"This week has been chilly and hurricane threatened. We’re busy. I can feel the hustle in the air. I hope you’re taking this day to breathe deep and rest. It’s a long run toward the end of the year. I vote we take it slow and easy." - Joy The Baker, Let It Be Sunday.
one small step forward
Here I am. It’s October 1st. It’s 7:20 am. Adam has just left for work. I have a full cup of coffee. Outside it is windy and rainy, and I love it. I love a good blustery fall storm. I love the cozy feeling of being inside. With a book. And my loved ones. My family. My little family: a man, and a cat. And me.
What is the shift I’m feeling in my life right now? I feel an urge to study it, to take time and space to sit with it. Like a friend. It’s an urge away from consuming. I can feel that. I don’t listen to the radio, I don’t really read blogs much these days. I want silence. I want space. I crave those things and I am making it happen. I am experimenting with NO and with not committing to plans.
I am here on the verge of launching my new business and I’m scared. I’ll admit. I feel like for the last six months, that I’ve set up a whole workshop of beautiful tools, some I know how to use, some I don’t, and I’ve told people “Now I have this beautiful workshop!” and now I’m standing at the doorway, it’s quiet, the tools are waiting for me, and I’m scared. I feel like I’m supposed to go in and whip up a masterpiece. “No big deal, just being a creative genius over here.” And then dance around like a monkey, grinning and being all “YAY!!”, and showing it off. But what I really want to do is shut the door. Lock it. Turn up music. Get coffee. Tinker. Play. Quietly.
But I do want to share. I want to attract people, clients, friends, readers. But I’m scared. I’m scared of --
Liz G says, “Fear is boring. Everyone has it.” I cut myself off there, in the last sentence. I cut myself off from listing all my fears, which was totally where I was going with that. Because, I just read that part in her book where she lists fears for three pages. And you can go on, and on, and on. Fear never stops.
So, as she says, make space for it to exist along with creativity. Maybe make a little bed, like a cat bed, in the corner of your desk, and whenever you sit down to write, invite your fear to curl up in it, get cozy, go to sleep. Let it be relaxed. Tell it, “if anything scary happens, I’ll come wake you up right away.”
(I have an empty basket (made out of chopsticks) in the corner of my desk. Maybe that’s what I put it there for? Unknowingly?)
“But you can’t put this out into the world just like this,” fear says. “It needs to be polished. It needs to be perfect.”
What is my brand again? Down to earth. Empowering. Enthusiastic. (I'll tell you one of these days about how my business coaches helped me figure out my brand. It was fun.) I want to empower other people to give it a go. I want to show them that they can work through the fear too. I want to show them it's possible.
Alright, well, this is long enough. Thanks for listening. One small step forward at a time, that's how this is done. I am in the workshop, I have turned on the lights.
Moving in to a new house
That's what this feels like.
Yesterday Erin Cassidy, the designer behind my new logo and site, showed me around my new site. It feels like someone taking me into a home that they built for me, showing me the rooms, and saying, "Here you go. Decorate how you like. Fill the rooms with things that have meaning to you. Here is your new home."
Now I am taking a deep breath, looking all around, looking out the windows, setting a few little things down here and there on shelves and windowsills, and admiring my new view.
Welcome!
When things go quiet
Things here on this blog are quiet. That’s because I’m getting ready. That’s because behind the scenes, wonderful things are happening. My new website has taken form, and it needs me to fill in some content before it’s ready to go live. (Early October is the due date.)
My new logo and brand colours are done. My new way of doing things -- of how I'll blog, how I'll do my social media -- is starting to take form too. I’m pivoting. When I hear that word I think of basketball. Of a player frozen in one pose, not actually taking a step but moving their feet a little bit in a new direction, readying to throw or to start running again.
"My new way of doing things" means: getting crystal clear about my offerings, who I’m serving, what my audience is. It also means changing a few things, tweaking really, about my social media and the content I put out into the world. It’s interesting to me, because when I did Dream Big Cape Breton I never thought about it all in as much detail or depth as I’m thinking about things now. I never thought, “OK, who is my target audience?” And now that I’m looking back I’m realizing that my target audience was quite large! It was something along the lines of “People who love Cape Breton and want to see a positive future for it.” That could be the entire population! It's a lot of people!
Now that I’m pivoting, changing my audience, and getting clear, and also making choices about who I want to serve (which is completely different from the voice in my head that says “try to serve everyone!”), it’s scary. I fear that if I shrink my audience on purpose, that I’ll have a smaller audience, and that I’ll be less popular.
All I can really do is trust my coaches. Trust them when they say, “Yes, but by getting clear about your new audience and niche, you are making it easier for yourself to create content specifically for them, that will really have value and meaning for them, and you’re making it easy-as-pie for them to buy you, to hire you.”
Anyway, I just wanted to drop by this little blog, which I think of as my apartment-in-between-houses blog, a place to stop and rest for a bit before moving on, just to say that things are quiet here for now. And it's because I’m putting all my energy into my new stuff, into doing the work behind the scenes to get ready for the end of the It’s Business Time program at the start of October. I cannot wait to share the new site with you!
And, thanks a million for all your support so far, for me in all my incarnations, whether as “huminbean” or as “Dream Big Cape Breton,” and now as I shift into “Leah Noble Design”. It means the world to me!
xo Leah
Goals update
Hey there! I'm stopping by after midnight on a Friday night because that's what is exciting to me right now: spending a Friday night with a glass of wine, being introspective.
We're newly returned from our trip to Chicago. It was so good. Adam and I bonded as a couple and saw lots of great friends. We walked til our feet were sore, and bitched at each other. We ate good food and danced to some of our favorite songs at two Phish concerts.
But I only took my phone with me, not my laptop, and it's so good to get home and be able to print off the It's Business Time worksheets, and spend time writing in my office for hours, and be HOME, and not beholden to anyone else or in anyone else's space.
I mentioned last month that I read the book "Essentialism", and that really gelled a lot of stuff in my head that I then thought a lot about, over our trip. The idea behind essentialism is that if you do fewer things, you do them better than if you try to do many things at once. I've always been someone who prided herself on having a big plate full of commitments she was juggling, and thought that that was what made me interesting in other people's eyes. But that way leads to burnout. The more balls you're juggling, the more awkward it is to put them down if you need to. Plus it's just not actually as productive as it could be!
SO. Taking a break from my schedule for the Chicago trip means that I come back to it with fresh eyes, and a fresh resolve to pare things back and make only a few things priority. So I'm looking at the list I laid out last month of some goals, and here are the changes I'd like to make. The original goal is italicized, and the updated YES or NO is in bold.
- Finish all the work for the crowdfunding perks. Date: end of this year. YES: this is priority. I've already sold my time to people, so I need to make good on those promises.
- Get digital photos for the last seven years made into photo books. Delete the digital versions of the photos. Stop worrying about losing them! Date: end of 2015. NO: no longer a priority.
- Put a couple of older posts from Dream Big Cape Breton onto “goCapeBreton.com” — maybe a beaches post, the post about the transportation system. NO: no longer a priority.
- Launch and then run a successful first year of the Creative Soul Weekend, with Emily Chafe. YES. This is important to me.
- Launch my business (October!!! Watch out world!) YES. On track with this, with the It's Business Time group.
- Grow a small veggie garden and plan a bit for next year’s veggie garden (get tarp, put rock around the corner of the yard where it will go) YES. Not difficult to do, and being outside working in my garden is a nice antidote to being online working. Plus, Adam does show an interest in it, as long as I'm doing it, so it's a nice way for us to bond.
- Go on vacation in August with Adam and check email only once a week. Pack super light. Enjoy and soak up the moments. Let the time away from things be refreshing. YES. Done!
- Keep working out twice a week with my rad new trainer Steph. Do an unassisted pull-up. (Maybe by the end of this year, it may take longer.) I don’t have a specific weight-loss goal, because my goal with training is to gain strength and muscle, which may not mean any change in the number of pounds I weigh. YES. Super important to me.
- Keep doing yoga once a week. NO. I have to cut back on some stuff and this isn't necessary. I can stretch and do yoga at home in my own time, I don't need the class. (It's wonderful, of course, but the trade off is more time at home, which is the more important of the two right now for me.)
- Be “hands free” as much as possible when at home with my family. We want to grow our family in the next year or two, and I’ve seen over the past year that the more hands-free I am, the more connected Adam and I are to each other, and the richer our family life feels. YES. This doesn't take extra time, it just takes a bit of a shift in my consciousness around my phone.
- Look into starting a podcast. MAYBE - in 2016. Not right now. This would be fun but I can only have a few things that are priority.
- Look into doing an extended walk, perhaps around the Cabot Trail, in 2016. NO. Again, this would be fun, but I want to cut back what I'm doing and focus on a few things. This isn't necessary: I can walk shorter distances.
- Look into writing a book. (!!! This one in particular feels SCARY to say out loud. But yes. I really really really want to write a book.) NO. For the same reasons as the walk, above.
WHOOSH
What's that?
Oh, that's the sound of time flying.
And what's that in the photo?
It's the beautiful little cabin where, in September of this year, Emily Chafe and I will hold the inaugural Creative Soul Weekend in Port Hood. There are six spots open. Find out more and book yours here.
What else?
Well! Man, oh man. Have I got some plans! I read Essentialism last week and decided, hey, maybe I'm NOT writing a book right now. Maybe I'll do that down the road. That's fine.
The book was awesome and inspiring. It lit a fire under me to cut back, again. Again, again. Why do I think there will come a point when I'm done cutting back?! When really, that's life.
So, what's on my plate right now:
- My day job. Because, you know, bills.
- Creative Soul Weekend. Because: passion projects.
- It's Business Time. Because: self-employment, sooner rather than later.
- Fulfilling the crowdfunding perks. Because: honoring commitments.
And.. .that's it. No new clients til - I want to say - October. But it might even have to be later than that, depending on how those crowdfunding perks go.
And the reason that's it, is because these things are on another plate of mine, a no less important plate:
- Adam
- Mittens the kitten
- Garden
- Walks and exploration
- Fitness
- Family
- Sleep.
Meanwhile... as a result of It's Business Time and planning my new site and business, I'm thinking about blogging and what that's going to look like for me in the future. Good news for you, if you like reading my blog posts: I'm going to put more time and effort (read: some time and effort at all) into blogging! I'm excited to share more stories.
For now: we're off to Chicago next week! I'm pumped. I'm packing light. (And in my head I'm thinking "Ooh! A future post idea!") Follow me on Instagram to see what I get up to in Chi-town!
xo Leah
three bullets // july 21
Today's a busy day for me, not much time to write, so I'm just going to use three bullets and keep it short:
- Today was one month into my new training regime. We measured my hips, bust, thighs, arms and waist and over all I've lost 5 inches. (Waist was 2 inches, bust was 1, thighs were 1, arms were 0 and hips were 1.) My weight is still the exact same. I'm stoked! It feels great and I feel like I finally found the sport that I want to get obsessed with. (I was never an athletic kid.)
- I bought this book and I'm so pumped to read it. And then report back to you all.
- Here is a post by Alexandra Franzen that I'm reading and re-reading these days. I love the idea of a production list, and of cranking tunes.
Have a great one!