I have now moved in to my Blue Mountains cottage with its very pretty garden. There is still a lot of organising to do after the big move, but at least all of the boxes are unpacked and the rooms are each generally serving their intended function.

Flowers from my garden.

I feel this is a much-needed fresh start for me in a new place. It remains to be seen how it goes as I settle in and become accustomed to a very different environment to the city.

In the spirit of a time of change I’ve also taken another big step this week, which is to resign from my four day per week job with an organisation I’ve been working for in some capacity for over a decade now. I will be continuing a relationship with them by way of a limited amount of contract work, but this still means I will finally be fully self-employed: something I’ve been working towards for years now.

So it also remains to be seen how that goes! It is a risk, especially given the current economic climate. But I feel that for me the time is right. I very much needed to change how I work and ideally work for fewer hours per week while still bringing in enough income to make ends meet and build a future – something that’s hard to do when working for a tiny non-profit organisation with a huge workload and minimal resources.

As for what I’ll be doing with the freed up time, well there are so many things I could be doing. Every year a myriad of opportunities come my way in relation to my handmade jewellery business as well as the other side of my career – web design and production. Much of the time I’m so busy I struggle to find the time to even get back to people to say I can’t do the work! Hopefully from here on in that will change and I can actually make something of many of these opportunities.

Finally, if you’re interested in seeing my new abode (or at least how it was before I moved in), there are some photographs on my Flickr. Once I feel a bit more sorted out I’ll take some more photos of how it looks now.

My studio is now fully dismantled and packed up, with everything ready to be moved to my new home.

If you’ve ever purchased any of my handmade jewellery online, then this is almost certainly the room where it was made.

But with everything now packed, the very next piece of jewellery I make will be created in my new studio in the Blue Mountains! I hope to have some photographs of my new space soon.

Well the acute feeling of being in limbo and wondering if I might be moving house next week or not is over, which is something. But the general sense of limbo goes on: I’m back to house-hunting again!

Yes, the house I mentioned in my last post fell through – believe it or not, the new owners have decided to sell it again rather than renting it out. What a saga!

So I hope to be back up in the Mountains looking at other houses next week. And I have my fingers and toes crossed that very soon I’ll actually know what I’m doing and where I’m going. Can’t wait to be getting on with it.

In the meantime I need to keep getting myself organised to move as soon as it works out – something I’ve been working hard on over the last several weeks anyway.

I can hardly believe that we’re already half way through January 2009! I think somebody needs to invent something which makes the world slow down a bit.

As for what I’m doing with my new year, well this time of year is usually when I try to regroup – I rest up to recover from the frantic Christmas selling season, start making plans for the rest of the new year and generally try to sort my life out a bit.

This year is a little bit different as I also have two freelance web projects to complete over the next few weeks, so those projects have been taking up a fair bit of brain space, not to mention time. It will be good to have them done.

However, I am also working on personal things, most notably going through every drawer and cupboard in my home (there are a lot of them and they’re all jam-packed!). Everything is being taken out and re-organised – and I’m being ruthless in terms of what gets thrown away, with anything still useable being set aside to be donated to charity.

This is with a view to moving over the next few months – and wanting to avoid taking too much excess ’stuff’ with me when I do. My plan is to have a go at living in the Blue Mountains outside of Sydney. I have a hankering to live in an actual house with a garden and space to have visitors. I also want to be in a place where there are lovely walks to go on (my current situation in suburbia is hardly inspiring in that regard!). Doing any of this within Sydney isn’t really an option for me.

I’m not positive that the Mountains will be where I will stay, but I have incredibly itchy feet and I figure I may as well give it a go. And maybe one day I’ll finally manage to figure out where ‘home’ is for me!

In addition, I’m also making plans to buy a shiny new car. I’ve managed to get by without a car for around 14 years now, having always lived in places where it hasn’t been essential to own one. However, over the last few years I’ve been a bit further from the city and it has been a pain not having a car. Also if I’m to move out of the city entirely, I really have no option but to get one. But it will be a teensy one and I still hope to live close enough to shops and cafes that I can walk to them as much as possible.

In terms of jewellery, I’ve been taking a break from making work having completely worn myself out closer to Christmas. However, in the next few days I need to get back to my bench to start catching up on stock, particularly with Valentine’s Day looming.

So that is where my life is up to! I hope all of you are having a good new year so far.

Before I take myself off to bed I wanted to let you know that I am alive and (kind of!) well.

I’ve been working hard on all sorts of things, including a web project which has eaten up vast amounts of time over the last month.

Plus I came very close in the last several weeks to packing my whole life up and moving it to another city … only to realise that right now simply isn’t a good time to be going anywhere for complicated economic reasons.

So that I can help myself to feel okay about staying put, I have also managed to do some sorely needed re-arranging at home. In particular I wanted to have far more functional working spaces, seeing as I work entirely from home. I’ve found spending so much of my life working in one little and very cramped room isn’t really doing me much good.

I’ve now successfully separated my office from my jewellery studio by moving the office into the lounge room … which probably doesn’t sound like I’m heading for a more balanced life as I’ve been intending!

However, so far it’s working really well and surprisingly the lounge room – which previously had a lot of wasted space – actually looks better for it. Plus I’m finding it great to leave my work on my desk and go and sit on the couch in the other part of the room if I want to take a break, rather than taking work with me to the couch as I have in the past! It’s making me feel more functional and now that my little workroom/studio is vastly less crowded, I can easily open the curtains and window and that makes working a lot more pleasant too.

As part of changing and reorganising things, I’ve also painted some furniture, bought new cushion covers and art for the walls and in all home is looking more homelike. Although there is a lot more of that sort of thing to do and I also have to organise for a painter to come in to repair and paint the walls, which unfortunately are worst of all in my jewellery studio. I see a messy and irritating few days in my future …

Anyway, I hope to have some photographs of my new working spaces once I have everything finished. If you’re interested in seeing my bench and workroom as it has been in the past, you can find some images on Flickr.

In other news, I will soon be taking some time out from other projects to get to work on a new range of handmade jewelry that I have had bubbling away in my mind and have been idly sketching in my notebooks for ages now. I’m really looking forward to sitting in my revamped space and getting to work on some brand new pieces. So keep your eyes peeled!

And now it’s goodnight from me … and goodnight from … me.