One of the challenges I set out for myself was to draw each of the lighthouses in Maine. There are 65 of them and I thought it would be a good exercise to push though to help build up some of my illustration skills as well as potentially some material that could do well on Etsy.com
But as with everything it’s the daily practice that’s the hardest. I started the project about a year ago and am only at “B” and of course I”m going alphabetically. It’s a testament to just how serious the work is and how we need to be resilient.
It’s easy to blow everything off and focus on the urgent but not important. Daily practice is indeed quite important to both maintain creativity, make progress, and indeed for our mental health.
If we ever want to be able to produce the level of quality that we are aspiring to it takes daily practice. If we ever want to produce the work we aspire to then it takes a daily practice.
The important is so very easy to blow off. And I feel like I’ve neglected my own practice and as a result my own creativity and mental health for far too long.
Probably the single biggest thing we can do to embrace our creativity is to do whatever it takes to commit to a daily practice.
And it doesn’t matter what our creative outlet is. Photography, poetry, video, writing, illustration, watercolors, or the practice of law. Setting time aside each day to develop our skills and practice should be our highest priority.
It often isn’t. The mundane tends to invade our time and we take the easy road.
It doesn’t matter when you put time for your creativity on the calendar as long as it is a time that you can focus and a time that you have energy.
Are you ready to embrace your creativity and to defend that time on your schedule?
I’m still not as successful in this area as I’d like to be but I’m trying to put creativity first in the schedule. Getting about an hour in the mornings focused on my writing and illustration projects before I move onto the day job which also includes a bit of writing, illustration, and video production. But still that time to develop and push is critical.