just show up, yo

I was kind of in a funk this week. I did some budgeting and realized that I needed to make some Adult Choices... and man I hate those, haha. I basically was living paycheque-to-paycheque and not really keeping track of my spending at all. So I put my Big Girl Panties on... and sat down with a calculator and my bank account. It feels good to have done that, but not so good to realize I can't afford my personal trainer. (Which, man, that feels like the most yuppie thing to say EVER.)

But I'm not a rich lady. I was going to a personal trainer for a medical reason I may talk about on here one of these days, and it was super amazing and helpful. 

Anyway, that plus the fact that I don't feel like I've hit a creative groove yet, since launching this website, meant I was in a funk this week. You know, that mood where your inner critic says all the mean things.

Then I went to visit the current second year Graphic Design class at NSCC, my alma mater. I talked to them about my story so far, about all I've done to get to this point, and about what I've learned along the way. It was fun! We laughed, and shared, and I looked at all their work afterwards, and it gave me the kick in the butt I needed to remember:

Oh yeah. I GOT THIS. Just show up. Just do the work. Just put it out there. 

So here I am. Re-remembering for the 456th time (roughly) that I work best through writing it out. Through sharing. That my blog posts need not be 100% polished, perfect, with photos, with links, to be ready to get out into the world. 

And then there was this.

the story of how I got into graphic design, part 1

Photo from I Love Typography.

I'd like to tell you the story of how I got into graphic design.

It actually begins back when I was a kid, but I'm not going to get to that part for a bit. (Because I didn't realize that that's where the love started, until much later.)

Where I thought it began was: 2007. 

I had moved back in with my mother at the age of 23, having left university in my third year. I had had depression. My energy was totally depleted. I was living at my mother's house, and I remember becoming totally entranced with typography of all things. Specifically, with a website called “I Love Typography” -- and I cannot remember now how I found it. 

My computer monitor at the time was a big bulky thing. Flat screens weren’t yet mainstream. (This was 2007.) I had the computer set up in my brother’s bedroom, upstairs, which was a small room with a high ceiling. I would sit there, crammed in between a high shelf that held books and random bits of my brother’s life (he was in Ukraine then, I think), and his bed, at a small desk I’d inherited from a friend, which was wobbly and painted a weird green. I'd sit up there, and scroll and scroll through this website. I was discovering: Typography was a real thing, and I loved it!

It seemed so magical. I’d always loved letters. I’ve always read voraciously, and loved design, kind of from off at a distance… I didn’t know I loved it, the way I do now, but I knew that a beautifully designed book or magazine had a certain something that just brought the reading experience to a whole new level. I learned the term “ligature”, which means when two letters ajoin, like “fi”. I learned about letterpress printing, which seemed like another kind of magic to me. From the belly of an inky, noisy beast could come this crisp white paper with an ever so slight indentation, and a beautiful design on it. I wanted to try it. I tucked that desire away like a precious stone.

Work came again to me. Once I had my strength back, I taught seniors how to use computers at the local library, and worked for a non-profit that runs computer sites in rural communities. Part-time work was good for a while but then I wanted more money. I went looking for a full-time job and ended up at the local marina. Now, I am not a boat person. I do not long to tinker with jibs and mains, or refinish the wooden deck of a sailboat. I do love the water, though. And I love people. And my job had me in the store, working with boat parts, selling them, arranging them in the store.

I stayed at the marina for three years. But somewhere in the middle of those three years I started looking for what was next. I looked at the local community college, NSCC, which has campuses in thirteen towns across the province. I looked at their landscaping and gardening program, in the Annapolis valley. I looked at their Office Administration program, thinking I did well in office work and wouldn’t mind some sort of credential for it. I lined up a visit to the local campus, signing up for both the Office Admin tour and the Graphic Design tour. When I was in the cafeteria with all the other students, though, and it came time to actually go on the tour, to pick Office Admin or Graphic Design, I went with my gut and I went with the graphic design teacher. Being in that classroom for the first time – ah, I can still feel the way it felt! The excitement. The feeling of “I need to be in this place!” They took art and letters – my first loves – and gave it a sacred space, a room with desks and tables, a dedicated workspace for each student to do their work: try, to create, to explore. To make drawings and posters and test out ideas.

I was hooked.   

(Part 2 to come... sometime.)

let it be sunday

"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.