Before I started living alone, I had a very specific idea of what an artists’ home or studio is supposed to look like. I had a very specific notion of the process and the work that took place there. I was convinced that by creating a space of my own, I could transform into the artist I had always wanted to be, that my work would automatically get better and I would be better once I had established this space for myself. I thought that living alone and working in that space would mean that I would never be distracted, that suddenly I would gain the clarity and focus I had always lacked while living with roommates or having to share a workspace with others.
I was wrong.
Working from home actually means that my day is full of rituals to get myself ready to focus and accomplish the day’s tasks. I make coffee, I pace around, I change from one pair of sweatpants into another pair of sweatpants. I talk to myself and curse aloud and then take a break to sweep the floor or do the dishes. I procrastinate more now than ever, mainly because there is no separation between work life and home life; I tell myself that I can just do the work later because it will always be there, sitting at my desk, no more than 6 feet away from me and always observable no matter where I’m standing in my apartment. I no longer have the luxury of ‘leaving work at work’ because ‘work’ and ‘home’ are the same place.
One of the things I do to procrastinate is take photos of my studio. I bathe in the morning light and document the shadows casting against the walls. I alter the space just a little bit every day and record the progress, pinning a new note to the wall or moving the bookshelf to the other side of the room. I make and unmake the bed, arrange and rearrange the houseplants. I document the whole thing and then compare it to past photographs I’ve made of the space. In my mind, I am curating the optimal environment to produce the work I was always capable of creating; the setting was just never correct before, but now, if I just move the bed over to this wall, then everything will be perfect and I can finally get to work on my masterpiece.
I created this zine as another act of procrastination: this is me procrastinating further by making a project full of images I made while procrastinating—meta procrastination. This book was designed, printed and bound in May 2016 in New York, NY.
