Welcome to Making Time - Introduce Yourself Here!
Feeling too busy for the creative projects you actually WANT to do? Let's get unstuck together.
Hello and welcome,
I’m Sarai, the person behind Making Time. I’m interested in living life with more joy.
If you’re new here, please take a moment to introduce yourself down below!
What is Making Time all about?
As a highly enthusiastic person, my biggest struggle has always been with time. I always seem to have new ideas, things I’d like to learn, books I want to read, projects to tackle… and never enough time to do them.
If you feel the same, welcome. This is written for you.
I truly believe that, while time management tricks and productivity hacks can be somewhat useful, they only address about 10% of the problem. The rest is a matter of emotional management.
In other words, creativity is about managing your energy, not your time.
This is for you if:
You have lots of hobbies and interests, but struggle to fit them all in.
You want to create more, but struggle to start or stay motivated when things get busy.
You are tired of living life in a rushed blur of activity.
If that sounds like you, hello. I relate. A lot. If you’d like to learn how to overcome this (alongside me), go ahead and subscribe to join me.
Who is Sarai?
That would be me. 👇
I’m a small business owner and the founder of Seamwork, a community for people who want to design and sew their own wardrobes. I’m also a co-host over at the Seamwork Radio podcast, and the author of The Colette Sewing Handbook. I’m extremely lucky that I get to do creative work each day, with people I like a lot, for people I like a lot.
But over time, I’ve realized that even when you’re doing something you love, it’s easy to fall into creatively dry periods, to stress far more than is healthy, to treat everything like an item on a to-do list, and even to hit the wall of burnout. I’ve crashed into it a few times myself.
With only so many hours in the day, I’ve had to learn new techniques for managing my creative energy. I’m here to share what’s worked, what hasn’t, and some practical ideas and mindsets I’m sure to learn in time.
I’ve lived in big cities most of my life, but now make my home on 5 acres in rural Oregon. I’m a fairly practiced meditator with dreams of teaching it someday. I have many hobbies including books, lifting weights, backwoods camping, sewing, knitting, cooking, and gardening. I also draw and am learning about textile design. Those hobbies all intersect and will sneak in from time to time too.
What to expect
Here’s some of what you can expect from Making Time:
The 2024 Slowdown, a monthly experiment you can join with me to refocus this year.
Tips and ideas for building and maintaining your creative energy.
Head, Heart, Hands: My occasional round up of links to things that make me think, feel, and do.
Introduce Yourself
Now it’s your turn! I’d love to meet and get to know you all a little better. Tell us:
Your name
Where you live
Your #1 favorite creative outlet (mine is writing)
Any other fun facts you’d like to share
I'm Miriam.
I'm a theatrical costume designer and also do custom work. While I'm good at focusing when I have a clearly defined structure, I have a lot of difficulty without it.
I have so many ideas of things to do and techniques that I'm interested in and want to pursue for both my clients and myself, but I find that I can't seem to find the time to pursue them in a focused way unless I have specific deadlines imposed externally.
I love taking workshops and learning new things—all things seem possible to me under those circumstances—but when I get home, life takes over. Part of it is life with 3 human and 2 feline agents of chaos (also, have to admit, I'm kind of an agent of chaos myself).
I don't have any answers, just observations.
Hi Sarai, I really enjoy your substack and have shared it on my own :) I live in the San Francisco Bay Area, and am a visual artist, mainly painting. So my work is a creative outlet of course, but I love to cook and knit in my spare time. I'm dedicated to yoga and meditation practices, and find that they are a wonderfully effective way to practice staying present and have the side effect of influencing time perception in a nice way. I really enjoy your observations here and your message of slowing down, so thank you! _/\_