weeks 4-6 of creativity.
It's been a little bit of time since I've written about my little creativity challenge that I started back in late July/early August, the 75 Day Creativity Challenge. It's already September and I'm already over a month into this challenge. I will say, the first 3 weeks were pretty easy but I must admit that weeks 4 and 5 definitely saw a decline in checking off everything for the challenge. This was somewhat expected, it's was around the time of my partner's birthday week and we also went on a short Labor Day weekend vacation. I even knew this would probably happen before starting the challenge but wanted to exercise grace for missing days and to be able to get back at it instead of quitting due to a few days of "failure".
Physical Activity (30+ minutes)
Weeks 4 & 5 was where I didn't get as much physical activity as I usually do, but that's okay. I had gotten a pretty sizable thigh tattoo literally the Sunday before week 4 and it was a rough one to heal. Mainly due to lingering pain (side of thigh has been my most painful tattoo yet!), annoying saniderm, and also just wanting to give my body the rest that is probably needed after 4.5 hours of being repeatedly stabbed and poked. I gave myself a whole week of not forcing any kind of physical activity and then the next week (week 5) was our vacation week. Since my gym is also at my office, I didn't really want to go to the office during my paid time off. So, for week 5, I did a few at home workouts/elliptical and then during our Labor Day weekend on our vacation, I didn't try to squeeze in any work outs but we did walk a lot and go on a hike. With week 6, I've started back to the gym and honestly I was really craving it by the end of week 5. My first day back to the gym, I did go a bit harder than I should've and wrecked my legs for a few days but I've done my 3 days in the gym and I'm feeling good again.
Creativity Activity (30 minutes to an hour)
Doing something creative every day for the last three weeks are starting to become a struggle, I started off strong in the beginning and I see myself waning. I think my biggest hurdle is finding the time and/or routine for creativity. If I were able to do my creativity the same time everyday, I think it would be a lot easier but since some days I go to the gym and then right to work afterwards, I don't always have a nice little morning slot of time to work on creativity and then it gets pushed to the evening and my energy levels in the evening after work various day to day, usually on the lower end of the spectrum. To combat this, I've tried to be a little bit more liberal with creativity and let that include writing/editing blog posts (like this one) or reading about creativity itself (I'm on my way to start The Artist's Way -- might also blog about that experience too!). With the start of week 6, I'm trying to be more diligent in getting back into my creative routine and taking it a day at a time.
Reading/Journaling/Crocheting/etc.
Reading is still my easy item to check off the list, it's my one guarantee I have since I've made daily reading so integral to my routine. I start the day off reading Daily Rituals while brushing my teeth, reading the routine of one or two famous artist's, and then switch to an audiobook to do my skincare, which lately has been The Villa by Rachel Hawkins and I think has been the perfect summer ending book to read. Then at night, I usually do a bit of reading before bed to wind down and minimize my screen time. I've started Braiding Sweetgrass back in 2022 and it's been a very, very slow read for me but it's a wonderful book and every story has really stuck with me.
As for journaling, I've started doing "morning pages" as directed by the book The Artist's Way and I've been counting that as my journaling effort. I've been enjoying them and found it best for me to type them out rather than write on pen and paper. I'm out of handwriting practice and get hand cramps, plus typing out my thoughts and words comes a lot easier and I can type way faster than I could write on a piece of paper. The idea of writing 3 pages (or 750 words) of just stream of consciousness has been pretty helpful in just clearing out my mind in the morning. It feels like I'm offloading all of the rambling thoughts in my head into a word document and saving it for later. Highly recommend just giving the morning pages a little try, it's a bit of an effort trying to do it very single morning but it's been making me feel mentally lighter starting the day.
Another thing I fell off of during the past two weeks was crocheting. I had just finished up a long term crochet project that I was working on. I was making a beanie/hat for a present for my partner's birthday and somehow, even with following the pattern exactly, the beanie was WAY too small for any human head (possibly a baby head, but I wouldn't even try that). I was a bit suspicious when I was reaching the end of the project but I powered through it and it didn't turn out the way I was hoping at all. But, I still gave him the present to show the time and effort I had attempted to make him something and he still loved it. I'm not in a hurry to make another hat and that project was honestly a bit miserable for me and sucked a lot of joy out of crocheting, so I took a little break from daily crocheting. Now, I'm trying to get back into it and just starting out by making a bunch of granny squares as practice and maybe trying to make enough squares to create a blanket (but we'll see).
This week
Again, this week's main focus is jumping back on the horse. I've done pretty well so far is completing week 6 and now starting week 7. I still missed a few items on my week 6 checklist, but we're not striving for perfection, we're striving for action and effort and trying to become more consistent.