On Picking a Project and Seeing it Through.

I'm hyper.  I love to work.  I have a hard time following projects through to the end.  I've learned to not only be critical of this part of myself because I do have a lot of ideas, but to embrace it as well.  I write ideas up like a mad woman on the whiteboard in the corner of my room while Remy is at preschool and Thea naps.  Having a lot of ideas is not a bad thing.  It's fun. But following a consistent idea through a winding and unknown path can also be fun, maybe more than jumping after the starts of a hundred different thoughts.

In business and marketing, I've somehow convinced myself that I cannot promote the same thing for more than a short time period before I move onto the next thing.  I often find myself running full speed into the next thing before anyone has really even been able to react to the last project.  This is a funny cycle because by not giving a creation it's full lifespan (which could be an early ending or a long life) I cut off the possibility of even knowing what this project may be capable of.  Ideas and creations, like people, need time and patience.  They need time to move around and explore and be let wild.  I often think of my friend Susan from the moccasin company, Freshly Picked.  I own a little freshly picked hand-sewn wallet from about five years ago and we used to sell at the same local markets.  I remember her booth always having a variety of things, but she was so smart and she understood the people she was selling to.  She was brave enough to take one idea, her hand-sewn, leather moccasins,  and run with it.  I still follow her on instagram and she almost exclusively posts photos of moccasins in different colors, etc... I love seeing her photos and I'm not bothered by another pair of moccasins because I know that is what she does and I know she takes herself seriously enough to be brave in asking people to jump on board.

I almost abandoned my own ship (I know, like a month in) with the brave women project because I had other things I wanted to get to and I thought that people must be tired and annoyed of seeing about it already, but really?  After 3 photos on instagram?  I recently read a book called Essentialism:the Disciplined Pursuit of Less.  One idea in particular was so useful to me as I read.  The author speaks about this contemporary idea we have of 'priorities', as in lots of them, a list of priorities.  But he points out that a long list was never the intention of the word priority.  Priority is singular, there is one.  It does not share the top tier with six other ideas or pursuits.  For me, this concept was revolutionary in terms of thinking about what I am doing as a creator.  I spent a good deal of time working through what my priority in creating is for right now.  I came to trust my instinct and my heart when I felt that empowering women, teenagers and girls through my art is the priority right now.  It won't always be only that, though I suppose it may be, and I'm willing to trust that too, but for now, I need to work through a project until it tells me what it needs to be and where it can go.  It happens a little at a time.  I'm going to trust that the people that follow me, or like my art already, will trust me enough to work through this project with me as well.  In fact, the very project of studying historical women and telling their stories is testament to the power in consistency and work toward a priority.