Making Time For What You Love
How often do you find yourself creating because it feels right? Or making something just for yourself? Do you feel you are expressing your deepest message through your craft? These are the questions I ask fellow creatives when we meet and the answer is not positive nearly often enough. I hear so much frustration from others about the lack of time, energy and money it requires to create the art that we love.
I gathered these roses ages ago for another photo shoot and they have been hanging dried in my house ever since. I was inspired last week to create and wanted to do so quickly, cheaply, and in a way that would reflect my message. No bells and whistles or anything complicated. Just me, sitting on a bed sheet in my house, with a couple of dead flowers. This is what makes my heart sing about photography – the swiftness with which one can put something together that reflects something deeper within.
I do not consider myself to be a busy person. I choose the events in my life that I really want. And when I am doing what I love, it feels like hours pass in minutes. I do not value being busy; I value filling my life with the things I love, including cooking, writing, sleeping 8 hours a night, and yoga. I like having time for family, watching Game of Thones and re-runs of Doctor Who. I love building time into my life for what I love. And what I love is creating.
Never underestimate the importance of creating for yourself. Build it into your life at all costs. The price of ignoring what makes your heart sing is the deeper and deeper fall into a life that looks less like anything you want. It is too easy to ignore passions and suddenly wake up in a life that isn’t filled with joy. I try to create at least one image a week like this one, where I created by myself, simply, and in time that I purposely carved out for myself. It doesn’t always work, but that is far from the point.
Take a moment today to define what you love and how to make time for it. Build it into the infrastructure of your life. It is too important to look back on and realize that we prioritized the wrong things.
What is one thing you love and how can you do that thing more?
9 thoughts on “Making Time For What You Love”
Always great to be reminded that it’s OK to take time for ourselves and not feel guilty about it. Thank you, you’re a wonderful person.
For me it’s about stopping and making the time, or taking the time. Twice a year I take a creative photography class to force me to take the time for me, to explore and do what I love. What I need to do is more creative work in between those times so I am now surrounding myself with others who love to create like I do so we can push one another.
From an early age I was influenced by peers and family that being creative was for sissies and the lgbt community! It wasn’t for real men – real men played sports! It was in an era that few were comfortable with creative and artistically minded individuals! It’s hard to break out of old habits of denying my artistic side! Here’s to my journey of discovery!
I know where you are coming from, my family isn’t too bad. But Most of the people I know would think I am a loon.
It is hard for guys to be artist, especially something like fine art.
I am in rural Kansas, and everything is stupid sports!
I forgot, I love the photo! 🙂
One thing that I love is going on adventures and finding new places that I’ve never seen before. I feel like I wait too often for someone else to join me because I might be afraid of going by myself. I think I need to start exploring places by myself when I feel the need to explore but no one else can physically be there with me. Thank you for these blogs, Brooke <3 Sam
I loved your words, reflects almost what I’m feeling and gives me encouragement to experiment with pictures and creativity.
I try to fully enjoy time with friends and do things that make me well, that your work inspire me.
I love Doctor Who and GoT 🙂 and I’m looking for my lost talent !!! It gives me much encouragement serious … hopefully one day can make some workshop and learn a lot more than you let on.
Greetings from Argentina
You have made my realize that I have created very little just for me. Out of all the wood carvings I have done, I have never carved myself something.
I will have to do that. 🙂
I love what you wrote here, BTW I discovered you and your work today and I couldn’t stop watching your videos in YouTube. I felt every single word you said. I’m a engineer and all my life I was doing what it is needed to try to have a career in that field, then to be a good wife and mother, etc. Always trying to be “productive” in the way that I think I was told to do. One year ago I discovered photography and now I cannot understand how I lived before of that taking away from me my artistic expression. Nowadays since I’m not producing or making money of this it is difficult to find the time to do it. Photography makes me feel so good, so alive and blessed, I can live like in a parallel world without living my current one. I now I have to make the time to do it but sometimes I’m finding my self justifying why I’m doing this since it was not what I studied for and so on. Thanks for your words and I love this photo.