begin, again.

Every storm and snowfall brings new snow to shovel. Every time I lace up my boots, and pick up the shovel, and go out to the driveway, I must begin the process of shovelling it clear, again. Likewise, every day and meal brings new dishes to wash. Every time I approach the sink, tidy and scrape, pull on the rubber gloves, and turn the tap, I must begin the process of turning dirty dishes into clean ones, again. Every day.

There is a concept in Buddhism called the "beginner's mind" that I'm a little familiar with, thanks to my Buddhist dad. Basically it means that, no matter how much of an expert you become, it is a good practice to keep your mind open to new ideas, as if you were a beginner. While the expert's mind has only one right way to do things, the beginner's mind has many options.  Begin, again. It's frustrating sometimes - "what, this again?!" ... like the movie Groundhog Day, but it is also a reminder to take a deep breath, not overthink the process, and just... begin, again. Do the work.

***

This week, thanks to the wicked and wild wintry weather, I had some time to spend working on my own branding. It is kind of funny how scared I am to just sit down and do the work. Whatever resistance shows up when I'm doing work for a client is double when it comes to doing the work for myself! It continuously blows my mind how weird that is.

But, for three hours on Friday and a few hours today, I worked on my own branding. And, I'll definitely share more about this whole process at some point with you guys, but right at this moment I don't feel ready to. My intuition is telling me to keep it private a little bit longer, to let it gestate. And, I'm working to give space to my intuition in this whole process, so I'm going to honour that.

But, I will share it, soon -- I want to show you the questions I've been answering, about my company and my brand, and the mood board I'm making of inspiring textures and colours for the site. I want to share how I came up with my personal values, and why value-work is even important (hint: it's a lot cooler than it sounds), and what sorts of goals I'm setting for my business. 

If you're curious now, though, you can check out a couple of Pinterest boards I'm using to corral inspiration and ideas: My Brand Moodboard and I Love My Small Biz.

I hope you have a productive and inspiring week!

xo Leah

i have a new client, and she is me

Oh man, so -- where to begin?!

On a whim last week I made this baby website public and then I wondered, "Oh no, what is my next step?"

And to be honest, at the thought of figuring out that next step, I felt paralyzed.

A part of me wanted to just grab a bunch of my work samples from school and the last year, and stick them on the website, just to have work to show. I came really close to doing that, but when I started to look over my work samples, I realized I wanted to change all of them some of them. Especially the ones from when I was in school; I've learned more since then and there are other design decisions I'd make now!

Another part of me wanted to show progress of some kind to you, my readers, but then I didn't have time to make any progress in the website design, so I couldn't.

So I did what I always do when I have a brain full of ideas and no idea where to start: I dumped them out. On paper. With a pen.

The first sheet is ideas for what I will blog about in this new space.

The second sheet is ideas for what needs to be done on this website.

Now, my other strategy for working through my ideas and figuring out needs to happen next, is to take a walk, and that's where the photo at the top of this post comes in. It's from a walk I took in the woods near my house, the other day. It's funny how I forget, until I am outside walking along, just how much good a walk does for me! The fresh air, the blue sky, the silence surrounding the crunch of my boots on the snow... all of that is a healing balm for my soul.

So, I guess this is my progress since last week! I've been walking, and scribbling, and thinking about what my plan is for this blog and this space.

Here's what I know so far:

1. I want to blog once a week. This is way less than I used to post on my old blog (I aimed for daily), but it's about what I can handle right now. Being realistic and working with the time I have available is key, I think, to actually succeeding. Plus, my goal right now isn't to build a big blog audience (which is when you would want to blog consistently and daily), it is to work within my real life, and share progress, and I think once a week is a good sort-of "check in" point.
2. I want to treat myself like my own client, and go through the whole process of design, from start to finish. That includes the hard work at the beginning of the process, of digging in to what my goals are, what my brand is, and spending time polishing up the samples of my work. All this work is not sexy, and it won't look on the surface like much is changing, but if I'm building a business that will last 40 years, it should have a solid foundation, right? These things take time.
3. Part of treating myself like my own client is making sure I have time available to do the work. This means not taking on any new clients at the moment. Committing to myself that much, by saying no to potential work and let's face it, money, is kinda scary! But it also feels really good.
4. I'm excited!

I'd love to hear from you... if you have questions or thoughts on my design process, or on building a business, or on anything at all really, get in touch!

blogging, I just can't quit you

So here we go again! (I wrote my first blog, huminbean, from 2002 to 2012, and my second blog, Dream Big Cape Breton, from 2012 to 2015.)

This time around, I'm blogging for me. I'm blogging for my business, which is in that sort of weird-awkward-teenager phase. My business exists, but it's still really young and just growing wings. Like a baby bird? An awkward teenage baby bird? I don't know... my metaphors are all over the place today.

Anyway, here we are! My business slash personal website. Currently there is no work on it. Some would say that's a big no-no, sharing it live before I've even put work on it, or branded myself, or any of that. And I totally get that, because as a graphic designer, my job is to think hard about what a product looks like, and about what impact that's going to have on the people looking at it. How will they judge it? How will that affect what they think about the product? And whether they buy it?

But, I'm sharing now because (A) that's how I roll -- I like to get started on things before they're done, and work on them as I go, and (B) I think it will actually be interesting to you as a reader, and as a potential client, to see how I take this site from a simple free Wordpress template to a full-fledged portfolio website, and what I learn along the way. (The template I'm using is Sela, by the way.)

For example, at the moment, you may have noticed, the URL or web address of this site is still the free Wordpress one, where my name is followed by ".wordpress.com" instead of just being "leahnoble.com". I do own the domain "leahnoble.com" and have actually been paying for it for a couple of years now even though I wasn't using it, just to make sure I would have it when the day came when I would need it. I'll switch it over in a week or so, and I'll show you how to do that if you want to.

Anyway, that's all for now. I'm excited to be blogging again, to be learning new things, and to be setting up my business properly. I can't wait to see what this awkward teenage/baby bird becomes!

I'd love to hear from you, too! Hit me up with any questions you may have.

oh hey there!

I'm so glad you're here! This site is currently being built, so if you've stumbled across it looking for information about me, you can find out much more about me at the blog I wrote for three years, Dream Big Cape Breton. Soon this site will have lots of my work, and information about working with me, as well as its own blog.