A few weekends ago I went around the Cabot Trail with my friend Jacquie. This is taken in Red River.
It's Saturday. It's 11 am. It's late Autumn, and outside the air is cool. In the sky, there are patches of blue sky, and patches of clouds. The leaves on the trees I can see outside my office window are half orange, half green. And swaying slightly, rustling, in a lazy little wind.
Adam, my boyfriend, is hanging out on the couch in the living room. He's watching Sports Centre. It's his happy place. He's got a blanket over him, and likely he'll doze off. The cat, Mittens, was outside earlier, so there is a good chance she'll curl up on top of Adam and sleep too. And me, well, I'm in my office, carving out some time for my business.
What that looks like today is: first, tidying up my space. Emptying the recycle bin of paper into a blue bag. Piling up the library books that I'm ready to return. Moving the pile of newspapers I'm saving to use in the garden, from the middle of the desk over to the far corner. Creating a spot on the shelf for magazines I want to use in making collages.
Same Cabot Trail trip from a few weeks ago, this is from the top of Smokey Mountain.
Then, I open up my planner. I take care of a few quick things: emailing my Mom and brother about tomorrow, when I'll drive up to Baddeck to hang out with them. We needed to confirm the time. I send an email to my friend Leah Wechsler, who came through the It's Business Time program with me, and who is now my "biz buddy" - we will be Skyping next weekend for a monthly check-in with each other. (We call each other Wechsler and Noble, since we are both Leah.) And I send one to my mom and Adam's mom Mary Jane, to confirm a date in November when we three will meet for lunch.
This is at Groves Point, collecting seaweed for my garden, a few weeks ago.
Now we get to the hard part. The part where Resistance gets to come out and tap dance all over my face. It's like when I'm at the gym, and I'm on the exercise bike, intending to be there for 30 minutes, but the pedals start to feel heavy. The machine is pushing back at me. It's on purpose: it's to make me work. It's to make me use my thigh muscles to push back, to raise my heart rate, to get healthy. It feels good, and it will feel good, once it's done. But in the moment, I'm incredibly tempted to get off the bike and say "Well that was just too hard, maybe I go better read a book about exercising, instead." You know? LOL.
It's the same with doing the work of my business. The work of my business takes a number of forms: doing design work, but also writing my blog posts, coming up with ideas for things to create, things to share. Showing up day after day after day is actually how things get done. And Resistance looooves to tell scary stories about failure, about how they're all gonna laugh at me, about not having what it takes.
From a mid-week walk, a cloud selfie in the field near my house.
Funny how easy it is for me to forget I've been blogging since 2002. That's thirteen years I've been typing into a white box on a web browser and hitting Publish. I forget even now, thirteen years later, that we figure it out as we go along. As we show up. That content plans are great, and goals for what we want to communicate to our audience are great, but that Showing Up and Doing Work (and maybe changing the plan as the work happens and we realize new things) is what trumps ALL.
I so want to be able to plan plan plan, and then have creative inspiration show up when I schedule it to. "Wednesday at 9 am, OK inspiration? Show up then if you can."
But Inspiration is like, "Leah, you show up, and I'll meet you there. Sometimes. Sometimes you'll be all by yourself. But do the work anyway. I'll be there again soon."
West Mabou Beach, last weekend.
As I'm writing this, Mittens came and sat next to me, right next to my computer.
Adam is getting up, I can hear him moving about the house. I think he's going to do some sort of home-reno-something-or-other. He's the handy one in this relationship, for sure. He does things like tile the laundry room, or put a new screen door and trim on the front door.
So is there a moral in this blog post? Ha! Likely not. Likely it's just me rambling. But it's also me showing up. Showing you pictures of life lately. Sharing thoughts from life lately. Putting into practice my belief that 60% is a passing grade. That you do the work, and put it out there. Before you're ready. Right? Right.
So now I'm going to use the remaining hour or so of the time I've blocked out for myself today to work on upcoming blog posts. I'm thinking of doing a "Day In The Life" post this week or next. I'd also like to share some actual designs I've done, but I imagine those posts will take a bit more to get together: sketches, my thoughts on the process, the finished designs. I'd also love to know in what ways I can be useful to you, my readers. What bits of expertise or thoughts can I share, that would make your day better? Do let me know.
That's all for now! I hope you're having a lovely day, that you get to get outside and feel the fresh and delicious Fall air on your face and in your hair.
xo Leah