Studio Notes: September 22nd, 2021

In this episode I'm at home cooking dinner, and I take a moment while chopping up some chicken to discuss life, love, and the importance of finding and maintaining a healthy work/life balance.

Transcript (areas in bold for emphasis):

I'm Brandon Woods, and this is studio notes for Wednesday, September 22nd, 2021. This is a little bit of a different video because I am at home. Wednesday and Thursday are our—mine and Caitlin's—weekend. And so I'm at home and I am cooking dinner. And I just wanted to make a quick studio notes to, I guess, talk about that idea of a life work balance and how important that is. And also just maybe show this other kind of part of my my life, because it is so easy for for us as artists to want to only ever show our...The, the art side of things, the studio side of things, and not give the. Not give the full, full picture, maybe. And maybe in a way that's, that's kind of the way that it's supposed to go. You know, you're supposed to be able to leave your, leave your work behind at the end of the day. But. But being able to connect to people is one of the ways that people are able to connect to the work that you make and so talking about cooking dinner or or just how important it is to kind of have those like, moments of uh, moments of sanity or sanity keepers, and have other creative pursuits, really. I mean, cooking, in its proper form, it is absolutely an art in and of itself. It's...thinking about chefs and things like that, whenever I say "in its proper form", but it's really I've found a real pleasure in the creative act of cooking lately at home, and it's truth be told, I've gotten pretty good at. And so we've been eating these delicious meal. This is after years of eating pizza and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. I love both still. Nothing wrong with either one of those, but they're not the best every day. Well, I did go, let's say three days, whenever I was in grad school where I literally ate pizza for every meal—breakfast, lunch and dinner—it was kind of the best three days of meals I've ever had because I love pizza that much. But. But I, I love... I love having these like really full...filling and fulfilling meals and I love making dinner for Caitlin. I feel like it's just a, you know, I can... It's a way that I can show my love for her.

And regardless of who you are, who you're in love with, one really important thing to try to do is try to find one little way every day to just brighten up their day, to make their life a little bit happier, a little bit more joyful.

And so, I've been enjoying cooking, and Caitlin's been enjoying that too. And this morning, I did a lot of cooking, too. I made her breakfast in bed. I made banana nut Belgian waffles. Oh, they were they were amazing. She got me this waffle maker for...I think it was our anniversary. Might have been our first anniversary, or maybe it was, maybe is the first...first birthday, the, my first birthday with her. But she got me this waffle maker and we've been using it for years, and we both we both love waffles. So so that was nice. And then tonight I'm making some kind of chicken something. It's going to be like a chicken pasta dish. I'm going to use some mushroom ravioli. And I got the. Probably like the most expensive chicken there was, but whenever it comes to chicken and it's it's weird that I don't really have the same feeling about cows. Maybe I should take that into consideration a little bit more and buy like higher quality beef, too. But whenever it comes to chicken—buying eggs or buying buying chicken meat—I always, always go and buy the the chicken from the chickens that have been treated best. I mean, because once you see that poultry truck driving down the road, it's just, ah, you feel like such a monster for, for not, not getting the, you know, free range eggs and things like that, or at least I do. I'm not I'm not going to try to speak for all of you, and I know that I know that a lot of you are happy with the 99-cent eggs, and if you are, then you know. Then you are and I'm going I'm going to keep buying the expensive eggs because, I don't know, I'd like to I like to think that happy animals that were happy in life make for happy food. I guess.

But. Work life balance. So before I met Caitlin, I. And this will sound kind of dark, but I always kind of envision myself being a. Being one of those kind of like the candle that burns too brightly type things that I was not expecting to, not expecting longevity to be to be necessarily my, like the biggest goal of my life, but instead for it to really, just to pour myself into my art and just produce, produce, produce until I burned out, because that that's how...And I think that a lot of a lot of artists will probably relate to that. Whenever we get in the studio, whenever I get in the studio—I'm really trying hard just to speak for myself more—whenever I get into the studio, I can go 20 hours and not even blink an eye, because that's just where I really just come to life, where I'm in my element, I'm in my full being...and it just dawned on me how weird it is that I'm like holding this knife and talking...yeah, yeah. I'm I'm in my element, but I still feel that way, too. Whenever sometimes whenever I'm traveling, then that same sort of vibrancy. And it was really only in. Being with Caitlin and finding my way into a long term, you know, for the rest of our lives kind of relationship with her, that I realized if I'm going to be with her for the rest of my life, then I want to live for a really long time! Which means that, you know, I had to kind of get my get my house in order? Is that the way to put it? Get all my, get all my "stuff" together—I'm trying not to curse on here for some reason—And so, so that I could be my best self in and out of the studio. And and she's really helped me with that. And and I've really I've really also just risen to that to that challenge that I set for myself to become better. So now I've I've started cooking and I've I started I started I started running, which I, I used to always hate running. I like, I never got it. I'm not sure that I still get it, but I want to I want to get good exercise. And and so I've been running lately and. I feel like it's good for me. I've been taking vitamins lately. I think that. I think that in order to be the best artist that I can be, I really need to, kind of, pursue excellence in sort of every aspect of my life. My…

As I've said several times, my first two rules are "do what you love" and "make good work". I've always considered the "make good work" to be something that does extend beyond art, beyond making good artwork, but, but in in the sense of “making good work” is being whatever you put your hand to strive to do it the best that you can. So I'm making the best chicken pasta dinner that I can, because that's going to be good. It's going to be a good dinner and it's going to be Good capital-G dinner if I can do too. And. And then also means that this "do what you love; make good work" applies, can apply, to anyone who wants to take that on for themselves. That if you love working on cars then doing good work is being a really good mechanic. Or, you know, if you if you love teaching, then doing good work is teaching people, and, you know, yada, yada, yada. But. But I want to do good work in and out of my studio, and I and I want to be my best self in and out of my studio, too, and so I think the best way to do that is to make progress towards a healthy work life balance.

That being said, there are times where we have to put everything into one of those categories into work or into life. And that's OK. I barely saw Caitlin at all in June because I barely left my studio in June, because I was getting ready for my show in July. I, I slept for four hours every other night. I mean, you know, it was not, I wasn't taking care of my of my body or or really, you know, spending, spending any time at all in the in the life, in the home part of of that balance. But that was what I needed to do. And it was... it's those short bursts of intensity. And then finding, reestablishing the balance, then maintaining the balance that will help you to continue this on for for years. So that's my "studio notes" for today. And so until next time, I want to encourage you to do what you love. Make good work. I'll talk to you soon.