Allowing Yourself To Rest

 

Going back about as far as I can remember I’ve struggled with sleep. I’ve never given it much thought because I always just kind of got on with things regardless of how much (or how little) sleep I was getting.

Through therapy I discovered I might have a phobia of sleep. Anyone who follows me on Twitter will regularly see me awake and posting until I basically can’t stay awake any longer. I fight it for as long as I can and I find my anxiety levels massively increase if I reflect on how long I was asleep when I wake up. This is exacerbated pretty intensely by my medication making me drowsy and needing to nap quite regularly. It resulted in a small crisis the other night when I felt like I was letting myself down by not being awake at the most opportune times for me to advertise work to people (I’m yet to find a free Twitter and Instagram scheduling app that I like using).

For months, maybe even a couple of years now, I’ve been obsessed with the idea of not needing sleep because it somehow means I’ll be less successful if I sleep as much as I need to. Reinforced by the amount of people on social media who talk about how they’re always grinding/hustling/working, I find myself comparing my perceived work rate with how those people present themselves, which is very understandably detrimental in both how it impacts my mental health and my overall motivation levels.

Shortly after my crisis, I was awake and writing the blogs I posted on Thursday and Friday until around 4am. I tweeted after finishing those that I’m starting to realising it’s more to do with how we use our time when we’re awake. The next day Gary Vee posted the image below.

This made me realise that, at times, sleep isn’t “avoiding The Hustle” but is instead part of it. How useful am I to myself, to my creative process, to my marketing approach, if I’m depriving myself of sleep? Constantly being awake doesn’t somehow result in success. If you’re awake for 20 hours a day and can only manage to concentrate well enough to complete four high-quality hours of work, then by many people’s definition of The Hustle you’ve not utilised those remaining 16 hours.

At present I’m sleeping around 8-12 hours a day but still managing to fit in 5-8 very high quality hours of work-related output. Right now it isn’t always things my customers or followers will see, I’ll be making lists, researching new distribution channels, new suppliers, new product/packaging ideas. I’ll sometimes spend a whole day just thinking about how to act next. To me, that’s adding value to my brand. The changes I made, which I detailed the other day, came from social media engagement and a whole day of thinking of ways to act on the responses I received and conversations I had.

It’s taken me a while to reach this point, but I’m trying to remind myself not to shoehorn myself into a routine that doesn’t suit me just because it works for somebody else.

As always, if you want to support me you can do so by subscribing to my Patreon page, where you can pledge from just $1 a month (around 80p), donating via PayPal or by purchasing through my store.

Attention Artists and Small Businesses!

I have news!

I really hope this is of use to some of you. I’m sure it will be.

You know at the start of this year I was sorting things about buying equipment to start manufacturing myself, and as a result also being able to manufacture for other small businesses and independent artists? If you didn’t, you do now. Well I’ve been working on things and have finally started producing my own mugs and tote bags. This should speed up delivery time for those items, and a few others that’ll be developing soon. For the moment I’m not going to be making phone cases myself as it means having to guess the number of blank cases I’ll need for each model and I don’t have the storage at home to accommodate them at the moment.

This means two things. One, I’ll be able to make stuff for brands, bands and artists. Either in bulk or to order. I’m still working on prices as it’s fairly new but from what I’ve seen it’ll be pretty competitive. I already have the mug prices worked out. I know a few people have been looking to add some items to their stores but didn’t want to pay for a lot of items etc in bulk. That’s not a worry now! I can make them for you as the orders come in, and even send them direct to your customers if you like.

Before moving on to number two, I’ve also recently purchased a lovely thing called a light tent for my product photos. Once I’ve got that fully sorted and worked out I’ll also be offering pictures of the items I make for you as part of the package. That’d be especially useful for anyone who’d prefer for me to send items straight to their customers.

Second, I’ve started work on a new set of products to sell under a different brand name under the Mr Crypt umbrella. A few of my designs are vaguely linked to the BDSM/kink/DDlg community (my Daddy’s Little Princess being one of the most notable) so I decided to roll with that and make a few more. I’m working on the same sort of items as I sell through Mr Crypt alongside new products that I’ll soon be introducing to both brands. The new brand is called Little And Hyde and at the moment largely works around pet names and terms of endearment used for partners. Very soon these will be customisable for people who have less common names for their partners. There’ll also be a range of colours etc too. It’s all very exciting!

In other news I’m looking to do more big pieces, particularly ukuleles and woodburn projects. I already have two ukulele plant pots that need painting and finishing off and you kindly picked a theme for a skateboard deck by voting on Twitter. There’ll also be pint glasses coming very soon to mrcrypt.bigcartel.com. In the meantime, head over and get some lovely stuff!