Welcome to 2023 and Tending to the Small Things
It seems like forever since I've written to you! I hope you are having a wonderful 2023 so far. I had a great time during the break, visiting with family. We even had a second Christmas celebration this past weekend since my mom wasn't able to attend the first one due to COVID. Along the way, there was lots of food, fun rounds of karaoke, and gifts, including the lovely ornament pictured above from my sister Becky.
Over the years I've discovered that the holidays are kind of a double-edged sword for me. While I enjoy spending time with family, I also find that I get out of rhythm with my normal routines during the holiday season. This is especially true now that I'm developing my creative business. I find I need these routines more than ever to stay on track.
But, there is also another part of the holiday season that I both anxiously await and actively dread - the new year messaging about starting with a clean slate, setting goals, choosing words of the year, and finally making this year the best year ever. As the inevitable emails began pouring into my inbox about new courses, journaling prompts, and bits of advice to make the most of a sparking new year, I found myself in a state of overwhelm, thinking of all the projects I want to embark on in 2023.
It became hard to focus. Should I go through my bullet journal to do my year-end review? Handle the growing number of household chores that have gone undone during the holidays? Create that new note-taking system I've been thinking about for months? Add new items to my Sunlight Forest shops? Research new markets for my work? Submit my work to Uppercase magazine before the January deadline? And on and on it went.
Suddenly, I just stopped. I sat down, set my timer for 7 minutes and did a meditation. It was difficult at first with all the thoughts streaming through my mind, but I just kept reminding myself that my only task was to quietly breath in and out. I ended up doing another 7 minutes after the first timer expired. Feeling a bit more centered, I decided to pull an animal oracle card to let the universe provide some guidance.
The animal that spoke up was Mouse Spirit - Tend to the Small Things. This message helped me realize that most of the things on the list in my mind were larger projects that needed to be completed in much smaller steps. My year-end review, for example, usually requires a large block of time for me to go over all of last year's projects, tasks, notes, and ideas. Submitting my work to Uppercase magazine also required many steps - deciding which pieces of art to submit, formatting those pieces for submission, filling out the form etc.
Understanding the need to tend to the small things helped me get re-focused. I chose to work on the project with the most immediate deadline - the Uppercase magazine submission. I worked on small pieces of it, then let it rest while I tended to other small tasks around the house. What I found is that small things really do add up to much bigger things. I'm happy to say that I got my submission into Uppercase Magazine this week, worked on new sticker designs, and accomplished a whole bunch of other tasks on my list.
I plan to carry the tend to the small things message into this week as well. There will be time to reflect on 2022. But for now, I'm handling the most immediate things, clearing the backlog that piled up over the holidays.
I hope that reading my thoughts will give you some ideas or even a little peace of mind if you haven't set your 2023 plans just yet. But if you're off to a running start, that's great too!