I climbed into bed last night and realized I hadn’t made my daily boring post. I decided I would rather sleep and make two posts the next day, so this is the first of those. I am finally starting to feel better since I fell ill. I haven’t been taken out by sickness like this since my slipped disc issues last year.
Yesterday afternoon, I managed to clean my sick, sad self up a bit and head over to a clothing swap that a friend organized. Maybe this evening’s post should be of the cute dress I got there. Or maybe I’ll bundle up in all the things and post that. Haha. I think at one point I was wearing three dresses and two cardigans, just trying stuff on.
I was glad I cleaned myself up and went to this event. Met some neat folks, and might have even networked something awesome for the future. I definitely felt like I gained some more confidence for some of my ideas, too. Even if I was just sitting there, barely propping myself up on the couch, trying to listen to the conversations going on, because my own voice was still raw from being sick.
No symbolism in my loss of voice, here, really! I promise.
It’s that time of year with yearly best-of lists and reflections on the past. I tend not to be much for reflecting on things, I think because I’d rather focus more on continuing to make improvements. But that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t look back and try to figure out instances where I messed up, so I can correct for it in the future. And that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t also look back at successes, the biggest of which being graduating from NKU in May. That took a lot of hard word and determination, and I think if I want to succeed on my future projects, I need to remember how hard I worked to get my Masters Degree so that I can throw that kind of energy and time into it.
What does any of that have to do with the folks I have been hanging out with lately? For me, it matters a lot. The idea of building community and creating art and projects together, about speaking up for women’s rights and all kinds of equality, it all connects. And if I want to do these things, every little burst of confidence I get from the community reminds me that the hard work and everything is worth it, that ultimately, what I am doing is worth the effort. Sometimes I hear a terrible little voice that tries to talk me out of awesome ideas, and there’s no reason it should ever drown out the support. I mean, if it’s going to be a constant little annoyance, and another little hurdle, I think it loses power from acknowledgement. See it, face it, get past it, and move on to the awesome thing. And the real ultimate goal here: see a project through to completion. That was an amazing lesson my thesis project taught me. And I knew I wanted to learn that going in, so I designed the project in a way that would help me learn it. I still want to take that project a step further, produce it and put it out there, and I think through some awesome networking and getting my words out there more, I will figure out what step I am missing to make it really happen.
It’s funny, these thoughts were on and off my mind all weekend, while I was drifting in and out of feverish sleeps. In a way, taking that break because I had to kind of helped to reset my mind on what really matters to me. I feel like I have new goals and better defined old goals, and this all fills me with a sense of hope for how much I can get accomplished in the next calendar year, and beyond.