Over Thinking & Anxiety

And so the feeling and thoughts of overwhelm begin to settle in. I tend to get ahead of myself and commit too many things. I was reading an article by Shawn Blanc and he runs the focus course. In the article he mentioned to build momentum by sustaining one thing for a period of time before adding to it anything else.And now I'm wondering did I add something else too soon? Publishing writing everyday, a weekly YouTube video, daily posting to instagram - oh and I must show up to work in order to pay my bills! These are only a few of the major things and we'll overwhelm is beginning to set in. I know I need to get better st my hand lettering so that I can attract clients. And while practicing for five minuets a day is better than not showing up at all, when I ask my self is this enough - 5 min of drawing is not satisfactory for me. I'm not even sure is one hour is satisfactory for me. In college we had four hour blocks during class and we had to match that at least to convince to teacher we could draw. And of course you could tell who put in the work.I know that I tend to set high standards for myself and I'm not sure if that's a smart thing to do. I know that contentment is important and even in falling short of a goal there are still many lessons to learn.This is the first time I've set a word for myself and the word this year is focus. I recently read an article by Marie Forleo and she talked about purging and pruning. So I went back and made a vomit list of all the things I want to accomplish this year. She made a free calendar tool and suggested putting in one for each month. I also believe we as humans have a poor perception of time. The things we feel will take forever - taking out the trash, making your bed, cooking up a meal, or writing for twenty minutes - we think will take longer than it actually does.The things that take much more time, a much bigger learning curve we assume it can be done in less time. We fail to remember that good work takes time. I've thought several times about quitting this daily writing. To just take a step back and write only once a week. But then I look at the chain I've created - I'm nearly half way there at the least. 69.5 days away from half to be exact. That's two months and 9.5 days. I've talked about needing to build a buffer and last night I went back and listened to a few personal conversations I had while at the seanwes conference. One thought that came to mind: have a reoccurring theme for each day of the week. Things like what I did to get closer to IDEO for Monday, Tuesday design, Sunday's being involved in church, what I ate or my health progress on Fridays…. you know categories. One thing I know for certain is that the journey from here to there is not one that is straight - no story is. Otherwise theres not much of a story is. In the beginning of writing I wanted to write each step I took each day to get me to where I am trying to end up - but in hindsight I realize it doesn't work that way. It takes time. And most of all it might take me longer than a year to get there. ...cringe. I don't know at the moment if I'm 100% ok with that.... I know I am told to focus on the thing that will have the biggest impact to help catapult me in the direction I want to go. At the end of the day I can only do One step at a time... and possibly lay off the coffee. Espresso well, it increases my anxiety.