Fields of Joy

I can see clearly now the rain has gone...
It's gonna be a bright (bright), bright (bright) Sun shiny day.

The month of August has become our official OW vacation month. It is not that we stop working and leave town, we just take it (a little) easy. August includes: a few long weekends, some days off with out-of-town guests sightseeing, and trying not to work on Fridays- well only 1-2 hours anyway.

We do get away for a few days to go camping, but followers of this blog know that:

• the laptop comes on the trip
• the office is staffed while we are gone
• and I am in contact via phone and email

I can't just shut down completely, can I?

While running our own gig, we really need to be reachable at all times. We have a lot of help doing the OtherWisz show (as a client once called it), but it's my ass if something goes wrong. And I can't pull a Stefan Sagmeister and:

• close my business down for a year
• go on sabbatical
• make art
  
• come back & pick up as if nothing has happened....

Now, I am not complaining, I signed on for this 'graphic design thing'. But a strange thing has happened: I re-discovered the weekend. They are like a mini-vacation- one in every week! And this 'weekend thing' really peaks with Summer in August- now we really got something.

I have had several periods in my life where I had a full head of steam. I worked during the week, worked nights freelancing, had DJ gigs on the weekend (often both a Friday and a Saturday night) and it just kept going. But after almost 10 years of just doing this-- running the design business-- I have all but stopped working on the weekends. This is the way it was meant to be and I like it. Weekends!! Yeah!!!

This 'weekend thing' just sort of happened. Now I really look forward to the weekend. I am usually getting fired on Thursday nights... I'll work late on a Thursday anticipating the weekend, then I am free once Friday night hits. I mean, I can still send some emails over the weekend, perform some quick website maintenance/updates, maybe read some documents... but I don't want to. Unless, of course, I absolutely, absolutely have you (see the above point about "...it's my ass if...").

So now a great month like August comes along and it has a good solid 4 weekends in it. This is like 4 vacations in the same month. These vacations include cutting the lawn and gardening, but hey, it beats sitting in front of this computer. I don't really think the 'word' computer and 'vacation' should be in the same sentence.... Once I can break that chain, we can really be free for that month off in Italy or Spain. Now that sounds like a good idea!

But for now I can float through Summer relaxing and really targeting these weekends for maximum fun. For the rest of the month I will be building websites, playing outdoors, reading RFPs, walking to the Saturday market, writing proposal & meeting notes & agendas, camping & hiking, marketing & promoting things, hanging at the waterfront & eating ice cream, writing letters & articles, laying in the yard hammock, camping, did I mention camping? Not so bad.