Our Most Important Work (and a little change)

We’re almost halfway through the third month of the year and I’m curious how you’re feeling. Have you been relishing your creativity and savoring life’s tiny (and not so tiny) joys?

I’ve been having so much fun in my tiny sketchbook

Or maybe you’ve had different priorities for this year. How has it been going?

Whatever your focus for your days, I hope you’re living in line with your intentions. I know it can be hard when so much vies for our attention and world events are overwhelming.

I’ve spent a lot of time this year listening. Thinking. Observing. Writing in my journals. Looking through old art. Paging through finished (and unfinished) sketchbooks. I’m considering my art, my creativity, my business. Realigning with how I want to live. I’ve been imagining my new garden and dreaming up projects for our home and property. It’s good, deep work and this sort of thought and imagining and dreaming takes time. I’m not rushing the process. I’m giving myself as much time as I need. I’m getting quiet and listening intently to what I feel in my heart. Asking myself, what am I noticing about my thoughts? What’s inspiring me? What’s pulling me?

After a detour, I returned to my houseplant painting and am about to start on another

As March approached one feeling kept showing up: I didn’t want to sit at my computer putting together the next workbook for The Analog Life Project. I kept putting it off. Yes, I do want to encourage and inspire you, but more than anything else, I want to live my analog life. Making art. Wandering in the woods. Cultivating gardens. Creativity needs to come first. This is true perhaps especially if I aim to inspire and encourage. I cannot help to fill your cup if mine is empty.

It’s important for us to listen to our hearts, our guts, our intuition. Our feelings will lead us in the right direction. Even the fear mixed up with our excitement about a new project tells us something important — that we care profoundly about what we’re about to create.

In my first post of the year I wrote about what I wanted to take away from The Analog Life Project. My underlying goal was awareness.

Some of the silver maple buds popped into bloom this week — right before it snowed again. And more snow is on the way.

If my focus for this year is awareness, I need to pay attention to feelings when they show up. So I decided to simplify The Analog Life Project Workbook. For now there will just be one. If you’ve already signed up for the January and February workbooks, I’ve sent you a link to the new one. If you haven’t, you can grab your copy here (you’ll also be able to access to my free resource library which includes my sketchbook guide, video tutorials and much more).I imagine the workbook as a spark to get you going.

To be honest, I think you already know how to live your analog life. You know which types of projects bring you joy. You know what you’re most curious about. You know what lights you up.

I painted this tiny landscape from a photo I took driving to my parents’ house the other day.

Maybe, like many of us, you need a reminder that this — joy, curiosity, creativity — is important. That it’s not frivolous to sit sipping coffee and watching the sun slowly light up the horizon as a new day dawns. That making a mess with art supplies on pages of a sketchbook is time well spent. That grabbing the next book in your favorite series and hiding out in cozy nook for an hour isn’t a waste of time.

Let this be your reminder.

The older I get the easier it is for me to choose what’s right for me and let go of other expectations. Perhaps recommitting to this is the perfect gift to give myself a week from tomorrow when I turn 50.

Your daily choices might look different than mine. If so, that’s wonderful. One of the beautiful things about our world is how different we all are. For each of us, being ourselves and showing up just as we are is the some of the most important work we can do.

As we we begin the second half of March, I hope you’re listening. To your heart. To your guts. To your intuition. And I hope you’re recommitting to what’s most important to YOU. I’d love to hear about it.

Sweet Clara beside me at my art table

Over here, I’ll continue with my listening. Thinking. Observing. Dreaming. I’ll be writing in my journals. Studying my art. Making messes in my sketchbooks.

Thanks for being here, my friend.