Changing focus

I am

Changing Focus

in my creative life. And that change will result in my writing fewer blog posts. I’m not sure how few. I just know that I want to clear a little more space for working on projects and that means I need to write fewer blog posts.

I will write when I feel I have something worthwhile to say or if I have images that I would like to share. But I’m not going to continue my daily posts 6 days a week.

Mornings are my best time to create and right now I spend most mornings writing blog posts. While I love creating them, recently I’ve often felt like I haven’t had a lot to say and have simply been filling space.

In the wholeheartedness of concentration, world and self begin to cohere. With that state comes an enlarging: of what may be known, what may be felt, what may be done.

   — Jane Hirschfield

Last night I finally envisioned a project that I want to work on this year. And when I sat down to work, I immediately began interrupting my process and questioning whether the idea would work. I had a litany of reasons why I shouldn’t even begin the project.

It’s so easy to make excuses or to avoid the deep digging and inevitable wrong turns that one must make along the creative journey. I’ve been sliding along the surface for a while now. And that has been fine. It was what I needed to do. Now I’m ready and willing to see if I can grow in new directions.

Last night I read through some of my oldest blog posts (from 10 years ago!). And while I cringed at the quality of the writing and photographs that I posted in those first years, I also saw how much I have grown during this creative journey. Now it’s time to dive deeper and grow in a new direction.

Creative work needs solitude. It needs concentration, without interruptions. It needs the whole sky to fly in, and no eye watching until it comes to that certainty which it aspires to, but does not necessarily have at once. Privacy, then. A place apart — to pace, to chew pencils, to scribble and erase and scribble again.

   — Mary Oliver

How about you? Are you thinking about changing focus? What is it that you want to make time for in your life?

May you walk in beauty.