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Making Time for the Things That Bring You Joy

Making Time for Things That Bring You Joy

Last year, while home at my parents house over Christmas, my mom asked me to clean out the last of the few boxes of my old things cluttering her basement. I obliged. In one of the boxes, I found some 10 or 15 journals I wrote through middle and high school. Honesty, I don’t even recall writing them but I obviously had.

Primarily, they comprised of my day to day feelings about boys I had crushes on, friends with whom I was fighting or spending a lot of time with and myriad other “of the moment” topics for a 15 year old girl living a pretty standard suburban life.

Through high school and college and into my post grad years, I amassed a collection of scrap booking supplies and spent a decent chunk of time preparing books and documenting my life. It’s nice to have those now, although they take up a good bit of space, which is sometimes frustrating in our small apartment.

As the physical world morphed into the digital world, my scrapbook supplies landed on Craiglist and I started using Shuttefly to create memory books. I still make them occasionally, though never as often as I’d like, and T And J LOVE reading them. My latest play takes my photos to Instagram. Those photo memory timelines are automatically printed to photo books with Chatbooks (which I love, and you can subscribe and get your first book free with referral code NR9QZEKZ). But I digress…

The Blog Was Born

Three years ago, I decided to start a blog. I love writing stories and sharing ideas, taking photos and developing my skills behind the camera, and learning about the digital and social media landscape.

After reading Susan Cain’s book, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking, I also came to better understand why my introverted nature thrives on the quiet peace of sitting in front a computer organizing and analyzing all the thoughts and reflections flowing through my mind. Stopping to make sense of the continuous flow of ideas and information in my head feels so calming and also re-energizing.

These aspects of my personality reflect the creative thinker deep inside me that I don’t think I really recognized or acknowledged until recently.

No one in my family would really consider themselves a creative by definition. I’ve never been deemed a particularly artistic person. In high school, my photography teacher couldn’t say much about my work aside from, in a hesitant and apologetic tone, “it’s getting better…” (That really happened.) Never being particularly talented at creative arts, I didn’t actively pursue them. Yet I seem to be subconsciously drawn to them time and again.

As I’ve discovered many podcasts for creative entrepreneurs, I enjoy hearing their perspective and feel compelled to continue learning more about this path.

Yet I’m an accountant. My family is full of teachers and finance professionals and sales people… not “artists.” What is an artist anyway? Is a Creative an Artist? Am I an Artist as a blogger? I’m a Creative right? But I’m also an accountant.

Can I find time to do both?

I’m curious. I’m a dabbler. According to M, I’m an “enigma.” Can I be a creative accountant? Is that oxymoron even possible?

My career path certainly wouldn’t lead one to expect I have an itch to express my creative energies. As an accountant, I should be a Type A, organized, somewhat neurotic and routined individual that loves crunching numbers in Excel and sporting my proverbial green visor. Despite meandering into the world of professional double checking and analyzing debits and credits, however, I find great peace and personal satisfaction exercising my creative muscles on a regular basis.

M asked me recently “when did you start being all creative and entrepreneurial?” While I may be embracing it more outwardly now, I’m pretty sure it’s been hanging out with me all along (as evidenced by those journals and scrapbooks and my innate interest in photography that started so long ago).

As I listen to these creative podcasts and explore growing the blog further, I feel compelled to dive in head first. I’m fairly certain, though, that I don’t want it to be my full time job. I think one thing I love about blogging is that it’s at my discretion and not a main source of income. There’s no real pressure to perform. More tangibly, I have a job I enjoy. I earn a comfortable salary, and I appreciate the benefits that income brings to our family.

As a modern mom juggling work, family, time for myself, and the demands the rest of life in general places on our time, I certainly don’t blog to fill unused space on my calendar. I have plenty to keep me booked and busy. But making time for writing and sharing and creating brings me joy. It helps me clear my head. The quiet nature calms my soul at the end of a crazy day. The blog gives me a place to share (in a hopefully meaningful way) all the ideas and tools and skills I learn in my journey as a modern mom.

Time for the blog doesn’t just show up on my calendar. But I create time for it, because it matters to me. It makes me happy.

What do you make time for that brings you joy?

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