is most of my "free" time each day,  an hour when Elliott naps, maybe an hour and a half and then at least an hour when I finally get the boys to sleep.  I have some weekend childcare lined up in the next few weeks and will soon be calling in a few more troops for some weekday hours.

As I sit in my sewing room and stitch and look, then stitch and look some more I'm getting slightly distracted.  I mean, I've never had such long periods of fallow time in art making as I have since becoming a mama.  Never had to concentrate my time for deadlines with so much life stuff on my plate before.  What I'm noticing is that as I'm trying to focus my energy exclusively on this piece other ideas are floating into my head.  Website re-designs, ideas for drawings for new pieces!!! Um..ok, that's great and all but I'm on a deadline here.  I'd love to flit around and move from idea to idea in a more fluid (water sign much?) way but I'm torn.  There are only so many hours in a day and I can't afford to devote this precious time to another project.  Not if I'm ever going to make this deadline.

I've given myself the luxury of sketching the ideas down when I'm on "Mama time."  This is fairly new for the boys.  They've seen me reading or with the laptop open, and even stitching something or other but sketchbook out not so much.  This feels good to me in the sense that it will give them another dimension of who mama is.  Even if they can't yet grasp that I'm other than theirs at all times.  In the future they will internalize the notion that parents are more than just there for them, that we too have dreams and goals that run deep into our personal journey.

As this overload of ideas hits I've tried to avoid a feeling of slight panic by letting them float through my mind and out again.  Yoga and meditation training has helped with this.  Acknowledge the thought, then let it go.  Focus on your breath, stay in the moment.  Stitch and look.  Stitch and look.