Work Smarter Not Harder!!!

I have been so busy working on my to do list and amidst the madness that is my creative life, I am still recovering from my thrown out back. This means less time working on art and more time letting myself relax and take it easy when my body tells me to! I have been thinking a lot lately- With my back going out again it’s time to figure out realistic solutions and new ways to live my creative life. As I lay on the floor last week in pain I was so mad at myself thinking - who cares if you have wonderful opportunities - if your mind and body are too exhausted to enjoy them, what’s the point?!?!? Somebody said to me recently that I need to work smarter not harder and my first response was...huh? How the heck do I do that??? But I have been thinking about this all weekend. Somewhere along the way I decided that as long as I keep working, keep moving, keep saying yes to opportunities, keep making things - that everything would work itself out and good things would come. Well, the good things came but they didn’t happen from working like a crazy person, hurting myself, not taking time for myself and my family. Living a creative life pursuing a creative career can be really exhausting and over the weekend I made a conscience decision to just let things go and try to apply the “work smarter not harder” mentality to my own life and so far it is actually working- I am completing my big projects but in shorter increments of more organized work time (like 3 hours of being productive instead of 6 hours of being disorganized and thinking I need to complete 5 projects instead of the 1 that is time sensitive) which gave me time over the weekend to do some of the other things that bring balance to my daily life- like cooking, reading, watching movies with my husband, working on the house and just relaxing a little. My plan is to make it through my big projects and then ENJOY and savor the holidays and time spent traveling to see friends and family- this is enough for now :)