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Welcome to the first blog in a series creatively titled What I Learned This Week. Each week, I’ll be sharing some of the interesting, unexpected, or meaningful things I’ve learned along the way.
I’ve created a personal curriculum focused on skills and hobbies that support my goals while still being genuinely fun and interesting to me. My hope is that this gives me something new to reflect on each week – but we won’t be limiting ourselves to just that.
Life has a way of handing us lessons of its own, whether we plan for them or not.
So- without further ado, here is what I learned this week.
AUTHOR 101-
- Outlining what you have already written is a great tool to force yourself to read what’s actually there vs what context you have in your head- that the reader won’t. It’s a great practice to use if you are self-editing that helps the gears shift to reading your work like the author vs reading your work as a reader.
- Rough drafts are called rough drafts for a reason. I have procrastinated writing the entirety of a book for roughly 10 years until now out of the fear that my book would suck. And guess what? It kind of does suck- but it’s not nearly as scary as I thought it would be. To be honest, while it was a little cringey to reread an unedited version of my story…I felt more pride than shame that I had a full book start to finish in my hand. Now all I have to do is polish it. That’s pretty dang exciting.
- Summarize each chapter with one sentence. That’s all you get. If by the time your done, you don’t have the most interesting 30 sentences you ever read in your life…you don’t have that interesting of a story…yet. I am a context and tiny details queen. That’s what makes a story good to me- BUT if the juiciest parts of your story aren’t juicy…readers are going to be uninterested in the nitty gritty details. Plus it highlights the filler chapters, what needs cut, and what needs added in a really straight forward way.
PAINTING BASICS-
Color Theory is not what I thought it was. I am a self taught artist and I sort of skipped the basics to get to the fun parts. While I think I have some skills in the art department…I have finally come to terms that if I go back and learn some basics and build a stronger foundation in my art education…that will come through in my artwork
So I made my first ever color wheels and watched a 10 minute color theory for beginners video and here are the results if you are interested.
LIFE LESSONS-
- Things don’t always and in fact don’t often go exactly to plan. But it only usually feels like a bad thing because we are really attached to the safety that our plan gives us. Life has a funny way of redirecting us to opportunities, lessons, and people that we never even knew we needed. So lean into the unknown- you never know where life will take you next.
- We are not the first ones to experience how scary the world can be. When we study history, it’s sobering to say the least to learn about what people have been capable of doing to each other. On one hand its discouraging that we can’t seem to learn our lessons. On the other hand…there have always been people that choose to be good, kind, and hopeful despite whatever horrid span of history they were living in at the moment. We are not alone and we never were.
There are a lot of bad things happening in the world, yes. And we get to be a part of the history books where we are all morbidly aware of every single detail of it. But when we look around- there are also so many people that are appalled by it. Many people care. Many people want to make a difference. And that is HOPEFUL.
We are not the first ones to experience a world on fire- and we won’t be the last.
While the world can be scary- be a part of what makes this world so mesmerizing, beautiful, and jaw dropping. Dance in the rain, eat your favorite chocolate, laugh with your kids. Embrace all the things that make life worth living.
So build community, be kind, be curious.
“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.”
-Nelson Mandela
<3 KR