birthdays

photo: via Babble

Ok, so yesterday was my birthday. And I'm having a crazy busy week, so I most likely won't celebrate until Friday night. Or Monday afternoon. We'll see. But it's a good busy; the kind of work that doesn't feel like work, among the kind of people you would totally be stranded with on a desert island.

And darlings, I have to dash, but birthdays are for celebration and retrospection, and while I do have some ideas for a celebratory giveaway (stay tuned), today is the day for some retrospection.

What I loved about the last year:

• I loved creating a poem for the Indie Lounge at the Sundance Film Festival. It was last minute, a spur of the moment thing, but I'm proud to say a mini-print of my poem was a gift for invited attendees. I still get thank you notes from that one.
• I loved attending more in-person networking/instructional events. Creative Mornings Atlanta, WordCamp Atlanta and The Science Tavern are some of my favorites. *Pssst: if any of my fellow ATL peeps want to meet up for one of the monthly Creative Mornings meetings, let me know! I'm always up for an impromptu meetup.
• I love poetry readings! I love meeting readers and connecting with my fellow writers. I've added more events for autumn, and I am seriously considering more events in the spring.
• I love creating blackout poetry. I began making blackout poetry (poems where you take a printed page of text and 'black out' big chunks of text to create a poem with the leftover words.

What I didn't love:

• I don't love my office. It's in a hot part of the house, so summertime is oppressive. Since May, I've moved my laptop to the kitchen table. Ok, the sofa. Ok, the bed. But my office door is firmly closed until late September when it's cool enough to get stuff done. 
• I don't love how I can get sucked into social media. Creative entrepreneurs do everything. And social media is right there on the list of Stuff You Should Be Doing. But one tweet turns into three and liking three Instagram picture turns into falling into the Suggested Account rabbit hole and then...boom, it's two hours later. I struggle with this, so I'm deliberately turning off notifications and keeping social media to mornings and evenings.
• I don't love my inbox. Oh my gosh, can we talk about my inbox? I have 543 non-essential emails in one inbox. I have a super strict 24 email turnaround for clients and I'm proud of keeping that sacred, but literally everything else slips. I need to do better with my communication - both in setting expectations for others and putting systems in place for myself. Because nothing is worse than making someone feel like they don't matter. 

I'm gonna expand what I love and minimize what I don't, and do my best through all of it.

What do you love about the last few months of your life? What do you need to pull back on?