Rachel L. Saunders's Blog, page 5

January | How It Went

So, it is officially February, y’all. Sometimes I am not sure how time works because it doesn’t feel like we should already be in February. But, as they (Ashley Johnson from Critical Role as Fearne Calloway) say, "time is a weird soup." Especially since early 2020. But I digress…

I wanted to do a check in, I’d stated my goals for the year and have made mention of the gentle nature of the schedule I’ve created for myself. (A Gentle Schedule) I’ve also been extremely vulnerable in sharing some concepts that have stood out to me as important parts of my creative journey of late. (Learning to Stand Alone and Befriending My Inner Child)

January was a success. I may not have done exactly what I set out to do some weeks, I’m looking at you staycation week, and I still came out having done exactly what I needed to.

Novel Writing

On the novel front I’ve written more than I have in months, which is not hard given that my word count for most of the last 6 months of 2022 was next to nothing.

But beyond the word count I’ve been using an online world building platform called World Anvil to really nail down the details and intricacies of the world of Vraith. I’m still working my way though the World Meta info so it is a slower process.

I also have bought a Novel Planner Guide from a developmental editor I found on TikTok, Cee M. Taylor, her videos were making complex things feel far more manageable and understandable.

Lastly I’ve bought a couple of books I’ve seen recommended for novel writing: Save the Cat! Writes a Novel (Jessica Brody) and Story Genius (Laura Cron). I’ve barely scratched the surface of Save the Cat! and feel excited for how it can improve my story craft.

Artwork

Art-wise I set out to make one art piece a week, and have successfully done that. I’ve been branching out a bit and trying some new skills and techniques. There has also been an ongoing attempt to merge my realistic style with my line-heavy work, currently a work in progress and going well.

The connection to my inner child has been most seen here in the ability to loosen up and simply draw. I think the effect is trickling into my novel writing and has lived in my blog writing for a while now.

I cannot wait to share my latest art piece because I think it is my best work to date, so stay tuned!

Selling my art is still on the table but I think it is something that is a down the road, later this year step. I’m stepping into feeling more confident with my overall cohesion of style and skill level. And I’m wanting to have more of a series of work to offer before I move more intentionally in that direction.

Considering those plant monsters as an option to sell, I do have more plans for more plant monsters. The next one will probably be more cute and cuddly looking…just don’t make them angry, you wouldn’t like them when they are angry!

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At the beginning of the year I wanted to have resurrecting and continuing my blog as a goal. I wasn’t sure what capacity I had and I knew that in the past I’d been very scattershot in posting anything since its genesis as Beautifully Functional.

So far, even with everything else on my plate, both chosen and obligatory, I’ve found a deeper need to post and make this thing go. It is a weird collection of me airing my inner thoughts to the greater world, advice, my creative and mental health journey. A lot of squishy vulnerability.

Nobody asked me to write it. I’d love to have fans, obvs, but nobody really needs to read this. I do hope that it helps someone out there to know that there are other creative weirdos in the universe.

Reading Books (AKA Buying ALL the Books)

The main goal in reading this year is to read more edifying books, like Save the Cat! and Story Genius. I also got my hands on some awesome Steampunk books that I’m excited to peer through for inspiration for the kind and level of tech I’m tinkering with for my novel. The Steampunk User’s Guide and The Steampunk Bible, both pulled together by Jeff VanderMeer, a favorite author of mine, and others. I will also probably take another journey through The Wonderbook, also VanderMeer and others, at some point.

I honestly did set out to read fewer books than last year. And I think that will end up being true by the end of the year. So far this year, though, I am miles ahead of schedule on my Goodreads goal. I cannot help myself. It is a compulsion to read all the books.

It is also a compulsion to buy more books. Mainly used books because we are trying to keep it on budget, but it is so hard to not keep buying all the books. I am as much of a book wyrm as I am a book dragon. I love to read the books I buy and am creating my own hoard of them.

I recently discovered the joy of making a spreadsheet to keep track of all the books we own. I'm working my way through the rest of my house but the ones living in my office are about 160 in number. The hubs likes the concept of the spreadsheet but gives me the weirdest looks because I actually want to spend my time tracking and cataloging our books. It is another way in which I’m letting my inner child lead the way.

That’s me, how are your goals, plans, resolutions, that off-hand promise you made to yourself that you just can’t shake going?

Befriending My Inner Child

I recently picked up a copy of Zen and the Art of Writing by Ray Bradbury. It’s a book that was gifted to the hubs by a relative of mine. I was looking for some writing books given that this is the year I’m getting serious about writing that novel rattling around in my head. I was looking for more technical books, to be honest, but I still gave this one a read.

I wasn’t wowed by every essay, I don’t think I was meant to be. And yet, I still found that reading another writer’s essays sparked its own creativity and thoughts to process. In this collection, for me it was Bradbury talking about his relationship to his inner child that most stuck with me.

I’ve not been on close terms with mine until more recently. She was hurt, alone and suppressed for a very long time. In my mental health journey I’ve come to find that opening up a connection is vital to my creative process as well as my general mental health. I discovered that openly acknowledging her existence gave me a lot of clarity on the little things that would just trigger that everything-is-no state I’d find myself in without warning and seemingly without reason.

And in this process of finding her again, of befriending her, I found that I remembered things about my younger self that had escaped my memory a long time. I used to write silly stories about my brothers and our friends, with colorful gel pens, of course. I dreamed of creation and beauty and magic. Where did it all go?

Looking back it isn’t truly clear. But I think a strong thread through it all was this: As the eldest child, when my parents split I grew up. Not all at once and not everything was touched. But enough. I didn’t understand what was happening, but I could feel that something was wrong and, as children do, felt I needed to be strong when the household was in ruins.

I never saw the fights, never really heard them, even. And yet, there still remained this tender layer over everything. So in opening connection to that younger self I’ve wondered if things would have been different if the cracks had shown. Not just felt. If my mother, or my father, would have let us know that they were hurting too. That there wasn’t something wrong with me for feeling all those big scary feelings that were not all mine. Explained to me that it wasn’t my fault, for not being strong enough to hold it all together. Could I have saved my creative inner child the hurt and pain of putting that beautiful creative spark aside and growing up too soon?

Mostly this speculation is moot and wishing doesn’t make it so, and yet, and yet, I think my inner child needs to know that I would have protected her, if I had understood the stakes.

We are working tentatively towards an understanding. She is teaching me to slowly give myself to that youthful spirit of carefree creative abandon and I am simply giving her the room she needs to run free at last. Hopefully together we can tackle all the pent up creativity that has languished over these long years apart.

It is not easy and it is worth every effort to feel seen both as my adult self and the inquisitive child I still am. Worth it to feel the joy of untethered creativity like never before.

How is your relationship/connection to your inner child? Do you find it important to your creative endeavors?

PS. My latest art piece was a lot of fun, and a lot of vulnerability. I do not feel as well versed in the realistic style, though I can see that I have skill. I created another plant monster, this time based on a snake plant. Enjoy! The top head kinda looks like Kermit, unintentionally, of course! Didn't realize until the hubs pointed it out...

Learning to Stand Alone

In recent weeks I’ve seen a couple clips of Brené Brown floating around my socials space. I love Brené so much, she has such a way with telling stories and collecting the data to explain why those stories matter. Something I’ve needed to hear beginning this year was her talking about braving the wilderness, of standing alone. Sometimes this is very necessary. And I struggle so much with the concept.

In the new year as I am working towards bringing myself further into a life of creativity, gentleness and love I find myself needing to stand on my own. To go my own way. Only you yourself can decide what is worth braving the unknown for. Many will tell you not to do it or tell you all the ways it won’t work.

And that is the thing, do they know what’s going on in your mind? Do they know the true and deep parts of you? Most importantly, do they have the standing to speak into your life? Sometimes it’s not so much people as expectations. General expectations from culture, from family, from religion. Things preprogrammed for you to follow.

I am still so terrified of standing alone. And I’m still gently working my way there.

I’ve talked about this a bit before but now it is about more than just being ok being alone in a social sense. It is about knowing what I want and need and going for it even when others important to me may advise otherwise. And, I dearly hope that those who are closest to me will know me well enough not to outright tell me I’m insane even if they disagree or advise caution.

It has taken years and I am still discovering myself in full technicolor. The nuance that is me. Today I have far more of a basis to go on for what I want or need and the continuing realization that my decisions are no longer so bogged down in the indecision minefield has been beautiful.

The biggest thing, this year, is that as I’m working towards a personal business and feeling out what works, I’m needing to purposefully stand alone to brave the wilderness. I need to rely on myself. Not that my people cannot or will not support me but that I must walk some of this alone, and that is OK.

My whole life I’ve sought people that I can connect with emotionally. To learn that standing alone is an integral part of being vulnerable is difficult. After my early years went by feeling deprived of emotional connection I’ve been very loath to leave the emotional warmth and love my life consists of today. I know I don’t need to go far and yet I think my inner child worries that the beauty I’ve found won’t be there if we leave it even for a moment. This is where I must trust both myself and my people.

So I will stand alone from time to time and trust that I will find the warmth of my community once again.

How are you braving the wilderness and standing alone? Let’s talk about it and the ways in which we can support one another!

PS. I've finally added my art of Biriyak to my website branding! Did you notice? I made the simplified art recently and am very proud of the results! Here is a comparison of my original art and the simplified for logo version:

A Gentle Schedule

Now, what do I mean by a “gentle” schedule? I mean that it is soft, flexible and still supports me the way I need it to. Providing structure where I need structure and grace where I need grace. Scheduling myself has long been a struggle of mine, it has been the downfall of many of my plans over the years. And it has a lot to do with how I was taught to schedule, and many of the myriad troubling items that touch almost everything in life, like perfectionism and people pleasing.

When I unexpectedly quit my job a number of years ago, I really wanted to do more with my life than simply get back on the get-a-new-job bandwagon. I wanted to explore the idea of working for myself, selling my artistic skills. The massive problem at the time was that my creativity had been on life support for years and was extremely fragile. The other problem, I see so clearly now, looking back, was managing my own personal schedule.

I did not know how to hold myself to it. So long had I bent to the whim of the job overlords that I did not know how to manage my own schedule when it wasn’t dictated by others. I was ashamed, embarrassed and so very stressed by this discovery. It snowballed alongside other, similar shames I have lived with time and again: I am too creative and scatterbrained; I am too much; without precise, tight, perfect structure I couldn’t amount to anything. Bottom line as an adult: I was not made to run my own life or business. I was not allowed to be myself if I wanted to succeed.

Since then, through countless hours of getting curious when I felt hurt, angry, wronged or anything that felt triggered and/or over-reactive to the situation at hand, I’ve managed to unpack a lot of those shames. And, I’ve come to realize that imposing old, outdated, “perfect” structure to my life and holding myself to insane, ill-defined-out-of-fear goals was making me feel trapped. I wasn’t listening to the messy human that I am and allowing room for anything remotely fun except as an escape. Fun was my evasion, not a part of the plan or goal.

It wasn’t an overnight discovery, there wasn’t a quick fix. It took all of that sometimes seemingly disconnected struggle to get here. Everything in life somehow touches everything else. The process is still going; it is a process after all. But through it and my curiosity I’ve found what I’ve termed a “gentle” schedule. I don’t assign myself big, faceless, multi-layered/tiered tasks without trying to break them down smaller first. I don’t get bamboozled by the lie that small tasks are worthless. I make sure to leave myself feeling like I could do more on any given day, knowing that if I push I will burnout. To keep moving slowly but inexorably forward one must simply do something small every single day.

So, while I definitely still have a day job—yeah, I did get myself back on that bandwagon, but not simply to keep repeating the insanity of my previous existence—I’m staying curious. And, this year, I’m working on keeping myself to a gentle and holistic schedule that will actively help me make the plans and goals I’ve set for the year a reality.

I am working towards allowing myself to be complete and whole and every bit as scattered and messy as I need to be. Nothing needs to be perfect straight out of the gate, or ever. Often the beauty in life is in the messy bits, the moments when you don’t need or want to mask all the little, imperfect things that make you who you are.

Anyone else feel this struggle running their own schedule? Have your own version of a gentle schedule? I’d love to hear about it!

PS. Here is my first art piece of the year, at least, first started and finished this year, lol

Allana Solo and her Nexu cub, from the Star Wars Expanded Universe:

Plans for the New Year; Reflections on the Old Year

There is something magical about staying up late and celebrating that a new year has sprung upon us. The hubs and I do so by heading to a friend's house and watching movies and hanging out until midnight with friends and family. This year's selections were Les Misérables (1998) and RRR, a wonderfully action packed, beautifully produced bro-mance that you had to suspend so much disbelief and still it was wonderfully done commentary. It was WILD y’all!

Driving home I found myself warmly considering all of the plans I’d been seriously considering and feeling so ready to tackle ALL of it. In the back of my head I knew the next morning would be less enthused. And not simply because we had stayed out far past our bedtime. The first of the year is when thoughtful and excited (and also slightly terrified) planning meets reality. That feeling of Now I really should do something with all those pretty plans I’ve made…

I woke up stressed. The warm feelings turned to acid in my stomach and I didn’t really manage to sleep in. Thankfully years of looking at myself and my feelings with curiosity came to the rescue. I still didn’t feel better, perse, but I did understand where the stress was coming from. And the day was far from ruined, for which I am eternally grateful because… there was a time…

Now, I don’t make resolutions. I’ve found that they often feel insincere and surface level for me. And while I do use the turn of the year to assess and make plans for how to change and improve I don’t really consider that to be resolutions, the assessment of goals and plans feel like they can be modified any time of the year.

Is the new year a time when you make resolutions, plans, and/or goals. Is it a checkpoint on your journey at all? What does the New Year mean to you?

For me, since I’ve found that I am an external processor (so much gratitude to the friend who gave me this term!) I’d like to share my goals and plans for 2023. They are both simple and complex.

Plan and continue writing my novel Create and share more art Sell my art (prints/commissions/??) Write on my blog again (Hello, it has been a while!) Still read books, but maybe not so many (and more edifying books, specifically)

2022 was a year of moving onward towards goals that have shifted and grown alongside me. I learned better how to make plans and actionable steps for myself without creating so much fear of being trapped or getting locked too far into my left brain. I did a lot of work on my novel, even if I ended up not writing anything for the last half of the year. It seems, looking back, that it was for the art creation to return to me, which I am grateful, so grateful. Somehow the magical moment was working on a character drawing for the Star Trek RPG that we are doing Tuesday’s. Suddenly I was in creation mode like I’d never felt before. This is everything I created in 2022, starting from September when the magic happened:

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Plus this world map I made for the hub's book series, Future's Birth (https://www.sjsaunders.com/futures-birth)

All this inspired me to look honestly at my life and actually see how I could make gentle plans to move into acting upon things I’ve always longed to do. Things I am still terrified to do…and I am going to do anyway.

In the past planning has felt too scary and confining because I’ve not let myself be a free-spirited, artistic, scatterbrained, messy person enough. 2022 was when I started to let down some walls and feel out how I can be the best version of myself if I allow myself to stay true to who I am, not who I’ve been taught and, sometimes, forced into being.

While 2023 will be a lot about me and my goals, a friend who has endeavored to reach out more and be more present with loved ones has inspired me to do the same. It has taken much hermiting and resettling my life into a better balance, and I am ready to be more in touch with my people both digitally and in person.

Across the Void We Go A Warping | from the Journal of Amina Anesidora Nyree

A note: this is the in-character journal of my Star Wars RPG character, anything that happens in these entries is entirely fiction, set loosely within the Star Wars Expanded Universe (not the current Disney timeline), and created in the minds of myself, the other players, and the game master.

We left Catesse for a bit. It should help the people of Catesse to go and set up some agreements with the other planets. But there is also the larger picture of everyone and every planet that is stuck in this time bubble with us. We must all come together and I’m not sure that there is a better group to do this work, but we are also probably not the best. Hopefully we can make a positive impact...without too much violence.

Hyperspace is so slow now, it shouldn’t have taken us two weeks to get to Habitade. I ended up rooming with Mina, a Zeltron and one of our mechanic players, this may have been a mistake but it didn’t go horribly. Mina actually made me breakfast one morning and made sure I was doing OK. It was pretty sweet of her. I did have to put up with a few instances of a sock on the door...at least I could crash with Ru, our other mechanic player and one half of our twin Nautolan siblings. And hopefully whatever was happening behind those closed doors helps improve Mina’s rather un-Zeltron funk that she’s been in recently.

You know, I hadn’t realized just how useful being able to converse with rocks could be. I’ve been made fun of for this and most people tend not to understand or believe me. In recent months I’ve learned that it’s more than rocks that I can sense, but it really is only rocks that I have conversations with.

Anyways, Gillian, one of our resident Force user players, searched me out to ask me about my special power. It was weirdly nice. Someone actually took it seriously enough to ask after and even request help by it. I also got this feeling from my connection to the Mother that I will play a pivotal role in helping the Force sensitive among our group to find their lightsaber crystals. I don’t know that I’ve felt this kind of useful before.

Our destination is night and day different from Catesse. It’s beautiful and there is no ash! They hadn’t received any of our messages and thought the Catesse colony was dead...our very presence dispelled that worry. It’s a very different world, there are Killik workers that harvest some sort of crop off of the non-sentient insects living on the planet.

Thinking of my conversation with Gillian and the nudge from the Mother about finding lightsaber crystals I ask around about caves on the planet and discover that we could find some on the way to check out their insect herd disturbances or after, our choice. After helping fix up their processing machinery we settle in for the night.

Sometime in the middle of the night there is a quake that as I reach out with my Force senses shows me that this is something different from what has plagued Catesse but no less potential darkness. It suddenly feels way more important to check out those caves as I have this sense that something “pierced” through the entire planet sometime in the distant past. And that worries me. There is so much to be discovered in the outer reaches and this is Wild Space, anything can happen...

Look here for the last entry, The Mother Lives , in the world of Amina Anesidora Nyree.

Office Thoughts | Holding Space for Creativity

The more I think about it the harder it is to deny that I’ve got to make time and space for creativity. It requires such a fundamental shift, and I’ve been severely hesitant to do much about it. I know I want it, I know I need it. And, it won’t happen overnight. I often wish it did. It would make my life a whole lot easier.

As I am now, I’m taking the time most weekdays to create space…but it feels like my creativity is very reluctant to come out to play. I already know that forcing it out does no good, though that doesn’t help the frustration I feel bubbling inside from making me ache.

I’ll be patient. I’ll wait for my creativity to become comfortable in the space I’ve created. I think it’s starting to see the beauty of the space I’m holding for it. The space may be small, may seem insignificant to some, but it’s far more room than I’ve held in a very long time.

I honestly didn’t even intend to write this tonight. I was just sitting in front of my computer thinking about the story I’m working on in my head. It’s not time for putting it to paper, yet it’s getting closer each day.

I’m very new to this concept of holding onto and gently pulling forth a creative idea. I’m a woman of action. Creativity has often been a mystery to me; it’s not something I can find and immediately execute. It takes time to cultivate, to nourish, to grow, to blossom. It’s scary to have a beautiful seedling of an idea that needs love and care before it can see the light of day.

I’m happy to say that the puttering seems to be working. It’s achingly slow, but it’s been worth it…once I get past all of the scary waiting and hoping that something good will happen. Things take time, especially creativity. It’s important to create space for what we love.

Project Hail Mary | Andy Weir

I read a lot of genres, but I think, if I’m completely honest, hard sci-fi is my absolute favorite. Project Hail Mary may not be a strictly hard sci-fi story, but it’s close enough for me. I’m definitely not worried about categorizing any book strictly into one genre.

I didn’t even read the synopsis before picking this one up. A friend, during our conversation regarding some world building I was doing, mentioned that this would be a great read for me. Even the sparse details they gave had me convinced. So here we are.

Ryland Grace is an interesting protagonist. You learn right along with him about where he’s ended up because he has almost no better clue than the reader. There he is, in the depths of space, lightyears away from Earth, no idea who he is. At first he’s just excited to be out there, doing science, but soon he realizes that he is humanity’s last hope.

He wasn’t meant to be alone; the mission did not start as a solo mission. And, yet, he’s alone…or is he?

Here is where I’m probably including some spoilers because I cannot and will not let this review go without mention of the beautiful friendship that develops as two beings work together against the clock to save two staggeringly different worlds.

And, due to the speed of the solution, there is an unexpected and desperate decision for Grace: will he return to Earth, and his students, or will he save the best friend he’s ever made? Being with Grace for the entire book, seeing him learn both about the desperate state of Sol and who he was before he forgot himself, you know what choice he will make. There was no other option.

It’s a wonderfully thrilling science fiction read, I highly recommend it!

Project Hail Mary

by Andy Weir

,https://www.andyweirauthor.com/books/project-hail-mary-hc/project-hail-mary-el

,https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/54493401-project-hail-mary

Setting Free | My Random Thoughts #9

One day you realize that, that someone living inside waiting to be set free has become a pale reflection of what she once was

Every day she seems to tire of pleading with you more and more quickly

Her voice grows dimmer and her influence diluted and half-hearted

You are wondering how long she will last, How long?

Every morning when you lock her away she goes, almost willingly

You realize that you are losing her to the trials and stifling situation of this world

That she needs to be set free soon, sooner now for she is dying, ever slowly, she is heart broken and lonely

Then, finally, you realize that, that day is just around the corner

And that by holding her in, you hurt her almost more than setting her free at the wrong time and place

You mourn because it was you who hurt her, not the world, and you long to set her free

At last that day has come and with it peace of heart and joy no words can describe

You tell her that she can go, be set free, and she flies away with gratitude in her heart for you and who you could become with your true self truly set free

Commentary

Just typing that out was an exercise in balancing both sides of myself.

On the one hand, I find my younger self possibly more in touch with me than I've been in many years. I'm getting the hang of it again, slowly but some of the insight in the poem is spot on for what I've been working through years later...in some ways at least.

On the other hand, well, it's a right mess of a poem. If I would even call any of this, or the other writings in this book truly poetry. I'm not sure that I always had delusions of grandeur as far as being a poet. But I think I had more moments than I want to admit, as a teenager. But there is also something to going for something full tilt, consequences and other's opinions be damned.

So, again I can definitely learn from my younger self, I had more wisdom than I realized. That said, I know that I am mostly wiser now, though some days it's hard to have something to show for it.

I often think that it's because being an adult and balancing that with creating time for creativity and play is extremely hard. We are told so many things about being all grown up. Our younger selves longed for the freedom that comes attached but had no concept of the utter terror that comes with being the sole responsible party for financing the rest of your life. If you fuck it up, well, you are kind of screwed.

At least that was the message I got loud and clear. You have to shape up, stop messing around, and be a real adult. To me the subtext of this was putting away all the "childish" things that I enjoyed doing as a kid. Somehow it also ended up meaning that I wasn't allowed to do anything fun until all of the important things were done...and that list was unending. Being an adult was not supposed to be fun. You get a job, you work the job, you pay your bills, and you spend your free time doing chores.

I've been working on setting my adult self free from these notions. I got the wrong idea, somehow. Being an adult is definitely not what I dreamed it would be, but I don't think anything is exactly as you dream it to be...ever, really. If I work at it, I do think that being my own person will be better than the dreams I had of some fantastical freedom. It is better because I am really, truly free to be me.

Office Thoughts | "Puttering"

I’m exhausted, possibly overwhelmed by the thought of making this a regular thing. But I know it’s a good thing, carving out this time. Also, the more time I spend in my office cultivating boredom or doing everything but write, the more likely I’ll find the courage to do what must be done. What I really, in my heart of hearts, want to do. Write. Create. Allow myself the freedom to blossom and grow.

In ways that I’ve not allowed because I’m fucking scared of how happy it could make me and how really real it could be. I’ve hidden behind structure and rules because they are familiar and, in a way, quite comforting.

So, for this self-imposed puttering I am attempting to confront my feels, big and small, and trying to create a flexible schedule. Where I can find the time to bore myself into doing the things that I’d like to be doing. Well, maybe I shouldn’t see it as boring myself into them. I’m giving myself time to transition from one thing to another. I don’t need to “hurry” and, honestly, I’ve always been slow to warm up to things. Transitioning activities have been a godsend to finding more ability to do just about anything creative and vulnerable.

Something I’m implementing along with the puttering is journaling. It’s something that I’ve used, off and on, for years to help ground myself, but I haven’t always seen it as a tool that allows me to move from one activity to another.

I spend eight hours five days a week working a day job. It’s not a hard job, nor a job that creates a lot of stress. But it is hard not to fall into the habit of simply becoming a couch potato every evening because I spent the whole day working on someone else's ideas. I’d love to have the freedom to get to my ideas on my own time with no obligations to anyone else's. But the reality is that, as an adult, I don’t have the financial freedom to spend all day puttering and cultivating boredom.

And, that very likely wouldn’t fix the crux of my problem of running away or procrastinating from what I actually want. Having to think about the importance of the time I do have to work on what interests me and makes me happy creates some focus on really and truly making it happen. Even if I’d love to have had a chance to try the more carefree way of getting there.

Journaling has been a good tool to transition my mind from job work to personal creative work. I highly recommend it for grounding yourself between tasks, whatever they may be. And I especially encourage exploring journaling if you have had trouble with self trust like I have. Seeing the reality of what I’m feeling in writing has been eye-opening. Though, keep in mind that journaling is only a piece of the puzzle towards a better sense of self, self trust and love.