WEEK 39 - Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
Hey there, thanks for joining us for Week 39 of HOMwork 2020!
My business has a lot of moving parts, and the bit I’m really missing lately is traveling for conferences, events, and murals.
One of my favorite things to do is get on a plane or train and explore new places or revisit old favorites. It has become a huuuuge part of my adult life AND I’ve made it an important part of my business. (One of the major perks of being a creative entrepreneur: You get to build a business that includes lots of stuff you love.
But COVID has put a complete stop to most travel and that’s actually been more of a challenge than I would’ve expected back in March. It turns out that I’m so used to having travel as a regular part of my life that I’ve struggled a bit with how to operate without it.
Where’s my adventure?
How will I collaborate?
What about speaking gigs and teaching‽
I’ve definitely found myself focusing on how much more/better I’d be doing if I could only travel again…
I’ve been hearing from friends, peers, and students that are also facing their own particular challenges because of our “new normal.” And my own attempts to get some clarity and peace about my situation, along with the conversations I’ve had with people around me, has got me thinking hard about this quote by Theodore Roosevelt:
“Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.”
Since I am an analogy queen I have - of course - come up with a great way to think of this quote in gaming terms:
Play the cards you’re holding, not the ones you wish you had.
It’s a piece of advice I’ve given myself many times since I went freelance (8 years ago 🤯) because it’s a way to combat the anxiety that comes with the “have not” mentality. I break this quote out whenever I find myself lamenting “oh if I only had _____ I could do so much more or be that much happier.”
When that thought is showing up a lot, I eventually check myself and try to reframe my limitations:
What can I do with what I have right now?
When I start thinking like that I almost always break out of my funk. It’s kind of like getting a design brief. You know how sometimes you want to do something creative and you just get overwhelmed by all the options? “There’s a million things I could do; how do I choose?!”
You rarely get that with a design brief because they have some limitations built in and they kinda supercharge the creative muscles. The “limits” of a design brief (or a hand of only 5-7 cards) actually provide a direction and a way to focus that creative energy.
So that’s what we are gonna focus on this week: thinking of our “hand” as a bunch of creative-combo opportunities.
This is an exercise in combating a scarcity mindset and the anxiety that comes with it. We are trying to give ourselves a personal “design brief” by identifying what skills, resources, and talents we already have in our hands. The goal is to orient our thinking toward “What opportunities can I create with these five things?” and away from “If only I had…”
Which leads me to this week’s assignment...
Your assignment: Think of 3-5 resources you have available to you right now and design or illustrate them as actual playing cards.
Thought starters: Try to think broadly. Your cards could include physical resources like money, space, or supplies. They could include intangible things like resilience, or grit, or a Skillshare membership. You could also think of intangibles in terms of particular talents or skill sets like being really good at analogies haha
Qualifiers: This isn’t to say you can’t strive for things or create opportunities. And we still need to (bigger picture) work to make sure people get dealt more equitable hands in general.
Caption ideas: Talk about your hand! What have you included? How can you combine your hand into something useful? And what combos might you create for a truly epic win?
Make sure to use the hashtag #HOMwork2020 and tag me @homsweethom when you post your cards on Instagram! I’ll be sharing some of my favorites in IG Stories all week.
x Lauren
P.S. I almost forgot about this card: my Mural Painting for Designers course that I'll be opening for enrollment one more time before the end of the year! If you're interested in adding murals to your creative offerings, click here to sign up for the waitlist, and I'll send you a free simple mural pricing guide :)
