Mid-year Check: My Words
Hello halfway point in the year! Welcome to June. The first day of official summer is this week. School is out and summer camp is getting into the swing of things. It seems like the perfect time to check in on my words for the year before quarter two comes to an end. If you need to catch up, check out my January post My Words for 2024.
Overall, I am feeling good about my progress so far this year. My words are there to motivate me. They are there to remind me of what I am striving for and why I am working so hard, sometimes spending my evening writing blog posts (like this one), when I might rather be curling up on the couch with a movie. My mantra that has emerged this year is: dreams do not come true by themselves. They require constant attention and small incremental steps can make a big impact over the course of the year. They are also there to help me course correct if I feel like I have strayed in the wrong direction.
Growth
My word related to my art practice for this year was growth. The growth goals I developed at the start of the year were to focus on:
Drawing skills and confidence in my drawing ability.
Color theory.
Watercolor techniques.
Technical skills and specifically softwares.
I think my biggest success in this area was completing the Immersion course with Bonnie Christine, where I learned how to use Adobe Illustrator over the course of about 12 weeks with a specific focus on surface pattern design. Surface pattern design is developing patterns to use on products such as fabric, stationery, and home decor. The course was a lot, but I used my vacation time to take one day off from work to complete the course and at the end I had a fabric collection of nine finished patterns inspired by the early automotive era. I’m currently waiting for a copyright application to work its way through the system and then I’ll be ready to share about the whole collection process from start to finish.
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This course was transformative in ways that I am still wrapping my brain around. Building the hard skill of learning Adobe Illustrator on its own feels like a massive accomplishment, but being exposed to what is possible with my art has left me so excited for what is coming up. I have so many ideas and a to-do list that is a mile long. Not overdoing, I’m discovering, is a lesson that I apparently need to learn over and over again, since right as I was celebrating graduating my course and the culmination of a big work project, I got sick and it took me a few weeks to get back to feeling one hundred percent. For me this is the biggest challenge right now, figuring out the balance between pushing myself to reach for goals while also recognizing what is reasonable progress in relation to everything else going on in my life. I’m trying to remind myself that everything will move at the pace it is supposed to, I just need to keep showing up. I even made the decision to add a break week into my calendar for Memorial Day weekend. I still completed my fifteen minutes a day of something, but I removed the pressure of needing a blog post ready to go as original scheduled.
Admittedly, almost everything else that was art related took a back seat during Immersion. I was still trying to paint, but not at my usual pace and sometimes it felt quite forced. My drawing practice and sketchbook practice are happening in fits and starts and I haven’t really done anything specifically related to technique work or building my watercolor skills. Even my blogging and newsletter writing has been more last minute than I would like. But I’m choosing not to let any of that bother me (too much). I’ve just started my Summer Vibes project and I am enjoying getting back to painting and spending less time on my computer.
Strength
One of my personal words for the year was strength. The fact that I got into a bit of a burnout stage at the start of my favorite season is an indication that I have not been managing my stress as effectively as I usually do. I have tried to be better at accepting that I am sick and just taking the time I need to recover. Another big step for me was doing some self-care things for myself. I scheduled a massage for halfway through my course, my first since the before the pandemic and it was just so nice to splurge. I also started physical therapy to work on a hip issue that had been bothering me for the better part of six months. What I was shocked by with starting PT was that I found out that my hips were registering closer to a 50 year old in terms of strength rather than a 35 year old. As somebody who considers themselves pretty fit compared to your average person, I was really surprised, but it put things into perspective that I am getting older and I need to start paying attention to twinges and issues now so that I can keep doing all of the activities I want as I get older. We’ll see how this word feels when we close out the year.
Friends
My final personal word was friends. I wanted to recommit to making time for my friendships and also attempt to make some new friends. I have made some progress on this front. I joined a cycling club based out of Boulder. I went to a few meetings and have taken advantage of some of the clinics with the group, but I have yet to actually go on any bike rides. I certainly have excuses as to why: scheduling conflicts, not being in shape enough for the mileage or elevation gain of the rides, but probably the biggest one is I have realized that I use bike rides as times to think and decompress and that is hard to accomplish when you are in an unfamiliar place with unfamiliar people, but I still have hope, it just hasn’t clicked yet and I haven’t made it a priority.
I also have been trying to be better at reaching out regularly to friends, even if it is just text messages to say I was thinking about them. Probably the biggest success related to my friendship goal though is my study group for the Immersion class. I paid a little bit extra to be paired with an accountability group for the duration of the course. Each week starting in March, seven of us met over Zoom to talk through our wins, challenges, and goals. It was admittedly awkward in the beginning, but I have really come to value these women and our group is continuing to meet even though the course has officially wrapped up. What I find especially inspiring about this group of women is that we are all in completely different life stages, we have completely different art styles and goals, but we are all equally invested in seeing the others succeed. It has been a life changing experience and I cannot wait to see how our relationship continues to develop and evolve.
Overall my words are still resonating with me and I think they are still the appropriate guiding force as I move into the second half of the year. Did you pick words for the year? Are they still resonating with you?