Hello, my name is Jennifer and I have a hard time actually *doing* what I love to do.
Welcome to my little spot in the digital world where I share my struggles *and* my progress in finding the time, space, energy, and courage to create, whether it’s painting, digital drawings on my tablet, doodling in my journal, or blogging about creating time to create.
This is my message because I think there are others who struggle too.. So this blog is all about doing the creative things you love to do and being yourself… even when your life is ridiculous-busy, you feel too stressed out to be creative, or when you feel like you suck and it’s flying-spider-scary to show yourself and your work to the world or even your co-worker.
I’m no creative guru, just a 40ish year old corporate number cruncher and mom of 4 grown kiddos. My favorite things are the great outdoors, good food, my family, and making stuff… any stuff… whether drawings, paintings, spreads in my bullet journal, painting my cabinet doors, fancy cakes, or even an elegant spreadsheet at work that solves a problem (and I just can’t resist adding some fun colors). When my kids were little I loved to sew cute clothes, make costumes, paint murals on their walls, and any number of crafty things to make a little extra money in the years I stayed home with them as a homeschool mom. As a child I was always drawing on something (appropriate or not), making not mud pies but mud pottery and baking it in the sun, and drawing pictures of pets friends.
But in this season of life, between weekdays of a job that’s brain intensive, crazy, and often frustrating (to put it nicely) followed by weekends of renovating my little dream house (that hasn’t been updated since the 50’s or maintained since the 90’s), it’s hard to get the “oomph” going to do what I really love – to create. It’s much easier to collapse on the couch semi-comatose and stare at the tube until it’s time to go to bed and repeat the work/collapse routine the next day. And on weekends when I’m not covered in house paint, dust and caulking, I’m usually scrambling to take care of other little life necessities, like having a pair of clean underwear or two and food in the fridge that isn’t green and fuzzy.
For the past few years I’ve complained about not having the time to do what I love and made multiple vows to myself to do better… and they lasted a day or two, maybe a week. On breaks at work I’d stare longingly at videos on the web of talented people doing the coolest stuff wish the hands on the screen were mine. I couldn’t figure it out… I mean, if you really love to do something, then actually doing it *should* come easily, right? I had to take a good hard look at my time, priorities, habitat, and brain, to figure out what the deal was.
What it boiled down to was being chronically too busy, too stressed, too occupied with too many things, and surprisingly too scared, to take time to create. There were too many “too’s” in my life. That’s what I needed to tackle.
If you can relate, you’re in the right place. If you have it all figured out and together already, you’re my hero and I might stalk you! Either way, I hope you hang around for a bit. Also if you don’t want to miss a post, be sure to subscribe to my list so I can let you know when there’s something new here.
