Week 9: Tasks

1. Read through your morning pages. Who have you consistently been complaining about? What have you procrastinated on? What have you allowed yourself to change or accept? What need have you been neglecting?
I don't like my work space. Writing at our store is impossible because there is always something going on and it is distracting and I don't like writing at home because I have to work at the kitchen table. I really want my own work space.

I have been procrastinating on doing any work at all. Luckily, I broke that habit and I've been writing quite a bit more this month.

I've leaned into the idea that right now the most important thing for me to do is support my husband and his needs. It is fine that I'm not looking for another job that is fulfilling to me because he has expressed his need for me to be around so that's what I'm doing. It will never stop being irritating that people don't respect this decision and even after I tell them this is what we're doing, tell me they hope I find work soon.

Even though I am giving the majority of my time to C and the shop, I cannot neglect my own need to keep order in my life and to create and do work of my own.

2. Imagine having your goal fully accomplished. What does that look like? Be specific. Name your goal. Describe yourself doing it.
Brooke will do a beautiful job on the illustrations for the Masala book, I will make beautiful dummy books and a major publisher will think my story is great and give us a good chunk of money for it and it will be available at bookstore and zoo gift shops across the country. Maybe that book money would even be enough for a down-payment on a house.

3. List for yourself your creative goals for the year. List for yourself your creative goals for the month. List for yourself creative goals for the week.
This year I would like to get one thing I have written published in some regard.
This next month I would like to finish the short story I have been working on.
This week I would like to put some significant effort into writing more of the short story.

4. Name a creative U-Turn.

I recently made a U-Turn in my work because I realized I had run out of excuses for not working. I don't have a job technically and I've been helping the husband in his shop which has a lot of down time between tasks. And then David Bowie died just days after a new album was released and I realized that he was actively dying and still made beautiful art so I had run out of excused. I then spent an hour every morning working on my children's book idea and within a week, the book was done. This has led me to start other projects as well. It's just time. I can't let how other people treat their own work negatively impact how I view my own.