Deer, Dogwood, Diligence

Deer in the backyard. The fawns are getting big!

I think the tree blooming outside my studio window is a Dogwood! If that's the case, things are going to get real purdy around here.

The cockpit of the studio. 

The last week has been as creatively rewarding and productive as any time I can remember. I love all the work I'm doing. I feel focused and there is no feeling of stress, only contentment. 

There are a few changes I made a week ago that made all the difference, I think:

1) I got off Facebook. It makes a huge difference not to be instinctively clicking on that site, then clicking on a link, and wasting five to ten minutes at a time - not to mention killing the momentum of whatever I was working on.

2) I installed a plugin on my browser that limits my total viewing of my other 'instinctual-click websites' to twenty minutes a day. These are websites about complicated historical conflict-simulation boardgames ("wargames"), which I absolutely love playing and reading about. 

On day one, the plugin cut me off by 11:00 am. Wow! 11:00 am and I already spent twenty minutes on those sites! How much time was I spending on those websites every day? Now I don't even reach the twenty minutes by the time I go to bed. 

3) Every morning, I write out the things I'd like to accomplish in the day. Then I look through them all and visualize doing them in a focussed, relaxed, way. I visualize being completely present with the task and enjoying it, whether it's paying bills, washing dishes, painting, or animating. I also imagine doing the task without thinking about an end goal - like, I don't HAVE to finish any of the tasks, I just do them and enjoy the process / practice of it. 

Once I finished reading all the tasks, I don't look at the list for the rest of the day. I just start doing stuff.  

The funny thing is that when I look the previous day's list the next morning, I have completed almost every task I wrote down. This is absolutely crazy for me! I never get everything done like that! I think it's because I used to put all kinds of pressures and expectations on the work, so I would spend a lot of time procrastinating. Also, I would spend a lot of time running in circles being overwhelmed with everything I had to do. 

I don't expect that every week will be as fulfilling as the previous one was, but it's nice to feel like I'm still finding ways to improve my state-of-being.