Let Me Tell You a Thing or Two About "Time"

I cannot believe it has been almost a month.  When I left my job to pursue art full time I naively thought that with all the extra time I would be able to blog regularly, write newsletters, and overall share more about my process than I was able to before. But here is the reality. When you open your life up to do something full time it, inevitably, takes up all of your time.  I feel as though each week I think to myself, next week I will have more time to do, (fill in the blank).  Instead of stepping back and feeling gratitude for all the awesome opportunities I have been blessed with I am over here in the corner worrying about my "lack of time".

Let me tell you something about my perceived lack of time. It is not real.  I decided this week to start to work on the belief that I do not have enough time.  I had decided that I would start first by reciting a daily mantra. My mantra goes something like "I have enough time to accomplish all of the things I need to".  Simple right?  Then I took it a step further a begin to really look at what was eating up my time. I am sure I do not even have to tell you where all my time was going.

Social media while an incredibly important part of running a business, or in my case multiple businesses, it was sucking up a huge part of my life.  I have decided to apply some strict rules around my social media time to help make my work time more productive. Part of my relationship with social media is that I love to consume art.  I love Pinterest for this reason, and am constantly on Instagram. The reality is, as inspiring as these platforms are, I ultimately fall down the rabbit hole of swiping madness. What I am doing then if not just wasting time?

Another thing I did to get my anxiety around time under control was to start doing my actual admin work outside of my house/studio.  I was doing it in a coffee shop which, I admit has its own distractions. Then I asked to share an office space that was not being used during the day. Having those four or five hours in the morning, three times a week has changed the way that I do work. 

Now that I have some rules about how much social media I consume and a new place to do the work I have to start asking myself the even scarier question which is "what am I doing to sabotage myself and my career".   I won't go too far into that as it is it's own blog past entirely. I will say though, that as I clean up my business systems I am learning to look further inside of myself at what other factors might be at play here.