So much for the circadian rhythm.

Been working hard on crafts again. Went to bed on Saturday night at about 4AM, slept a ton, woke up at just before 7PM Sunday evening. Seriously thought my tablet clock was screwing up for a moment.

The weird thing is, I kind of like it. I'm off work for a week so there's no pressure there, and left to its own devices my sleep pattern becomes very unhinged. I've done decently well at keeping up a normal pattern over the last few years but in all truth it's not felt very natural to me and a lot of the time I feel restrained. This is how I used to work, years ago. I'd craft or write or draw for ages, often with a show on in the background to keep me company, and I could keep that up for hours. Then I'd crash, and wake again feeling properly rested. It's a pattern that normal work doesn't provide for. Getting back to it feels like being alive all over again.

That I can feel autumn coming helps too. It's my favourite time of year, when I feel energised and charged up and ready to go. New things are starting, NaNo's around the corner, and I'm being industrious.

Had an interesting idea too. I'd been doing a lot of doll work and it got me thinking that I'm never sure how long it takes to make a doll, because I spread the process out. I've never timed myself. What if I could do it in say, a weekend? I might give this a try. Use a show I'm watching to keep track of time, make sure I have materials but don't start until I get home on Friday evening, and I win if I have a completed doll by Sunday night. I think it would be challenging, but doable. Maybe not next weekend, but the weekend after...

Weekend doll challenge: tentative ruleset

Unless something comes up, I'll be doing this from Friday 19th September to Sunday 21st. The reason being I want to do this within the context of a normal workweek.

The clock starts ticking when I get home from work on Friday afternoon (unless I go to art class, in which case it starts when I get in after that - the time difference is a couple of hours so not vital, I hope). It ends when I go to bed on Sunday night. That's not definitive, but if I have a completed doll by the time I do so, I win.

I will decide what sort of creature to make in advance so I can gather the required materials, because having to run out for something will obviously screw things up, and if it's something I have to order in advance it'd be blown otherwise. However I must NOT start work (including drawing up physical plans) until the challenge begins.

I should keep track of what I'm doing using photos and keep updating accordingly.

This isn't an extreme challenge. I can take things as leisurely as I want. So there's no rules on when I can sleep, eat, leave the flat, play games, etc. However time doing anything NOT related to building the doll (including working on anything else artistic) isn't counted.

To log the amount of time I actually spend, and also be consistent with how I usually work, I will have a TV show playing in the background while I'm working on the doll. As long as the show is running, I have to be working on it. f I want to eat, sleep, go out, do anything else, I have to wait until the end of the episode (though obviously not if it's an emergency, but that's a common sense thing). The ideal show will be something I've seen before (so I don't get distracted) with relatively short episodes and lots of them. Once done I'll tally up how many episodes I made it through and use that to calculate how long I took.

This'll be fun!