Creative Life Series: Writing Down Your Creative Goals

We're approaching the halfway point for 2013, and because my birthday is around the same time, I have two 'life assessment points' fairly evenly spaced in my year. I often find myself taking a breather at the proverbial halfway house and reviewing the goals I set at New Year. In December I invested in the inspiring Leonie Dawson's Create Your Incredible Year workbook and one of the most valuable things I have got from it is the encouragement to write down this year's goals, rather than just saying to myself, 'this year I'd like to...' I came up with 100! Some big, some tiny, all important to me. 

It's a funny thing, this writing down of goals. Funny how this simple action has made me so much more focused in the first half of this year. Funny how many of them are being met, seemingly without all that much effort on my part. Others are taking a gigantic amount of regular effort, don't get me wrong, but often simply writing the goal down can seal it in your mind and you'll subconsciously work towards ticking it off the list. 

But something I was really keen to do this year was to write down some creative goals. Last year I came to realise just how vital my creative life is to me. It's my inspiration, a source of happiness, my therapy and gives  me a sense of accomplishment. I had a really creative 2012, and I wanted 2013 to be even better.

Here are some of my 2013 creative goals:

• Learn to crochet 
• Make banana bread
• Come up with five new button designs
• Knit a scarf (and finish the last one!)
• Reach 100 button sales
• Do a 'big' painting (ie, not button-size!)
• Go to the theatre
• Start a new journal
• Make another candlelit project

We often see creativity as something comparable to water. It ebbs and it flows, it comes and it goes, and it's pretty impossible to pin down. I have always viewed it as a force, something that would only come to me if I was having a good day, was lucky, prepared my mind properly. And so it's often the case, but I do believe that writing down your creative goals means you are committed to reaching them, and making that commitment seems to automatically increase the chances of creativity showing up on the day you decide to work on them. 

You know the phrase, 'when the student is ready, the teacher will appear'? In the first half of this year I've met three lovely people who offered to teach me to crochet. A colleague gave me a scarf knitting pattern which should be one step up the knitting skill ladder from my current point. An opportunity to do a craft fair came up so I'm making lots of buttons in the hope of meeting my 100 sales in 2013 goal, and this recipe for banana bread turned up last week. 

Whatever your goals - creative goals, lifestyle goals, health goals or work goals - write them down. What have you got to lose? Any time is a great time to do so... and you now have the perfect excuse to buy a shiny new notebook! (Yeah, as if you needed one.)

What are some of your creative goals?

PS: If you fancy getting started on your creative goals tonight, see you for Creatives Unite at 8pm.