How to Build a Practice Around Your Creative Work
Let me talk with you about a maker's dilemma.
Starting a project, brainstorming, building mood boards on Pinterest - super fun. The edits, revisions, tweaking, and translating feedback - not always super fun. When you get down to it, the work that pays your bills and feeds your dog, is not always what your creative mind wants to do.
You can treat this like a battle and feel anger towards any client who dares to interrupt your creative process with emails. Or fight the part of you that needs to make things late into the night. You can try to work/life balance it all to death. Or maybe, just maybe, you can make this work for you.
As a maker, you have control over your process. Unless you're in art school, there is no one telling you how/when/where/what. Someone might make suggestions, but those are just suggestions. It is up to you to grasp the freedom of your craft.
I try not to fight my mind. I take her to the playground. Every morning before work I spend 1 or 2 hours drawing, reading, dreaming, and writing. This is the hour that I build my creative practice. Just like a kid, my creative mind is able to release any excess energy or tension.
I find I am much more focused and disciplined with myself after "my practice hour." I am able to relax into the work. I look forward to the steady even keel of a day spent working on graphic design.
