Jan 6, 2009

A New Direction!

Happy 2009 Everyone! I'm excited about this year because I get to start over! I'm going to try something new, something I haven't done before which is to break everything down and structure my goals. I used to be like this when I was in school - but when school was finished... I got kind of lost. The structure they made for me was gone and I had to manage on my own. Scary!

I got the idea from fellow artist and blogger, San Smith, where she outlines how she created a "Visual List" for 2008 because things weren't going so well the previous year. And it looks like its been working for her so far! I've been following her blog last year and she's done some amazing things! I hope this method will work for me too.

I was originally going to get the popular 3.5 x 5.5 moleskin book, but then I saw the 5.5 x 5.5 square notebook and I was sold! Just to be safe, I wanted bigger paper for big ideas. Its still small enough to carry around too!

I started off by writing down all of the art related things I want to accomplish this year. Now that I've written it all down, it doesn't seem as overwhelming because I can just look at everything all on one page. Before I had a constant worry about all the stuff I want to do. Now I don't have to think about that stuff because its right here:



The cool thing about it is that I realize that its a busy schedule, but I think its very possible to do most, if not all of these things by 2010! When they are completed, I will cross them out. Vague things like "doodle" and "etsy"... it'll be hard to determine when these are accomplished. The best way for me to gauge when these are done are when I'm happy with my progress or if it starts to become a good habit. I left room for more stuff, just in case I finish all these.

To keep me feeling motivated, I also listed small daily goals. I like that feeling of accomplishment when I cross them out (p.s. Sharkey and Jetta are my pets hehe!):



And most importantly I pasted in a small calendar and I list important events and how many daily goals I did. So at the end of the month I can say, "Whoa! I was awesome last month" or, "I wasn't so productive, I will just have to try harder next month".



I am also using this as a reference guide. I'm going to paste in some of my influences and things I like to look at. Thoughts, feelings, stories, sketches... whatever comes to mind.

2 comments:

San Smith said...

hooray! Sarah thats so excellent!! keep me posted on how this works out for you :)

lisa currie said...

go girl! :)