Jes Lee

Cold mornings and my ideal self

Winter is working very hard at arriving full force today. Of course as much as I would love to just curl up on the couch with a good book and watch the snow come, I must be out today. There are photos to take at MCBA, and a class to teach tonight at Bloomington.

I chatted with a good friend the other night about goals, and what we would love to be able to do every day and how these things make up our “ideal selves” which is not usually how we actually are.

My ideal self would not feel so crazy right now. I have had two classes run that I wasn’t really expecting, that included a fair amount of prep work. I have been also working like crazy to get caught up on a lot of photo  jobs, knowing that my hours at my “day job” will be increasing soon. So this week has seemed busy and stressful and way too full. Not ideal. But I know it will get better.

So what is my ideal self? My ideal self would have take time every morning to write. My ideal self would take more photos everyday than just those I use for my daily photo projects. My ideal self would be working on those leather journals for myself and Mr. FN and they would be perfect (this will in part happen soon – I am planning on working on the journals more next week, though they will not be perfect! I am ok with that part though!) My ideal self would never feel spread too thin. My ideal self would have time to work out every day. But, reading back over that, my ideal self would have a lot of routines, and that could get boring, so maybe it is better that I am not my ideal self anyway! ;)

My bestie reminded me today that November is just around the corner and with that comes national writing month. There are people who commit to writing novels in November, people who commit to writing a new poem every day, and people who commit to writing a blog post every day. It really is an exciting, creative month, and it has me thinking of what I would like to do for November. Perhaps committing to something like this would be good. Maybe it would be a good way to get myself writing more and blogging more again. Or, maybe it is just one more commitment that will leave me feeling too busy . We’ll see!

I know that I need to be more focused in my creative work flow, especially knowing that I will be working more. Working more is not a bad thing! So how do other creative types make it work? Is there a secret?