Episode #125: Your Project is Waiting

When I returned home from traveling, I was so excited to work on my creative project.  Days went by and I hadn’t seen any progress.  Does that ever happen to you?  You have every intention of making great strides, and then you wonder “What happened?”  If so, this episode’s for you.

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This is a special episode.  I've been traveling for 2 weeks, and then we had a major storm that knocked power out.  So…here's what I learned from my travels and post-travels.

I came home with action plans for my new songs and both creative projects.  All I have to do is start to implement.  But so much got in the way of getting started.

  1. Real life.  You know,  stuff like errands, laundry, grocery shopping, clearing the yard of leaves.
  2. The Resistance, as Steven Pressfield calls it.  It gets stronger the closer we get to our creative calling.

I didn’t plan for it.  I didn’t expect it to be so much.  Granted, the storm was an unusual wrinkle.  And, as a result, all the leaves came down about 3 weeks earlier than usual.

Some of that is normal.  And then there was the storm and unplanned eye doctor visits.  I had to be a bit flexible when it came to my schedule.

Has that ever happened to you?  Life gets in the way of the work you want to do.  Especially when it's creative work.

It wasn't all bad.  Here's what went well:

  1. I planned a light schedule.  It didn't work out as planned, but I couldn't have helped that.
  2. When the unexpected happened, I adapted well.

What could I have done better?

  1. Spend the first 15 minutes of the day on my creative project.
  2. Put re-entry time on calendar.
  3. Spent some of that re-entry time to organize and clean my office, especially of the paperwork I brought back from my trip.

Fortunately, I have a list of action items.  That's important.  It's also important to schedule your next actions.  Then make sure you either document where you left off or stop at a natural breaking point.

How do you keep momentum on your creative projects when you’ve been traveling?  Share in the comments.