Coach Bennett’s Pearls of Wisdom – Part 5 – Struggling

In this blog series, I am going to share with you some of Coach Bennett’s pearls of wisdom and how they apply to my art practice.

Today I am going to talk about struggling.

According to Coach Bennett

Struggling does not mean failure. Struggling means successfully not giving up.

There are times when I struggle to go for a run. I feel tired, or cranky and the last thing I need is to pound my feet away on the treadmill again. But then I do it anyway and I get a little bit of the runner’s high.

In my art practice, I struggle with showing up consistently. In particular, when it comes to social media and promoting my work. I keep looking for methods that will make social media, blogging, and promoting art easier (without spending a tone of money). But I keep showing up. Maybe there are more breaks than I would like.

For me in running, the way to keep showing up is to set out my workout clothes the night before, and get dressed in them as soon as I get out of bed. Then, I leave for the gym as soon as the kids leave for school. Once I am at the gym, the hardest part is over, and I do the work out I had planned for the day.

For social media, here are a few things that have helped me:

I wrote a photoshop script that takes all my scanned art work and places it into a neat art display mock up, like the one in the image below.

The script is great, because it will take several pieces of art at once, and make them look presentable for social media in a matter of seconds. Sure, it took me several hours to find and adjust the mockups, write the script, and fine tune it, but now I have it and I love it. It is similar to setting out my clothes the night before: I have the assets ready to post when it is time.

The second thing I did was use a scheduling service for social media. I have been using the paid version of canva lately, but I have used several free ones before. It is a so nice to sit down and upload lots of pictures, write the captions all at once. Some times, I can do it for months in advance. On canva, I like that I can see the calendar.

How do you handle your struggles?