Studio Diary: Tuesday, January 8, 2018

My Studio Diaries gather raw and real inspirations and insights of life in my studio. They are not finished pieces but works in progress intended to let you in to the world of this one creative heart.

The Funny Shape of Productivity

The overarching theme of today is getting bumped off track. This morning after filming the first BTS of the season, I discovered a technical problem with all of my domains and had to go down the well of tech support in order to get it resolved. Just like that, the rest of the morning was lost.

Then we got an email rejection letter from the city for our reno and were sent in a tizzy!! Luckily it turned out to be simply a revision of the original refusal letter but, just like that, my focus was lost!

Those bumps and bruises continued to arrive and by the end of the day, I felt a pummeled. It seemed that I had gotten nothing done. I have two practices that revealed to me that this was simply not true: daily check-ins with a friend and my “Day in the Life” file.

Every morning and evening I have a daily text check in with my dear friend Kim. We tell each other what we plan to get done in the day ahead and then share what we actually managed to do. We each give the other gold stars for every accomplishment.

I also keep a running file called “A Day in the Life” where I note all of my activities during the day. I originally called this practice “My Day at Work.” I set it up when I became an entrepreneur so that I could have some perspective on what the “right” amount of work was to get done in a day. It was instrumental in being able to declare my work day complete. With the upcoming reno and some other new priorities, I’ve decided not to limit it to work activities but to record life stuff too.

Today both the check-ins and the A Day in the Life practice helped me see that despite not accomplishing what I had set out to achieve, I did get a whole heck of a lot done.

Inspiration

Last night right before I went to bed I had two big thoughts, one about Studio Diaries and one about blogging.

Studio Diaries: I’ve been wanting to come back to Studio Diaries for years and make them a regular part of my practice. I’ve had all sorts of different ideas about how to approach this and many different reasons to be unsure of how to start. As I sit down to do this writing and sharing I realize once again, you can’t know what something wants to be until you start creating it! That moment of inspiration has just enough juice and info to get you started but not enough to provide a blueprint. You must start and try and experiment and listen and it will slowly but surely become what it is meant to be. You have to be willing to risk, to get messy and to be in process. As the creator, your job is to listen to the inspiration, get into action and step-by-step follow the path as it lies before you. I am here.

Blogging: Many times and with many people I have lamented the loss of the early days of blogging, the days when people were sharing from their heart not from their marketing strategy, when bloggers were actual people not influencers, where we could be a community of creatives finding one another around the world. Yesterday my perspective shifted from mourning to blessed when I realized how lucky I am that I found blogging when I did, that I was able to experience that unique moment in time, a time when blogging was raw, real and a lively frontier, where everyone was making it up as they went.

As with so many things, I’m realizing the key is to be filled with gratitude for the experience without trying to hold onto it or resenting its departure. Life moves on. Things grow and change. It’s natural and inevitable. Blogging (or anything else, for that matter) cannot remain stagnant – nor should it!  There are blessings in its new iterations too! Instead, what can serve as a constant, is the love we have of the qualities that made that time or that thing special – in the case of blogging: sharing from the heart, creative community, the realness and risk of being on the frontier. All of that magic can (and will) simply take new form.

Rainbows

So, in the midst of a wonky day, there was still insight and productivity. There was even an actual rainbow! Even better than that, I was able to yell downstairs to my sister Suzie that she should come up and share in this beautiful sight. It reminded me of when she was just a little girl and someone named “Mr Rainbow” phoned her and asked her to step outside and say hi to him, which she promptly did. I wonder who that might have been?

I guess there are some things that don’t change.