weeks 7-8 of creativity.
Today marks the beginning of week 9 of my 75 day creativity challenge (read about it here). The last few weeks were pretty bumpy and I missed a lot of things off my checklist for each day, but week 7 started off strong and I was able to check everything off every day! Week 8 also started off strong but ended up being another rough week due to a family emergency and my dad having to go through surgery, which understandably led to me feeling sad and not having really any motivation or desire to care about the challenge for the rest of the week.
Physical Activity (30+ minutes)
I completed all my physical activity checks for week 7 and majority of week 8. I ended up skipping the last few days of week 8 due to shoulder pain and just honestly, not feeling like it. My right shoulder is still not 100% but I'm skipping exercises that bother it and I have been on an ibuprofen and bio-freeze regime over the weekend to help with inflammation and healing. I wasn't too concern with missing a couple days of physical activity, I probably could've done it and it probably would've even made me feel better but sometimes you just need to let yourself be sad and down and just wallow in those feelings before you can move on. It's a slippery slope, of course, but I just needed the time to feel those feelings and not worry about if I did 30 minutes of cardio or not.
Creativity Activity (30 minutes to an hour)
Week 7 was a great week of creativity, I was inspired and actually writing fiction for a change and I was also inspired to start working on another writing project too. Needless to say, the emergency drained all the creativity motivation from me and week 8 only had one day of creativity marked off. I'm not too mad at myself for doing so poorly on week 8, it was a hard week and I truly find it difficult to create when I'm feeling upset. I've never found that being sad or dealing with pain or struggling ever caused me to want to make art or inspired art. It's when I'm feeling happy or in a good mood that makes me want to create and I just wasn't feeling that way last week. I'm still not at 100%, but I'm trying to push myself with the new week.
Reading/Journaling/Crocheting/etc.
The only thing I managed to consistently do the past two weeks was read. I started a new book, Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone and Sign Here. I also kept up with journaling majority of the time but fell off during the end of week 8, which was kind of expected. Probably would have been helpful to journal more during that time, but again, sometimes you just need to let yourself rot a little bit. Crocheting also fell behind during week 8 but I was able to crochet a granny square everyday during week 7, I have a small pile of them on my desk now!
This week
This goal for week 9 is to get back into things as we only have a week and a few days left of the challenge. As of writing, I'm on day 57 and soon enough this little challenge will be over. I know I haven't been marking off all my tasks and I've had some rough patches through the past 57 days of being creative but so far, it's helped a lot with me wanting to prioritize creativity more and helped me want to get back into writing and just creating things in general.
My dad is also doing as well as he can, the surgery was successful but recovery will be a long and difficult road. Any thoughts or good vibes are welcomed and appreciated. Take care.