Dear fellow art fags,

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

How do you handle it when you are working on a piece of art or writing or music and someone interrupts you with non-essential chit chat? Does it break your concentration or do you just sail right through without really noticing it? Sometimes I feel like a freak because I'll be concentrating on writing or design or just getting into the headspace to make stuff and someone interrupts me or calls or drops by unannounced, and it breaks me completely out of the flow of what I was doing, to the point where it can take me an hour or more (in a few cases, days) to return to the same creative space I was in. Is this normal or am I some kind of hypersensitive spaz?

[Cain]

Sounds pretty normal to me.  Sometimes, I can ignore it, and get right back on.  Other times, however, its flowing, I'm in the zone or whatever, it's all going well...and someone breaks my carefully focused creative atmosphere and nothing I do will get it back.

This is why I now tend to cut myself off from all external stimuli while writing.  Phones, silent.  IM programs, off.  No forums.  No IRC.  Doors locked, windows closed, blinds drawn.

[Doktor Howl]

How do you handle it when you are working on a piece of art or writing or music and someone interrupts you with non-essential chit chat? Does it break your concentration or do you just sail right through without really noticing it? Sometimes I feel like a freak because I'll be concentrating on writing or design or just getting into the headspace to make stuff and someone interrupts me or calls or drops by unannounced, and it breaks me completely out of the flow of what I was doing, to the point where it can take me an hour or more (in a few cases, days) to return to the same creative space I was in. Is this normal or am I some kind of hypersensitive spaz?

I typically make my feelings of irritation known.  When I'm writing is NOT the time to talk to me about anything else.  It's fucking insensitive at best, and a fucking control game at worst, and the one way to PISS ME OFF is to say "can I interrupt for just a second?", because at that point, YOU'VE INTERRUPTED, and my train of thought is GONE.  It really, really pisses me off.  Unless the house is on fire, and that fire has reached the second floor, SHOVE THE FUCK OFF UNTIL I AM DONE.

Sorry, you hit a nerve there.

[Luna]

How do you handle it when you are working on a piece of art or writing or music and someone interrupts you with non-essential chit chat? Does it break your concentration or do you just sail right through without really noticing it? Sometimes I feel like a freak because I'll be concentrating on writing or design or just getting into the headspace to make stuff and someone interrupts me or calls or drops by unannounced, and it breaks me completely out of the flow of what I was doing, to the point where it can take me an hour or more (in a few cases, days) to return to the same creative space I was in. Is this normal or am I some kind of hypersensitive spaz?

Unless you NEED it for your work, unplug the phone.  If possible, disconnect the doorbell.

And keep heavy objects on hand to wing at the roommate's head, if necessary.

This is normal.  The weaving, once it's going, interruptions are fine, I can sit and have a conversation if it's a simple piece.  However, Suu and Richter have both seen me trying to set the damn loom up.  My language (which, IRL, is much cleaner than I use, here) gets... colorful.

[Suu]

Woman, I've had to help you set up that massive floor loom.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I have a curtain that separates my office from the dining room, but that doesn't seem to deter my housemate. Who is so fucking evicted the moment I get my mortgage modified, because this is fucking bullshit. And every time, I tell her "You need to pretend I'm not here during the workday." It would be expensive as fuck and not part of my original design plan for the house but I'm seriously thinking about putting in a door where the arch is.

The phone and doorbell suggestions would be great if I didn't have kids and a home-based business that gets regular deliveries. What frustrates me is the apparent inability of friends and family... people who should know me pretty well, at this point... to absorb the message "LEAVE ME THE FUCK ALONE DURING THE WORKDAY".

[ñͤͣ̄ͦ̌̑͗͊͛͂͗ ̸̨̨̣̺̼̣̜͙͈͕̮̊̈́̈͂͛̽͊ͭ̓͆ͅé ̰̓̓́ͯ́́͞]

For this reason I often do my art/design work between 1am - 4am, sleep deprivation be damned.

It's not practical and I have to find a better way, but that's what I've done for a loooong time now.

[Jasper]

When I'm trying to think complicated thoughts, it ruins everything to be distracted.  I know for a certainty I've had some potentially genius ideas that I may never recover because people notice that my "thinking" face looks a lot like my "I'm really upset/trying not to shit myself" face.  Never understood that one.

[Luna]

Woman, I've had to help you set up that massive floor loom.

Yeah, wasn't that FUN? 

And that yarn?  Snaps ever time I try to touch that particular project.  I'm about ready to take a knife to it.

I have a curtain that separates my office from the dining room, but that doesn't seem to deter my housemate. Who is so fucking evicted the moment I get my mortgage modified, because this is fucking bullshit. And every time, I tell her "You need to pretend I'm not here during the workday." It would be expensive as fuck and not part of my original design plan for the house but I'm seriously thinking about putting in a door where the arch is.

The phone and doorbell suggestions would be great if I didn't have kids and a home-based business that gets regular deliveries. What frustrates me is the apparent inability of friends and family... people who should know me pretty well, at this point... to absorb the message "LEAVE ME THE FUCK ALONE DURING THE WORKDAY".

Invoices, I tell ya.  Rate sheet for interruptions.

"Is the house on fire?  Is one of the kids bleeding?  Nope?  Twenty bucks, thank you."

[Suu]

I'm a fan of earbuds.

No one fucking bothers me when I have the buds in listening to the hardest, angriest aggrotech I have.

"Hey Suu...oh shit, she's got the untz untz stompy stompy going on, get the fuck away from her."

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I am very comforted in knowing that it's not just that I'm a great big freak.

I was on a serious ROLL, an hour ago, and the retard housemate pops in with "I'm excited to be driving a bus south for three hours this weekend!" and now, an HOUR LATER, not only have I not finished my piece, which I was deep into, but I haven't made any beads and basically I just spent the last hour locating a folding screen in my basement and finding the most obtrusive location to put it that will block her view of me.

HATE AND RAGE.

[Suu]

Woman, I've had to help you set up that massive floor loom.

Yeah, wasn't that FUN? 

And that yarn?  Snaps ever time I try to touch that particular project.  I'm about ready to take a knife to it.

Could it be the tension on the loom, though?

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I'm a fan of earbuds.

No one fucking bothers me when I have the buds in listening to the hardest, angriest aggrotech I have.

"Hey Suu...oh shit, she's got the untz untz stompy stompy going on, get the fuck away from her."

That is my preferred method when I'm torching. It's so fucking loud in there between the exhaust fan and the concentrators that I can barely hear anything anyway. I have also used screaming and throwing molten rods of glass as a deterrent. Unfortunately, for me music may get me INTO the mood for writing, but it often interferes with the actual writing itself. I just want quiet, and to be left alone. I have orchestrated my entire life so that I can have these two things, for six to eight hours a day, and inevitably some jackass just has to come along to tell me they've really been craving a Twinkie and it's really warm out today.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

You know how much I had written when she interrupted me to tell me she was going to ride the bus?

Half a page. In about 45 seconds. I was SMOKIN and deeply inspired. And poof, it just dissipated in a puddle of some dumb bitch on a bus.

[East Coast Hustle]

I have a curtain that separates my office from the dining room, but that doesn't seem to deter my housemate. Who is so fucking evicted the moment I get my mortgage modified, because this is fucking bullshit. And every time, I tell her "You need to pretend I'm not here during the workday." It would be expensive as fuck and not part of my original design plan for the house but I'm seriously thinking about putting in a door where the arch is.

The phone and doorbell suggestions would be great if I didn't have kids and a home-based business that gets regular deliveries. What frustrates me is the apparent inability of friends and family... people who should know me pretty well, at this point... to absorb the message "LEAVE ME THE FUCK ALONE DURING THE WORKDAY".

I bet if you mace her the next time she does it she'll get the hint.