So I’ve changed my mind yet again! And I’m writing this blog post to remind myself that it’s OK to have done that.
At the start of this year, I started a “play project” – I created a six week course called Pieces of Me, and I ran it for some friends. It involved a bit of creative writing, a bit of photography and some creative journaling. I did it because I was a bit fed up and wanted a change but didn’t know what I needed.
I enjoyed it and thought I wanted to do more like that. I spent time on social media, I spent time blogging about my story, and I spent time on my newsletter. But I didn’t develop any new courses. And I didn’t grow an audience as quickly as I wanted to. I learned from doing all of those things.
I tried another couple of things. A writing workshop on Zoom, which was enjoyed by the people that signed up. A free creative challenge over the summer, with weekly prompts. But the course development side wasn’t really going anywhere.
My September started slowly after the summer holidays. It took me much longer to get my head back into things than I’d thought it would. And when I suddenly had the time to implement some of the ideas I’d had over the summer, I’d gone off most of them. Even one I’d created a website page for already!
I jumped back into writing on this blog and have written quite a bit in the last week or so. I’m enthusiastic about that at the moment.
And then I decided to add my services page onto this website again, showing my project planning services. Or “untangling” as I call it.
Suddenly I’ve officially fallen out of love with the idea of running courses and workshops, and am back thinking about untangling again. The very thing that I was fed up with at the start of the year, couldn’t work out how to progress and did a play project to get away from!
So now I have a newsletter list of people who want creative inspiration, which I’m not going to be providing. Or at least not in the same way I was planning to.
Because my form of creative inspiration is more about being inspired by walks in nature and taking 5 minutes to look at your surroundings, it’s based on something I do as part of my week. So that part isn’t going away. It’s just the course idea that is. (Until the next time of course….)
But I still plan to talk about creativity in my newsletter, and to share my blog posts there. And I’ll start mentioning untangling as it’s one of the things I do.
So yes, I’ve changed my mind. My untangling services are back on my website. Even though I get to do a lot of untangling in my freelance work, because I work with someone who has a lot of big ideas. I’ll untangle ideas there, I’ll untangle them for freelancers and small business owners, and I’ll let the thoughts in my head express themselves as blog posts and share those. And I’ll still be going for walks and taking photos – just not making that aspect into anything.
Have I come full circle? No, I’ve evolved and had new opportunities. The freelance work I’m doing is where I want to be. I’m enjoying having the inspiration for blogging, and I’m hoping to find some interesting people to work with to untangle their ideas.
I learned things from the new ideas I tried out, and those things led me to a new desire to untangle and to write again. So yes I changed my mind, but that’s OK! It’s a benefit of freelance life. 😊
Are you sticking with something you feel obligated to continue? Could you change your mind and do something else instead?
