December 13 – Action. When it comes to aspirations, it’s not about ideas. It’s about making ideas happen. What’s your next step?
I think I need to re-define what I think of as a worthy action. Looking back at how I spend my time, I see many things I currently consider “distractions;” how can going out for the day with my mother to grab crafty supplies be considered a waste of time? A step in another direction? Or enjoying a movie after a stressful time?
Did I get anything related to my job done? No. But I don’t think that’s really what matters.
I have a friend who, like me, loves to write. But we often lament over the fact that we haven’t written anything in a few days, and moan about how behind we are. I have to remind myself, and then her, that most of writing doesn’t happen when the words hit the page, but in the mind. Maybe you hear something that spurs a story, or begin piecing together character traits because of a sign you see while driving. If you were to really sit down without thinking anything about what you were going to write, nothing would come out!
So maybe I didn’t get prints done or make journals or work on that piece of canvas stretched on my studio wall. I did get new yarn and crochet hook to play with adding hand-made flowers to my artwork, new batting for the pencil cases I want to make for people, paint on clearance, and more magnets to make little gifts for people.
Ideas are amazing and wonderful and get you going, but in the end, I’m the one who has to take that yarn and turn it into flowers, or sew the pieces to apply the batting to, or use the paint to make a painting. Grabbing the supplies, then, is a crucial action!
The hardest thing is to get up. To move away from that TV show you’re watching or the book you’re reading and sit down where you’re most productive. For me, that’s my studio space. Or it may be a computer. Maybe it’s walking out your front door to take photos. Whatever it is, you don’t need to focus on a precise set of actions to get you going, you just need to get up.
Since my brain pings all over the place, I’ve found micro-movements, which I learned about from one of SARK’s books, work the best. They’re little actions that take 5-10 minutes - you feel the satisfaction of crossing things off on your to-do list, get projects done over a span of time, and for me, I don’t have to kill my back by sitting in a chair too long.
My next step, I think, is truly sitting down and getting out of my head all the things I want to accomplish. Not a scrawled to-do list, but a big, long, this-is-my-month kind of list, and then go through and break it down into tiny movements that feel like nothing at all but add up to everything.
I’d do all this listing in small doses, of course.