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This post is part of the “What I Wish I Knew” series being hosted by Ashley at Your Super Awesome Life- a new site dedicated to helping teen girls live a life that they love. Ashley has rounded up an inspiring ground of women is asking us what we wish we knew about all different parts of life when we were teenagers, and I’m excited to be sharing a post about passion.
This weekend I started a simple experiment: to pay attention to being moment.
In the last week, I’ve kept coming across different blog posts, TED talks and reflections on how being constantly focused on our smart phones or our technology is damaging. A quick sum up of the argument is that being engaged with our devices all the time gives us an excuse to be around people without engaging with them, it lets us edit ourselves to a huge degree, and over time it builds the tendency to fill any moment that we’re alone.
I can definitely see the wisdom in that assessment, but I’m also a lady who loves carrying my iPad with from room to room, listening to podcasts. I love my gadgets and I’m more than a little attached to my twitter feed. I can understand scaling back, but as a policy I’m not going to axe anything that adds to my life.
{image: watering can by Sadie Olive }
Alright, on to the fun parts of the Easter Weekend! :)
I started the long weekend off by sitting myself down on Friday and planning out my client schedule between now and January. I currently take on three large design clients per month and am trying to come up with a more balanced approach where I start two clients & then a few weeks later start another two, but it’s been difficult to picture what my year will look like until I charted it out. Jesse and I have been planning a mini-trip to Minneapolis in September, visiting our American family Florida in October, and I’m considering going to Toronto for the first time(!) in May, but blocking off any time from projects means a gap in income and missing time with clients that I’ve got to plan for.
It was complicated, but there was wine involved so I survived quite happily and knowing that I have a plan that will work for me and give me time off is a relief and energizing in its self.
… and yes, I did dye my hair back to brunette! It was a four hour marathon of cancelling out the red and it will fade out to match my natural dark brunette colour. I’m loving the new look & feel a lot like Snow White since Elsie pointed out the resemblance! I can’t wait for Halloween.
image: Dana Tanamachi
Last week I wasn’t sure how the Easter weekend was going to be. The week had a bumpy end with some seriously unpleasant & upsetting happenings, and after many years of having an overwhelmingly positive experience with blogging, I found myself surprised, shaken, and questioning why I share moments from my world every week. Over the weekend I gave myself lots of time to think, feel what I needed to, and think about my online space.
This is the bottom line that I came to:
Finding a place to pause in the things that I love is often really difficult for me. When I’m on a roll with cooking, I want to stay up all night making the next recipe in my queue. When I’m almost at the end of a book, I want to get to the end no matter what, and when I’m working on designing a website for a client it’s really difficult to get me away from the computer. Because of that tendency (and in spite of knowing myself!) I often work until I have no more gas in my tak and then take a big break. This weekend I reached that point, took the weekend off to be with friends and family, sleep as much as I needed, and spend a little time offline. It was such a necessary, restorative time and this morning I woke up feeling turbo charged with passion and happiness.
Thank goodness! It was that or curl up in my sock drawer and sleep for days. I would love to know how you keep your self from falling into a full bore + burn out cycle, or if you embrace it as part of how you explore your passions. Any tips?
At the same time, I’m not surprised that I’ve been a bit worn out- there has been a lot on the go, including a string of big news & little pick-me-ups that have been surprising and new:
In the past ten days my prairie city has been a changed place- instead of late winter snowstorms we’ve had sunshine, instead of a windchill we’ve had humidity, and it has been amazing! All the snow and wind have vanished and instead it’s patio and t-shirt weather. I’ve never experienced anything like this, and it’s so amazing to have spring when my American friends are enjoying the beautiful weather!
Exhibit A: the photo on the left was March 8th, and the photo on the right was taken on March 18th.
I'm Kyla- a twenty something web designer & full time creative business owner, friendly introvert, thrifting addict & vegetarian foodie. I live in a tiny house with my husband Jesse and very small (very bad!) dogs, and am passionate about handmade, living simply, organization and making my time stretch so I can fill it with all the projects I have whirling around my mind.
This is my personal blog where I share stories from my life, lessons I'm learning through living with GAD, being self employed, results from my kitchen, and inspiration that makes me swoon.
