6 Things That Are Helping Me Stay Inspired At The Moment
As January and February are such quiet months for me work-wise as I imagine they are for nearly every type of freelancer. Instead of sitting and panicking about having a quiet inbox (which I still do a lot of) I'm trying to recalibrate and refresh for the upcoming year. The things that inspire me work-wise constantly change and evolve as I grow as a human being and I always find it a fascinating conversation to know what inspires and motivates others to work so these are the things that are doing that for me right now.
reading
Last year I found myself struggling to make reading part of my everyday routine, there were a few books that I read and enjoyed but I didn’t have much of an urge to pick up anything else. During my Christmas break I started to reread my beloved Harry Potter books as I knew that I wanted to get back into the swing of reading and felt like I needed an old favourite to get me started. And it’s worked, I’m now reading more than ever and it’s bringing me so much joy and whenever I’m in a good place with reading I find that inspires my work and the way I write so much. I’ve made it no secret that I’m not a natural-born writer but there’s something about reading that makes the words pour out of me with ease.
decluttering & admin
Whilst these are two things you’re unlikely to ever see on a beautifully illustrated quote about motivation on Pinterest they are two things that help me a huge amount. Something that I’ve come to realise over the years is that I really hate having a lot of stuff and clutter surrounding me so something that I’m more conscious of than ever is making sure everything we have in our home has a use to us. The two areas of my life that I find require the most decluttering are my clothes and beauty stash, every few months I go through them and look at what I’m using and what I’m not. Next year we’ll be hopefully moving house and one thing I want to be careful of is moving any stuff that we’re not using as it’s just pointless moving it somewhere new so this year I’m more conscious of streamlining our possessions than ever. Admin kind of goes hand in hand with decluttering for me, whilst it’s not the most glamorous side of running your own business it is important. The more I’m on top of admin the more room it creates for the more exciting ideas to flow through my brain which is exactly what I want.
consuming different content
I very much have a comfortable little bubble that I stay in when it comes to the type of media I consume, whether it’s a tv series on an Instagram profile I do like to be in my comfort zone. So this year I started to challenge myself to go out of that nice bubble and watch and follow things I wouldn’t usually do and I’ve absolutely loved everything that I’ve discovered so far that I probably wouldn’t have found otherwise. We’re so fortunate that there is so much out there at the touch of our fingertips and it’s something that I know I need to appreciate so much more than I have done in the past. As well as consuming different genres of media in general something that I’m trying to do more this year is watch more films, it’s something my boyfriend always says we need to do but we always get stuck in a series instead so it's something we're finally working on.
instagram stories
A couple of weeks I finally faced my fear and started regularly posting on my Instagram stories once again. In the past couple of years, I’ve felt a lot of anxiety towards Instagram and the platform has undeniably has had quite a serious negative effect on my mental health and the value I hold in my work. So I’ve been working really hard to change my mindset towards Instagram and it's going well so far. I used to get so much joy from posting on my stories as it’s where I have the most conversations with the people who follow me and creating a connection with the followers I have is something that’s so important to me. I’ve always felt the pressure to almost daily vlog on Instagram stories but really it’s only another way to share photographs so I’m trying to find what works for me content wise over there.
the day to day conversations
An approach that I’ve had to the blog posts for as long as I can remember is taking the everyday conversations I have with my boyfriend, friends or family and plucking an idea from them. I find those are the type of posts that I love to read from other people as it feels like I’m involved in the conversation and that’s exactly what I want from the things I create. I want anything I do online to feel inclusive in some way for others and to be a safe environment too as I think that’s it’s more important than ever for people to have that online.
embracing the season for what it is
As I said earlier, this time of year is always really quiet for me work-wise and whilst that certainly does send me into a spiral of worry that I’ll never earn any money again it’s also a time where I do enjoy the world feeling a little slower. Alongside work being quiet, this is probably the wettest winter on record, which has meant staying in a lot more than we typically do and normally that is something I’d hate but I’ve quite enjoyed it this year. It’s given me the chance to do the things that I often make excuses not to do (like cleaning the inside of washing machine) and even though the things that I’ve been doing aren’t exciting by any means that still doesn’t mean they don’t need doing
