Laugardagur!
Happy New Year from the house studio at Casa Corteza! We here at studiOmnivorous have been doing the usual New Year-style revelries: travel (and I’m excited to share those soon), friends, family, and a lot of sleeping.
lots of sleeping.
We’ve been working a lot too: dare I say, working too much? Though full of awesome results and good times, the weeks leading up to our wanderlust were exhaustingly busy. I enjoy getting my hands dirty and spending time immersed in my work, but if the holidays have taught us one thing, it’s that spiked eggnog and cold weather running don’t mix. And we also learned that every so often, you really do have too take a break.
That’s why we’ve decided to celebrate Lagurdagur.
…For the etymology-disinclined, Laugardagur is the Icelandic word for Saturday. In Old Norse, the roots mean “pool” and “day,” or literally, “bathing day.” This is not to say we’re going to stop bathing the rest of the week, by the way…but we figure, if we need a regular break, what better day to celebrate than a day that looks like “Laugh” and means “Pool Day?” It just conjures up hours of fun, sun, and general relaxment, with or without an umbrella drink involved.
So what’s going to make Laugardagur special? Well, we’ve already decided that we’re unplugging. We can still listen to music, but overall we’re seriously limiting our use of computers and television to just about nil. The only exceptions are to look up tutorials for projects, but we’re even cautious about that, since from there it’s a slippery slope to browsing Pinterest (for educational purposes, of course, ahem).
For people like us, who make their bread&butter through or because of the web, this has been…difficult, to say the least. But it’s allowing us to follow the second rule of Laugardagur: to use our mind, and learn something new and/or do something creative.
(including personal projects I've otherwise put off for one reason or another.)
Granted, given that I have a tendency to rewatch (for the twenty-something-ith time) The Day After Tomorrow for it’s sheer Work-On-Other-Stuff potential every time I do a tedious creative task (and while that sounds like an oxymoron, try cutting 230 tiny strips of paper or individually hand-sewing 350 squares without something else going on), the whole ["No TV" plus "work on stuff"] equation has also taken a little time to solve. But I’m finding that I really like it. It puts me back into my work, to appreciating the craft of making…and even if I’m doing a repetitive task, I’m seeking out conversation that grows and flourishes instead of just stuffing something into the gap.
It’s putting me back into my world, the one composed of making, doing, and thinking. I’m appreciating my surroundings, or actively beautifying them if I don’t. And that “present-mindedness” is very grounding. Being aware of my environment leads naturally into the third rule, Go. Outside. Especially as the weather cooled off, it had been too tempting just to stay under the blankets…but after the oh so gentle reminder video short, 23 and a Half Hours, and missing the burst of energy that comes from using our bodies, we’ve made a renewed effort to get away from the desk, no matter how comfortable it is.
(Inspirational photo-adventures are good excuses to do so.)
And we’re finding geting away to be just as comfortable. The final rule of Laugardagur is that You Don’t Work on Work, also known as, “No Seriously, you don’t work on work.” There’s been a lot of writing on how taking breaks enhances or improves creativity, but there’s a big difference between reading about “what a good idea that would be,” and actually feeling it happen, especially because you’ve made it happen. Though I love what I do, I was starting to feel a little burnt out by the time winter break rolled around, but giving ourselves permission to “take a real break” – even if we had to force ourselves to do so in the form of a car trip and uncertain internet or outlet access – really helped me look forward with fresh eyes. Now, knowing that I have Laugardagur off, I feel more excited to get my work done beforehand and more refreshed to actually start the next week. It’s powerful lesson in what a little self-balance can achieve. Rather than dreading January, I feel more excited for 2012 than I have any other New year.
And, of course, for each and every Laugardagur.
So Nashville, what are you doing this Saturday?