Have you ever been in a position where you are trying to juggle too many creative projects?
Have you ever not been in that position? I feel like I am fighting that urge all the time.
I see a cool project idea “I could make that!” Then I go through the process of getting all the materials, starting the project with every intention of finishing, and then I distracted by another cool project, putting the current one aside while I dive headlong into the new one.
Sometimes the projects are lucky enough to get revisited, like the sweater project I started in college with a beautiful turquoise boucle yarn. Mmm- it was delicious! But then, something else came up. And the sweater looked like it was going to be too big. And I really hate pulling out knitting. So, I put the sweater aside. Every time I looked at it I felt a little guilty. Guilty about the money I spend on that yarn. Guilty about the seemingly wasted time that I spent half finishing the project. Guilty that I bought new yarn when I should have been finishing that project.
But sat there it did.
For years.
Something like 7 years later I came back to that lucky sweater. I reworked it and put the pieces together in a different way than the way they were originally meant to be put together. It worked! I loved it and wore it all the time.
But that isn’t the ending for many projects that are started and abandoned. Many projects fall by the wayside never to be revisited again.
Does this sound like you? If so I have some advice.
Pick one thing.
Stick with it. Every day. Or every weekend, or whatever your creative schedule allows. Make a commitment for a specific amount of time. Maybe it’s 3 months. Maybe a year.
Make a series of drawings of your cat. Or knit a sweater. Or create a series of paintings of vegetables. Whatever feels like the most important work for you to do at the moment. Don’t let yourself get distracted. Follow through on your commitment to yourself.
Envision yourself in a year with 8 finished paintings. Or a beautiful handmade sweater. Or a
whole book of sketches of your cat- with a huge improvement over the year!
All of this is not going to happen in a day. It can’t. but if you take it one day at a time, one brush stroke at a time, one row of stitches at a time, one sketch at a time, keeping your end goal in mind, you will be able to achieve your goal.
It’s simple, but not easy.
Pick one thing. Choose a length of time. Make a commitment to yourself. Stick with it.
Ready? Get to it!