I’ve had a busy week. Lots of business to take care of, which is my least favorite thing to do. I finally got all my doctor’s appointments made Tuesday. It took almost three hours of being on hold, getting cut off, and getting transferred to the wrong number, to get it all done. It was infuriating and frustrating, but in the end I was relieved I stuck it out and got it all done.
Yesterday I took down some paintings that were hanging downtown, went to FedEx to get some flyers to advertise my business, stopped by Michael’s to get some oil paint, and then drove over to Jerry’s to get canvasses.
Today I called my insurance agent to see if they could shop around for better homeowners and auto insurance, set up bill pay to pay my property taxes by the end of the month, and I ordered my nephew a birthday gift. It just seems like the beginning of the year brings large To-Do lists and mine is getting crossed off.
I’ve got three finished paintings of Thomas Jefferson high school and two more on the way. My plan is to go up the street and see if I can hang them at the coffee shop and then offer prints of them on Etsy. I’d like to make them available soon.
I was listening to an interview of James Clear, the author of Atomic Habits. I’ve seen the book cover and I’ve heard about the book ad nauseam but haven’t read it. I listened to an interview of him last week and decided to put the book on hold at the library. I feel pretty good after listening to him a few times. I think I may already being doing a lot of the things he suggests, but I always love to learn more about how to be productive. One thing I’ve learned over the past year is that it’s one thing to say you want to be a professional painter and author and it’s another thing to do it.
James Clear and the podcast host were talking about how you don’t ‘write a novel’, which is something I’d heard before. Instead, you sit down every day and you write for an allotted amount of time, then, after a while, you have a finished novel. Last year I started writing and painting every day. I don’t have specific goals I’m reaching, like selling X number of paintings by X date. Instead I paint every day and work on getting better. My goal is to improve and paint things that I like. My hope is that in time, that behavior will translate into being a professional artist. Obviously there are other things, like hanging work up at galleries, my Etsy shop, etc, but I can’t be a professional artist unless I’m making art every day.
Both the host and James Clear are writers and I it was cool listening to them talk about the process of writing. They also talked about asking yourself, What do I want my daily routine to look like? For me it’s getting up every day and spending allotted amounts of time being creative, my two creative outlets being painting and writing. That’s my dream life. This is my dream life. That feels good. It feels good to know that I’m already living my life the way I want. I am a writer and painter. Now I can make small shifts and changes when I want to tweak things like income and getting published.
I’ve always been fascinated with how people make change and achieve goals. As a teenager I was a laissez-fair goal setter. If it happened it happened. I wasn’t into struggling towards anything. At the time I was constantly told that what I was doing was wrong and I carried a lot of guilt about that for a long time. Now, after years of goal setting, I can say that there was a part of me back then that was on the right track. Yes, setting goals is important. But sometimes they can keep us stuck. What I’m finding now is that there’s intention setting and then there’s letting go. Letting go was what I was great at as a teenager and I’d like to be great at that again.
With the New Year just begun I would like to state some intentions. I want to paint houses, pets, and kids for my neighbors. I want to finish the two novels I’m working on right now and I want to regularly submit query letters to literary agents. I want to spend two hours a day on writing and two on painting. I want to hang my work at three locations before June. And I want to improve, both as a painter and as a writer. Those are the things I can control.