Alright! A month and a half after my last post…having hoped to write one every week. Oops! But then again, here’s why these targets we set for ourselves kick us where it hurts…frequently.

I’m a little bit of a dabbler. I dabble in a lot of things. Just reading that word brings about connotations, in my mind, of what ‘dabbling’ in something represents. It means you do a little bit of this, a little bit of that…not to perfection but in a light-hearted way. Herein lies the issue! I’m greedy. I want to do EVERYTHING. I want to sing, play guitar, take photographs of nature, start up projects, go to yoga five times a week, give my hair a hair mask treatment once a week, go to talks, see new films, save (but still do shit!), draw, go out, meet new people, do cardio, go to gigs…And, all this, I want to do alongside my quite heavy-going full-time job.

Thus – here we are! A month and a half later. My comeback post aha. And, quite fittingly, it is about the way in which we can sometimes do things that sets us up for failure. Much like the ridiculous notion of new year’s resolutions, as if a change in the numerical value of the year you’re in is somehow going to change who you are – your habits, your thoughts, your patterns – in the same way, we randomly set these overly-ambiguous goals. We go BIG. We ain’t got time to go small…nobody’s getting any younger eh! (Side note – I also just turned 29 in the last week of October so there’s a write-off week in itself!). And something has to give!

What will you sacrifice? (at least temporarily)

You want to go to a yoga class before work? An hour of sleep is lost. Thus, an hour of sleep must be compensated for before bed…thus, an hour of sleep is lost in your spare time in your evenings, post-work. What falls away in that hour? You either give up the sleep and brave the tired, or you miss out on that late-night binging you do, on that social activity you do evenings. You tell your boo sex needs to be scheduled earlier – I got a yoga class to get up for bro. I don’t know what the deal is – I am entirely writing whatever hypotheticals come to mind but the reality is – something must fall away. At least at first. We really need to accept that if we are aiming to implement something new into our routines, we may have to give something up to do this.

How frequently must you do this?

Another thing that we need to think about is frequency. Realistic frequency. I’m just gonna go back to the yoga thing a minute because it’s applicable in my case. For a month or so, I went to 4/5 classes a week, all before work. I got up an hour earlier and made that rush trek to the studio. So I CAN do it…but life happens. Flus, trips abroad, general tiredness…and when life happens, we can no longer stick to the militant schedule we had set for ourselves. Although an advocate for commitment – it does not mean you can never falter and in the event that you do (and you will), you get the hell back on it. You may need to adjust – that’s cool. But if it means something to you, you will go back to it. You will press restart and you will build your way back up.

Why are you doing this?

It’s imperative that we remind ourselves of our motivation for doing things. It is also very useful if that motivation is in line with we you are, what we love and what we want…as opposed to because we have come to compare ourselves to others, someone else has told us to or to compete. The latter three are hollow reasons and produce mediocre results, and an undeniable sadness, as opposed to blissful satisfaction. We want the damn blissful satisfaction yo! So, I’ll tell you how I spent the latter part of my October (from the 15th onwards).
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I Inktobered!

Inktober is a lush challenge, whereby you are to draw something, using only black ink (and an optional one extra colour if you like) every day of October. I only clocked it was happening halfway through the month so I joined then. And, bar one day, I produced a drawing every single night. Now, let’s go through the little checklist!

What will you sacrifice? (at least temporarily)

Writing in my blog
A little bit of sleep

How frequently must you do this?

Every night…but, realistically – as many nights as I possibly can.

Why are you doing this?

Because when I was a child, I loved to draw
Because as an adult, I never draw anymore
Because it’s a challenge
Because I’m excited
Because I’m creative
Because it’s yet another way to express myself

And so, now that Inktober has finished, I am going to be going back to other projects – some new, some current. But the things I’ve really taken away from last month are that:

I can be kind to myself and accept that I am not superhuman
At certain times, different things are allowed to take priority
In order to achieve something properly, I must be prepared to make some sacrifices
I don’t care less about something just because something lays dormant for a while

Hope this post helps all your lovely creatures realise you’re allowed breaks, changes in interest, the love and pursuit of multiple things…let’s just do this shit a bit smarter if we want the right results!