Don’t you just hate New Years Resolutions? As if you wake up on January 1st and everything just gets on track. This is followed by things inevitably moving back to the way they were making you feel like a failure, even though things were that way because that is how you had learnt to survive in this strange world as a human on a day to day basis. Expecting yourself to be a ‘better’ because a human made tracker refreshed is kinda invalidating of all you have experienced and the reasons why you have come to live the way you do.
That said…I have made some unofficial goals and it just so happens that the start of a new year is a convenient way to get it all up and running…
2020 was going to be a regroup and recharge year for me, and that all went out the window with a whole range of life things. You know how it goes. I have however, felt a lot calmer and in sync with life since the year started. I spent the few days over New Years in Mudgee with a friend and her family. I love to get away from Sydney and over the years I have found that I need to do that often to clear my head and recharge. There is nothing like a long drive in open country spaces to make you feel like your mind is just opening up and letting in fresh air (probably both physically and mentally). This trip reminded me about what I want in life- space, creativity and flow. I had become so wound up in so many tasks and goals last year that I barely enjoyed actually living.
So my aim this year is to slow down and create. While I painted and created last year, it was all commission and design work, I don’t think I created anything of my own. I feel a pull to go back to basics and strengthen my foundations. I also want to share that and connect with more people.
When I launched all of this, I wanted to share a creative process, not a perfect result. I want to share my flow and creativity and to do that, it means I have to get a bit more focused on marketing and content. I know this doesn’t sound in tune with all I have said so far, but hear me out! I have never been great at posting and creating content, it always struck me as fabricated and a little disingenuous. I would just post as I felt like it- I knew I should be more focused with these tools from a business perspective, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. As I took the long way home from Mudgee to Sydney (9 hours, I went the very long way) and my mind thought on the dialectic of how I would so like to just play, paint and create but also knew that I would most certainly start and then the ‘admin’ of my art would take all my time and prevent me from doing just that, I saw a nice way forward. I could make my play my admin- it could be my content, and I had to actually do it if my admin required content. A bit of accountability and a bit of using what I wanted to do anyway as my business focus.
I developed a very light weight social media plan for 3 months. Nothing extreme, just one feed post and a couple of stories on Instagram a week. Film myself whenever I am creating, write a blog post once a fortnight. Very light weight for a social media plan but it is a starting point. I’m sure most of it will suck as I am learning, and there is every possibility that I will go back to doing nothing in a month, though I have cut back on work and other distractions so it is more doable.
So here I go, sharing the next step in my journey. I am looking forward to seeing where this goes. I think I should also learn how to successfully sign off on blog posts.