I recently learned of something called 'pleasant activity scheduling' from the Mentally Strong People podcast by Amy Morin. In her 49th episode, "Friday Fix: An Exercise to Help You Grow Stronger When You're Feeling Depressed" she explains that scheduling pleasant activities is a way to reduce depression. If you're feeling down or depressed, it's not always easy to motivate yourself to do the things that will actually make you feel better like doing things you love, taking a walk, or exercising. Scheduling them and settings time aside for them increases the chances you'll do these activities. It also gives you something to look forward to and, in certain cases, can give you a sense of accomplishment.
I'm not feeling depressed, but I am feeling discontent with my work life. It's often a slog of 8-9 hours of what feels like busy tasks and never-ending meetings and screen time. I hadn't realized what I was doing with my sewing, but I was scheduling it into my day regularly because it is an activity I find pleasant. I know many others don't, but if you're reading this, I bet you're one of the people who finds sewing just as pleasant as I do.
I schedule time in my mornings to write (here in this blog) for 20 minutes because I also enjoy writing and then I spend about 15-30 minutes sewing before I start my work day. It feels like starting my day off right doing something that I truly enjoy. It also has meant that I am finishing projects faster than I was before because over the course of the work week it means that I get in at least an hour and 15 minutes to two and a half hours of pure sewing time, not counting the weekends when I can get hours in.
There are many sewists out there who do sew-a-longs and you can find them on Instagram (where I often see them) or Facebook (I haven't looked, but I bet they're doing sew-a-longs on here!) This may give you some external motivation to pencil sewing into your calendar if you know that someone is offering a sew-a-long at a certain day and time. Brittany Jones does them - check her out on Instagram. She's the co-owner of Melanated Fabrics.
I hope you are able to schedule some sewing time in today or can simply make sure to add some time to sew to your schedule over the next week. Happy Monday!