I know that one of my goals for this year was to try and blog once a week and I haven’t been around here much this month.

I feel like all aspects of my life have been “full” lately. (I’m trying to avoid using the word “busy” because aren’t we always?) Working at my day job, coming home, cooking dinner, cleaning up the house, taking care of the cat. Trying to make time in the evenings and weekends to work on my surface pattern design portfolio, taking a ceramics class on Monday evenings, taking an online calligraphy course. Actively working to simplify my closet, my home, my routine. Taking moments to enjoy the nice weather and relish the life around me.

It’s not that I’m not doing, I’ve just been doing so much that I’ve been overwhelmed while simultaneously getting on to myself for not doing more. Not blogging more, not spending more time painting, not reading enough, not being as far along in my design portfolio as I’d like. Not even attempting anything that could remotely be construed as exercise in longer than I can remember. (unless walking from my house to get a snowball counts)

Over the last few months I’ve spent a lot of time thinking. Why do I do all this? Why do I push myself so hard? Try to do so much? Set so many personal goals? Try to expand myself in so many different creative directions? Why can’t I just be content working my day job and then coming home and watching TV or reading a book?

Well, I can be. But only for so long. I can’t quell the desire in me to create, to work at putting together a career that I love and enjoy and is fulfilling to all my creative passions. And the only way to get that done, to get to where I want to be, is to work at it. Because I know my future self will thank me for it. For taking the time now to work hard at paying off student loan debt so we can be financially free. For taking the time now to learn calligraphy to enhance my hand lettering for my design work. For taking the time now to learn new skills, to get better at surface pattern design, for building a portfolio, for perfecting my painting skills, for blogging about the process. For taking the time now to learn to live with less, to simplify.

What are you doing today that your future self will thank you for?

P.S. The quote above was hand-lettered by me in my own version of modern copperplate calligraphy. Getting better thanks to Melissa Esplin’s I Still Love Calligraphy course! The pattern is also part of a pattern I designed myself!