Motivation Tuesday

My Oh-So-Fab BFF and I have begun a mutual admiration society. OK, in all honesty we did that years ago, but this time we're being productive about it. On a weekly basis we make goals pertaining to building our brands, skills and companies while bettering our lives. We have weekly check in sessions to report our progress. One of our strict rules is that we have to post to our blogs on Mondays. I have decided that I want to use these Mondays to motivate myself and also to discuss where I'm at and what I'm doing in the hopes of giving other artists out there that extra little push. Wonder of wonders

I'd already posted to my blog yesterday, so this week you're getting a 'Motivation Tuesday.' We'll return to our regularly scheduled programming next week.

When I find myself making excuses, I need to think back to this idea of priorities. I am always trying to rededicate myself. I just feel like everything is so damn important! Here are some of the things that I am constantly trying to balance.

• Living an Active Life
  if I don't make it to the gym at least three times a week I know that I get grumpy, my mind wanders, my art suffers and I feel awful.
• Being social
  As a single girl in the city this is vital. If I give this up I become that raspy cat lady who never gets dressed before 3pm, existing on a diet of stale Saltines and canned soup.
  
  Being a friend could be a full-time job if I let it. I am really lucky to have so many people I want to spend time with. It makes it hard for me to prioritize. I'm not naturally social. It takes work. I know I have the ability to go totally unhealthily recluse artist. Once I get started one direction or the other it's hard for me to stop. These days I feel like I'm spending too much time out and about with friends. I need to pull back a little but it is hard to feel like I'm missing all the fun when I sit things out.
• Sleeping
  My entire life, this is always the first thing to get cut. It just feels like if there were more hours in the day everything would be OK. So 86ing sleep buys me time. Lately I get by on about six hours on a good night. Um... yeah, so I need to reassess the importance of this. There are times late-late at night that I trick myself. I think, "I'm so close to finishing this illustration. I'll just stay up and conquer it!" But then I'm not giving my body a chance to recuperate. I always forget that whatever I'm doing will still be there when I wake up. I'm starting to set an alarm clock to make myself go to bed. I'm trying to scale back so that I say, I will go to bed by 1:30 am, working back to getting to sleep before midnight.
• My Art
  I need to put in a lot of time every week on my personal work and my client's work. It's my dream to have my next tradeshow roll around and to just casually stroll into the convention center, well rested and so completely prepared that nothing extra has to be done prior to getting there.
• My Business
  I really try to keep this separate from 'my art' in my head. I put everything dealing with liaising, follow up calls, promotion, digital footprints etc. in this pile. It is not supposed to be in anyway lumped in with the act of creating. I need it to have a life of its own. The trouble with this is that a lot of it needs to happen in the day time business hours which is sometimes difficult because of....
• Job-Job
  This is the easiest to balance with everything else. My job is wonderful. I get there, I draw some cute stuff, I talk to people I genuinely like. My problem is letting things go and leaving after I've been there for eight hours. Sometimes I convince myself I should just put in more time. It's pretty obvious I don't have any extra of that.
• Education
  I'm always working on this. I read a lot, both books that are helpful for my career and books that are fun. I subscribe to several 'smart' magazines. The subway really spoils me. I have a 35 minute commute and it leaves me more than an hour to read a day. I just feel like I need more. I'm at an age where a lot of my friends are looking at grad school and deciding where they're going with other endeavours. The nice thing is that I know exactly where I'm going. I feel like I am successful in everything I'm working towards. The goal is to be more successful.
  
  I know I don't ever want to sit down in an academic adviser's office and be told what idiot class I need to take to complete a degree again. At the same time, I miss the classroom. I miss the energy that was in such rabid supply at Pratt. Just being there is exciting to me it's almost as if the air is crackling and everyone is feeding off each other's creative process. So I'm trying to find a way to add this to the mix too.

I want to make this idea of making room for the important things my mantra. It's all a matter of balance. Speaking of which. I really need to get to bed. Typical.