(I actually only have 3 days left here but I started and abandoned a bunch of draft posts so I will probably just keep posting them after I leave)
I've heard jokes from the regulars about 'Art Farm Time,' usually referring to the warping of project schedules due to unforeseen side quests: to build a building you need to transport a beam, to transport the beam you need to repair a tractor, to repair the tractor you need to learn a lot about tractors...
Time flows differently on the scale of days, too.
It took me a little while to stop scheduling my studio time. I was worried about "making the most" of what could be my only time away from my 9-to-5 (read: 8-to-?) for the foreseeable future. I wondered if I should shift my work hours earlier so I could get started more quickly after lunch, or if I should wake up early to pencil in a morning session. I planned to leave for the studio after a 30-45 minute lunch and return 6 hours later for dinner. Friday-Sunday, when we don't have work hours, I would camp out in the studio all day.
This schedule was quickly disrupted by my reliable need to return to the house a couple of hours after lunch to refill my water bottle and use the bathroom. Pretty much everyday, this 10 minute errand run turned into a snack break, a reading break, a writing break... there was one day I when was so absorbed in a book that I stayed in a shady spot reading for the rest of the afternoon. I remember justifying to Phoebe that it was "related" because the book was about waste, and therefore an acceptable use of my time.
After the first week or two I realized that no one was coming to collect the timesheets I was filling out in my head. Since then, I've been working toward a bigger revelation: nothing valuable happens in units of hours.
Part of the lesson of this residency for me was just allowing myself to follow where my interests led. They led to my studio, but also toward lots of other things: I finished two courses on Codecademy, I am attempting to revive my Spanish vocab, and I started a Coursera course about the circular economy and am actually doing the assignments. And I'm reading and listening to audiobooks, a lot - mostly about waste and the climate crisis. None of this may sound very impressive but these are all things I really struggled to do in Brooklyn, with the exception of, sometimes, first thing in the morning before work. No matter how many lists I made or how ambitious my plans were, I ended up spending most evenings and weekends staring at the TV or the wall. I wanted to do other things, but my brain could or would not do them.
People who have been in the workforce longer than I have will probably find this dramatic, but taking time away from the office, the city, and a structured work schedule has allowed me to rediscover how my brain works (To those people: why do we live like this??). It allowed me to live a life in which the rhythms of the day are determined not by the meeting invites in a calendar but by daylight, hunger, thirst, interest --- and temperature. None of the buildings here are air conditioned, and since it gets into the mid/high 90s most days, everyone sort of naturally falls in line with the thermal patterns of the farm. That's the gift of freedom of movement and wardrobe (+ being somewhere with shaded options and, this summer, unusually low humidity) -- except in a few extreme cases, I didn't miss AC. My heavily shaded studio, especially the naturally ventilated corner I organized my workstations around, stays pretty comfortable even when it's blazing outside. Hence, lots of studio time in the afternoons.
Here is my low quality cell phone coloring explanation:
And it wasn't until I moved up to the Princess Tower, which can be cross ventilated and stays much cooler than the common area below, that I started regularly spending much time in the house before evening.
Also, I can't stress enough how important these trees are to the livability of this farm. If this property looked more like the land around it, it would be a very different story.
Anyway, although there is no real schedule, I've noticed patterns to the way I build my days around these natural factors. Here's a little outline of the way my brain works here:
Wake up - ~ 9 am: Active learning - Skills practice or reading information that it is important to retain (Codecademy, Duolingo, Coursera) --- Princess Tower Desk
9 am - 12 pm: Work hours - community contribution, task-oriented, (sometimes) collaborative, social, outdoors --- Misc Locations
12 pm - Too Hot to Be in the Kitchen: Lunch & more active learning --- Kitchen Table
Too Hot to Be in the Kitchen - Water Refill: Creative (studio or installation) + Passive learning (Podcasts, audiobooks - only if I'm doing something process-oriented or repetitive in the studio which I often am). --- Schoolhouse or out in the fields somewhere
Water Refill - Want to Go Back to the Studio: More active learning or writing --- Princess Tower Desk
Want to Go Back to the Studio - Hungry for Dinner: Creative + Passive learning again. Usually there is a yoga break before, during, or after --- Schoolhouse or out in the fields somewhere
Hungry for Dinner - Sleepy: Recreation/rest - cooking, eating, reading, writing, going for a walk, socializing, sitting by a fire, yoga, drinking tea on the roof, looking at the stars/moon
Sleepy - Wake up: Sleep
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