The Beauty of Small Steps

Last month I wrote a newsletter sharing two of my intentions for January with you.

1) Going social-media free for the month (not COMPLETELY without it, but setting boundaries for my usage of it.)

2) Having daily character design sketchbook conversations and filling 20 pages in my messy sketchbook.

The first few weeks of the month went really well! Although I faced a lot of challenges in my character design intention, I made a lot of progress and was beginning to turn a corner. I had finally landed on a design for a new character, and I was excited to see her come to life. I’d also been faithfully following the boundaries I’d set for myself with social media, and I’d noticed much more mental clarity and overall joy in my life.

And then January 19^th happened. I came down with another round of illness, this one much more brutal than the last few have been. And my media-free intention absolutely fell by the wayside. I was MISERABLE on the couch, and I spent a good portion of time doom-scrolling on Pinterest and mindlessly making my way through the For You page on YouTube. I’m not proud of this, but I wanted to share it with you as a reminder that sometimes we slip up. We let our goals go and make choices that don’t align with the lives we want to live. But just because you have a bad day or a bad week or a bad month doesn’t mean you can’t get back on track. Don’t wait for tomorrow to make a good choice. You can start right now.

Although my media-free intention turned into a dumpster fire, my character design intention didn’t. However, it didn’t exactly look the way I’d planned. Due to overwhelming fatigue and shakiness from breathing treatments, some days I was only able to sketch for a few minutes. But whether I sketched for 5 minutes or 3 hours, I made it a priority every day to move the needle forward. When I felt particularly miserable, I filled a page with 1-2 minute gesture sketches. Each sketch improved my sense of gesture, made more dynamic poses a bit more intuitive for me to sketch from imagination, and helped me familiarize myself with more childlike proportions (which was what I was aiming for in my new character design.) On days that I felt a bit more energetic, I worked on facial expressions or outfit designs or poses I could eventually build into an illustration.

Did the last couple weeks of January look as productive or prolific as I’d originally planned? No. But it was a good reminder for me that moving the needle forward isn’t about always working at 110%, always making big leaps of progress. Small, consistent steps do more good than inconsistent large ones. As Jemma Simmons from Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. would say, “The steps you take don’t have to be big; they just need to take you in the right direction.”

What’s one small step you can take toward your intention today?