Kelly: Getting Started!

I am SO excited to be on this journey!  2010 was a good year for me.  I got back on track with my artwork and felt my old self come back to life.  This was so thrilling for me!  Now that it's been a few months and I've got a new line of sculpture that has found life, I am ready to figure out my plan for 2011.  I received this book, The Creative Entrepreneur, a few weeks ago, and got started on the exercises, but I lost steam as the holidays rolled around.  I was also juggling creating some more work for an exhibition, with the exercises in the book, and suddenly, I found myself a bit overwhelmed.  Fast forward to now, post-Christmas, and I am ready to get my plan prepared for 2011!  Join me as I work through some of the exercises, learning my strengths and weakness, and so many other things!

Let's get started! I'm going to dive right in, so here we go!

In this photo, I'm showing my workstation, which last night was at my kitchen counter. :)  I've got my moleskine journal, The Creative Entrepreneur, coffee (a must have!), and various art supplies.
I found art journaling at the beginning of this year and I have found it to be a HUGE help in my creative life.  I have always loved color, and sketching, and this was a perfect match for me to do my journaling, whether it needs to be sketching out new ideas, writing about an experience in my life or just playing with some color.  It feeds my clay work with ideas for patterns, textures, color combos, and even text.  So when I heard about The Creative Entrepreneur, I hoped that it would be a colorful way for me to explore my very much-needed business plan for the upcoming year!  And it has worked out just the way I hoped!

I have followed the order of the book, doing most of the exercises in order.  The first thing I want to share with you is the Gifts and Flow exercise.  I did find it helpful to go through each of the Pathways, suggested in the book.


Gifts and Flow was one of the easier things to write about, even though certain things felt uncomfortable to write.  I finally understood, through this exercise, that I really don't like spending my precious studio time doing things packing/shipping, cleaning, recycling my clay, etc.  I really want to use my few hours of studio time actually working, painting, creating, whatever.  But not the other stuff.  Good thing to realize for me, in order to keep my frustration levels down!


This is the Managerial Tools and Leadership Skills exercise, and I feel that it is one of the areas I really need to focus on.  I tend to hide, or procrastinate, from the things that I am uncomfortable doing, and I just need to get over that!  By putting it all on paper, it really makes you realize the areas you need to work on!  In the past, I've just sort of avoided these areas, and only dealt with them when I had to.  Or I thought, "sometime in the future I will deal with these".  Well, that future is here, I have decided!  Even though all of these things are still in Chapter 2 of the book, I feel like I've already benefited from starting this book.  I already feel like I've got a better understanding about where I am, and what I need to work on for 2011.

I am not breaking up these posts by chapters, because, surprise, surprise!  My brain doesn't always work that way! So in the next post, I'll be talking about the Mandala and my thoughts on it.