Truthful Wednesdays: Inconsistencies

ALL IMAGES KIMBERLY J.

I feel like it’s pretty safe to cue Brittany Spear’s “Ooops, I Did It Again.” Inconsistency has definitely been my middle name for the last couple of weeks. To be completely honest, life has been serving me all kinds of curveballs. From personal things to work things to life things…I’ve been hardcore riding the struggle bus in the creative department. There’s no doubt about it, when your career is mostly creative and you manage yourself and your work flow, the lines get super blurred…it’s nearly impossible to keep things compartmentalized, because your work is indeed personal.

The weirdest thing about this particular season is that blogging has felt more like a chore than a desire. In nearly 4 years of pretty decent consistency, this is the FIRST time I’ve ever felt this way. In fact, I was pretty shocked by my own avoidance and the burden I was feeling when I even thought about sitting down to whip up a post. Granted, if I was just posting photos, we would not even be having this conversation. However, I believe in storytelling. I strongly believe that expression through words is one of the things that differentiates me from the rather large pool of influencers in the World.

As I’ve grown into adulthood, I’ve often found that honest self-reflection is the best way to move forward in various aspects of your life. And when I say HONEST SELF-REFLECTION, I mean honest. Often times it’s simply acknowledging those things that you have been suppressing and/or avoiding. I will be the first to say that acknowledging things about yourself is not always a fun process, but so needed if we desire to move forward in life as thoughtful, intentional, passionate human beings. In my honest self-reflection, I’ve realized that obsessive routine and 24/7 go mode are literally killing me. For far too long, I’ve allowed myself to do the same things and have basically become bored. Rather than looking for ways to make things fresh, I just drowned myself in other to-do’s and declared that I was too busy to post. Truth of the matter is, I’ve just flatlined and that’s totally natural. I should have identified this at the beginning of the year, but I can be kind of hard headed at times. I am both a Howard (my maiden last name) and a Read, both of which are stubborn in nature. In addition to the never ending list of overly exaggerated to-do’s, I’ve just been running like a crazy person. When you are mostly creative, it’s important to allow time for creative refreshing and I SOOOOOO have not done that. One of the biggest mistakes I’ve made thus far on this journey as an influencer is not changing things up consistently enough. I’m incredibly Type A, which is both a blessing and a curse. Change can sometimes be hard for those of us who love extreme structure and will avoid it at all cost. However, in this particular career, lack of consistent exploration can lead to irrelevancy, which is partially how I feel right now…irrelevant.

In realizing there’s areas of inconsistencies, there’s two ways you can move forward. And that is to either keep dwindling and eventually quit or accept what you’ve identified and take the necessary steps to change things! As you may have guessed, I’ve decided to accept what I’ve identified and I’m taking the steps to get things back on track! I have a couple of things I am working on that I think are really going to help with the redirection of this creative pursuit. As those things come to life, I’m excited to just be consistent again. I have a fresh new post coming your way on Friday and an incredible life of Marfa content starting next week and will probably last until June!

Thank you for being patient with me, as I continue to discover who I am here. It truly means more than I can express! Here’s to a new chapter. I think I will call it, “Recovering from Inconsistencies.”

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