We’re in the new house. Phew!
The boxes are close to being unpacked, and the analog room I told you about a couple of weeks ago is slowly becoming a real place. No screens, a good chair, paper everywhere. It’ll get a proper tour once it stops looking like a creative crazy lady’s storage unit.
This first weekend in the new place has me thinking about how much of building a business is just deciding what gets to take up space.
So here are a few of the things I’ve let take up space this week, in case you’d like to let them take up a little of yours.
On my nightstand
Two on the go at once right now. Don’t Call It Art by Austin Kleon is ten ways to create like a kid again: permission to be bad, throw out the instructions, believe in a little magic. Exactly the energy I want in that analog room.
And Outsider by Brett Popplewell, the true story of an 81-year-old who lives in a school bus on a mountain in British Columbia and runs ultramarathons through blizzards. A second-act story if I’ve ever read one.
A poem I’m enjoying
“Otherwise” by Jane Kenyon. It’s about an ordinary good day and how easily it could have gone another way. Reading it in a house where I’m still deciding which paintings go on which walls felt about right.
I got out of bed
on two strong legs.
It might have been otherwise.
You can read the whole poem at poets.org.
On my new office wall
One thing I bought for the new space is a small print called Light by Grace Croughan, a Canadian artist who paints these still, dreamlike mountains. It’s a reproduction of her painting “A Touch of Light,” and something about it felt like exactly the right thing to look up at while I work.
What are you letting take up space this week?
Life first. Work optional.It’s your business, your energy and your rules.