“No matter how you define creative success, one of the most important components is the willingness to show up and do the work.” – Jane Dunnewold

Thanks Jane, oh, how I can relate to this. The last few months have seemed chaotic for me. A variety of things taking hold of my schedule and spinning me around. Now I’m out of practice for showing up, but I’ve started the new year with good intentions.

What I realized is intentions alone aren’t good enough. Healthy habits of showing up and doing the work need to be enforced. But how do you do that when there are so many things distracting you.

I started the year with my Passion Planner. Last year was the first time I worked with this planner. In reality, it is just a planner, I didn’t need this “special one” to accomplish my goals and schedule my time. This one just includes prompts for self-reflecting, which I find very helpful. I need to remind myself of the positive things I accomplished, as well as keeping track of those items that need to get done. It’s helpful for me to check-in with myself weekly and monthly.

The other thing I realized I needed was practice showing up. For me, this means scheduling time EVERY DAY to work on my creative work. Frequently, I spent too much time on the admin work and the creative work gets postponed.

Recently, I started following a textile artist I admired, Anne Wood. She makes these cute little stitched designs and has some patterns  for birds and dolls that I’d like to try. A couple weeks ago, she announced she was going to start a 100 day stitching challenge. The goal is to spend 100 days, stitching for at least 15 minutes a day. Sounds just like what I need.  Today is day 6. It is easy to get distracted, but I’ve been doing the work (you can follow my progress on Instagram). Making the commitment and now sharing it with you, holds me accountable. I personally know that accountability is what keeps me on task. Left up to my own devices, I tend to wander.

Do you have tips for keeping consistent?