body + creativity: on lifting weights

Around this time last year, I went for a routine check-up with my family doctor. She put the blood pressure cuff around my arm and took my blood pressure as usual. She looked a bit worried at the reading, and took it again. 

Again, it was high. 

She suggested I get a blood pressure cuff of my own, and track my blood pressure. So, I did, for a month, and it was high the whole time. I went back to see her. We looked at all the factors and prescribed some changes: eat less salt, take a sodium pill, and try to lose weight.

I wouldn't call myself heavy, necessarily, but definitely I'm a curvy gal. I'm 5'8" and at the time I weighed 205 lbs, and wore anywhere from a size 15 to a size 18, depending on the store and brand of clothing. I've always been fairly comfortable in my own skin, though, and believe in body-positivity and in all different shapes being beautiful. "Losing weight" had always been one of those "maybe someday, wouldn't that be nice" things, kind of like "going to Hawaii" or "having a $4000 buffer in the bank". Not necessary to daily life, but a someday-sort-of goal that I wasn't really doing anything about. 

Anyway, there I was, with high blood pressure, at 30 years of age. Not cool. I already did yoga regularly, and walked on my lunch break sometimes, but there wasn't really much else I was doing to try to lose weight. After several months of this, and no weight loss, I felt frustrated. I thought about it, and realized that I was having such great success with having a business coach, why not seek help with weight loss? 

So I asked the guy at the counter of Downtown Nutrition if he knew of any personal trainers. He in fact did, and he wrote a name of a gal down on a piece of receipt paper. I remember thinking, as I picked up the paper and folded it and put it in my pocket, "This piece of paper is going to change my life." 

I messaged the gal. Her name was Stephanie and she lived near me. We agreed to meet at the Tim Hortons by the mall here in North Sydney, to talk about options. We had a great chat, and agreed on so many things: that weight isn't necessarily the important thing, but fitness is; that food is to fuel the body; and that getting outside to work out is fun.

The next time we met it was at the local gym, Platinum Fitness. I signed up to see her twice a week. We measured around my waist, my hips, my bust, one of my thighs and one of my arms. (I'd share these numbers with you but they got lost.) She said most guys measure their necks too, but we would skip that. "For guys it's important, for some reason," she said. 

We began each workout with a ten minute warm up, just walking on a treadmill. Then we walked over to the area with all the machines, the racks of weights, and the big muscle-y dudes. It's the area of a gym that scares off most people, and for good reason: it's scary to go to a place you don't know, where there are people who know what they're doing, and in clothes tight enough to show off all your fat rolls, no less! 

But with Stephanie there with me, I felt confident, at least enough to give it a try. 

And that's all it took: trying. Twice a week. Each week. Following her instructions, and trying out these new movements. Lifting the weights. Being pleasantly surprised by what my body could do! 

At the end of each workouts, we'd do some H.I.I.T., or High Intensity Interval Training. It sounds super bad-ass, but it really just means doing cardio in intervals: one minute on medium, one minute on high, on minute on medium, and so on, to get the heart-rate up. 

So that was in June, that I started working with Stephanie. By August, when Adam and I went to Chicago (and I took a three week break from working out), Stephanie had moved gyms, to Ascendo Fitness in Sydney. Even though it's in a different town, it's right on my drive home from work, so I happily switched gyms with her. (She's super rad!) 

By September, my measurements were: Bust, 43", Waist, 39", Hips, 46", Thigh, 27.5", and arm 13.3" My weight, funnily enough, stayed exactly the same, at 205. 

By October, I was ready to work out on my own. (Plus, I'm actually trying to save some money, for that other goal of having a buffer in the bank, haha.) Steph set me up with a program to follow, and suggested I go three times a week: twice for lifting, and once a week for just cardio, 30 minutes of "playing with my heart rate." I'd lost three inches, 1 at the hips, 1 at the thighs and 1 at the arm.

By November, I'd lost another 4.5 inches. (At waist, hips, thigh and arm.) My weight, on the other hand, went up: I currently weigh 217 lbs. But I honestly don't even care, and in some ways am proud: it's muscle I'm building! And it's obviously just a number, as I'm the trimmest and strongest I've ever felt.  

Alexandra Franzen has said that everyone has different ways to be motivated, when it comes to fitness, so you need to find your thing and why you like it, in order to keep doing it. I think that's certainly true! And, I have found my "thing". I love the feeling of being powerful, of being strong, of being able to lift those badass big manly weights. I love the clank when I rack the deadlift bar and it falls back into place. I love the feeling of pressing through my heels and feeling my legs engage when I squat in the squat rack. I even love my cardio sessions: I put my music on in my earbuds and I kind of go into another place, almost like meditation, swing-walking on the elliptical, feeling the sheen of sweat come out on my skin. 

And, I find that my mood and my creativity is increased as a result. Here it is, November, the time of year when I normally find my mood dropping, and I feel pretty damn good. 

My blood pressure? Well, that's dropping too. I'll know more next year about the long-term effects of my working out, but for now it's looking pretty good. 

So that's my fitness story, at least the story of the past year! Maybe some other time I will write about how I felt about fitness as a teen (and how I would do anything to avoid participating in Gym class), or about my love for yoga, for hiking and for swimming. 

In the meantime, I'd love to hear about your fitness story, and how fitness contributes to your mental wellbeing and creative work, too. Leave a comment below! I'd love to hear from you. 

links loved: november edition

A co-worker shared this bean burger recipe with me recently and I want to try it out.

Linda Arcuri is a yoga teacher who was part of It's Business Time with me. I loved her recent post about feeling safe with yourself. 

"I used to spend a lot of time feeling inferior; like for some reason I did not deserve the success I was experiencing...But at some point, I decided, this is bullshit." "I am an artist" by Lisa Congdon.

A cute free Christmas background for your phone or desktop. I'll admit I've already put it on both of mine! I'm in the spirit of the season this year. 

Nixed ideas for iTunes logos, circa 2004. (I like looking at early sketches and logo development.)

Entrepreneurship is the new women's movement.

Reading the Ministerial Mandate letters from Prime Minister Trudeau to his Cabinet last week for work made me feel super excited and proud of my Canadian government. I know, it sounds boring, but it's actually pretty neat! 

Esmé Wang's writing in this piece made me feel transported and transfixed: a Thanksgiving Story.

I'm thinking of trying my hand at a simple sewing project for our home this year: a star tree garland.

If you're wondering what to get me for Christmas... a fat plush pony by Kate Beaton always wins.

And, Michael Buble's Christmas album is my favorite, this year and every year. Here is a little clip where he talks about the arrangement of "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas."  

Logo design: Margaree Walking Tours

When I did my crowdfunding campaign back in April, to raise money to take the It's Business Time program, the main thing I did to raise money was sell my time as a designer. People could buy my time in 1-hour blocks, which I valued at $50/hour. A couple of people bought 10 and 20 hours of my time, but most people bought 1 or 2. 

One such person was my friend Hannah. She was starting a small business and wanted a logo designed for it. She's an amazing gal, super positive and energetic, and passionate about the environment. She was creating a summer job for herself, in between living in Edmonton, and moving to Budapest in the fall with her boyfriend. Her plan: to give walking tours in Margaree.

Hannah bought 2 hours of my time, which to be honest isn't really enough for a proper, in-depth logo design, but the way I figured it with the crowdfunding perks, was that I'd be honest with people about what I could do in the time they had purchased, and do my best for them in the time allotted. And, it worked out. With Hannah, we already communicate well with each other, and she liked my work, so that cut a lot of time out of the process.

We started with an in-person client meeting. I asked her all about her new business and what her plans were. I took notes in my sketchbook and sketched out some of the things she described:

We used a private Pinterest board to collect ideas and similar logos that she liked.

Then I spent some time sketching out ideas based on the Pinterest board:

I picked out the six that I liked the most (circled in red) and re-drew them on tracing paper with Sharpie. This, I scanned and emailed them to Hannah:

She picked out the ones she liked the most and then I scanned the Sharpie drawings at a high resolution (600 dpi), and used Illustrator to Image Trace them. This is how you vectorize (make digital) any hand-lettering project. 

Then, in lllustrator, I created the logo variations:

Hannah got to choose which ones were her favorites, and then I'd tweak accordingly, depending on what she wanted. She liked the hand-lettering, but wanted to try the circular logo with it. We did some back and forth, and in the end, this is what she got: four variations to use where she wanted.

Even though it was a fairly quick process, I really enjoyed this logo design! And even more, seeing it in action: here is a post Hannah wrote about the logo, on her business blog.

Branding: my brand tree

Something really cool that came out of It's Business Time and working with Tiffany Han was getting clear on my own personal branding, and creating something called a brand tree. 

Now, "branding" is a term that I want to dig into more, and learn more about. I feel like it can be one of those smokescreen words, corporate-speak. I want to get clear on what branding means to me, what it can do for a business, and where to start crafting a new brand, so it doesn't feel so overwhelming. So, I'm going to write my way through this learning, as I do with just about everything, here on my blog.

I went to design school and I still feel this way about branding, so I imagine you might too! Anyway, I hope it's interesting. :)

So, back in March of this year, I hadn't yet started the It's Business Time program. I was still in Tiffany's 100 Rejection Letters program. And as part of that, I was developing my own brand. In this post, I wrote about the process and shared what I had come up with so far. 

Then the whirlwind of the crowdfunding campaign happened, and before I knew what was happening, I was in the It's Business Time program and the real branding adventure began!

We did a great deal of introspection and writing in the program. It wasn't until Week 13 that we dug into branding and crafting our Brand Trees. I won't share the worksheets, as they are Tiffany and Michelle's intellectual property, but we did things like answer questions like "How do you want people to feel when interacting with your brand?" and "How do you anticipate differentiating yourself from the competition?" (In another post soon, I'll share my own branding questionnaire, that I've come up with for my clients.)

So here is my brand tree, now:

It's so interesting to look back to the one in this post and compare. 

How do I use the brand tree? Well, I keep it on the wall above my desk, and often I'll look at it, just for inspiration, or when I'm kind of staring off into space while creating. The core values are the roots of my brand, and they help me when I'm coming up with new ideas or trying to figure out if an upcoming project fits in my brand. The brand words in the middle are the three things that everything I do or put out there into the world must be. The three words are not meant to be limiting, but rather a guideline to help me remember what my brand is all about. And the branches at the top are the three ways that my business manifests... the things that I do and create. 

nature + inspiration

Nature, man. It's the best. That's why hipsters take photos of leaves in front of their faces, right? 

I put on my agenda, "Write a blog post about how nature inspires me." I was thinking of making moodboards, and taking some photos and then making colour palettes out of them, which is like, lovely, designer-y stuff, and might be a fun project for me sometime, but it isn't something I actually DO.

What I actually DO is go out into nature and take walks. 

And I take photos. So many photos. Most of my iPhone photos are of leaves, trees, roots, water. Shit that at the time, feels so awesome and powerful and beautiful. (And, it is.)

So then I was like, I'll just write about how nature impacts my designs. 

And then I sat down to write about it, and this is what came out:

How can I put into a blog post what nature does to me?

The way it makes me feel? Why I want to be out in it, all the time? What the fresh air does to me? To my soul? How excited it all makes me? The leaves on the ground, the flowing brook, the needles of the larch, the colours all around, the way the clouds change colour. The smell of the air. The goddamn smell of the goddamn air. It invigorates me!! All the exclamation points!

I need it to breathe. To breathe deeply. To really inhale. To feel free. That feeling of freedom, that’s what I’ve been searching for, for the last year. I was feeling frantic, and stuck. Stuck in between boxes and boxes and boxes that existed in my dayplanner… boxes I had set up. The boxes are commitments to things. But along with all those boxes, I was also checking social media all the time. You don’t realize what that does to you. I didn’t realize until these last few months, when my imagination started coming back. When my sense of freedom started coming back.

Reading back through 100 Rejection Letters book, I see: Slow Down comes up a lot. SO WHY AM I RUSHING MYSELF AND PUSHING MYSELF TO DO MORE? I want to build a business sustainably. So that means not making myself burnt out doing it. Simple. As that.

Here and here are other posts I wrote (on my old blog, Dream Big Cape Breton) about nature. I like 'em still. 

Friday music I'm loving right now

Mmm hmm, so so so SO good: the new album by Fat Freddy's Drop. You can hear a track off it on that website. 

I love cranking my tunes, it helps me work. If I'm in my home office and Adam isn't home, I crank it in my speakers with a sub-woofer that makes the bass really pop. If I'm at my day job in my office, I put on headphones and that helps to tune out some of the background noise, and focus. 

(Other times I prefer silence for working. It really just depends.)

And then other times I get up out of my chair and have a mini dance party! Move that body. That really helps creativity.

Happy Friday!

a love note to our own inspirational notes

Portrait of me is by Paige Rankin. "Big Things Happen One Day At A Time" is from the Get To Work Book.  Quote from the Bible was written down by my cousin Ginger. "You are a creative soul" print is by me, it was a gift to the participants of the Creative Soul Weekend.

Dear Notes,

Thank you for being there for me. A simple piece of paper and a thumb tack, or a piece of washi tape, and my own handwriting, or a simple design: you are the conduit between the big magic of God/the Universe, and my simple bones and flesh here on Earth. You bring the words that act as little stones, little pearls to rattle in my pocket as I go about my day to day. Shake shake, rattle rattle. Remind me, remind me, whisper to me, that I am creative, that I shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that I got this, that I am more than whatever bill I am paying at the moment.

The words become stepping stones. One flat stone in a garden, dew of the morning still on it, my bare feet standing on it. There is another stone, I step on that, and then to the next stone, and I move forward. I am not stuck. The words serve. 

Then there is the cleansing that comes when its time to take a note down. You are like husks and seeds in the fall… the seeds have fallen, the husk remains. It’s time to take you down, put the paper in the recyclable bin. Leave a blank space on the wall for a bit. Let blankness be.

Someday soon, another idea, another quote, another string of stones and pearls will float down into my mind and catch. I’ll write it down, take out the thumb tacks or the washi tape, and attach it to the wall for a little while. And so it goes, the cycle of creativity, the cycle of hanging on to the thread of an idea, the cycle of supporting myself through the Resistance, through the negative voices that would stop all forward movement if it could. 

O little piece of paper, you are so much bigger than your fibres. Thank you.