Looking Back At A Changing Life

Looking Back At A Changing Life

It has been over a year since I had my last professional headshots done for my book To Love. I just redid my profile pictures myself and it made me start to think. What has changed over the year?

  1. I published To Love. It is a 5-year project that is completely done.
  2. I left my kitchen job to pursue my art business full time (I’m still at my part-time church job).
  3. My Patreon page was started.
  4. Love Nerd and Tiff’s Tips both started in between these 2 pictures.
  5. I opened and post regularly to 2 Print On Demand stores.

Basically, I did a lot, and even without taking into consideration all the changes in the world I can say my life has changed a lot in this past year. Life is a crazy adventure for me right now, but I honestly wouldn’t have it any other way. I love the personal growth I’m experiencing in this chapter in my life.

Want More?

If you would like to keep more up to date with what I am doing I am on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. You can also read about my life in my series God Shows Up or in the category “Life.”

Tiff’s Tips: Do Not Be Afraid To Change

Do Not Be Afraid To Change

Some say that, the one constant thing in life is change. That is true. Change is chosen or forced on you, either way it will happen. Life is full of fresh adventures and pivots in your plans. Adjust to these redirections. You can either resist and fear the change or accept the new normal and adjust to it. If you resist and fear the change, that may cause more issues though. Not accepting the different way of life can stunt your creative or your general growth. You should not fear change, but embrace it and adjust to the new chapter in your life or creative career. Most changes are a new chapter in your story. They can be you turning down an alternative path on your life’s journey.

This tip goes along with another one; Try different things. Do not be afraid to allow life’s changes to move your creativity into another direction. When you embrace the changes, instead of fighting or fearing them you can grow from them.

Yes, it will be hard. It’s difficult to adjust to adjusting. There will be times when you need to focus on transitioning into this new chapter of your life, whether it is an enormous change or a small one. Transitioning into the new normal will be even harder if you resist or fear it though.

It is easier, in the long run, to go with the flow so to say or at least accepting the needed change. You’ll also save emotional energy when you don’t fear or resist the change. When you allow the changes to happen, you can even learn from the events that brought on the changes into your life or creative career.

Want More?

This is part of Tiff’s Tips a blog series. I have also done a goal setting video series on YouTube.

Chapters of Life – DreamWard Bound

Every few years my life changes. Each change is the start of a new chapter and a new part of my epic story. Most of the time it also comes with a change in location, but not always.

I try to prepare for each change in my life the best I can. I look at it like almost like a new story. What will the plot be? What new characters may I encounter? What will the theme or message be for this chapter of my life? Each time my life changes I think I answer these questions, but God or life always has at least one different answer. The changes are never fully what I expected.

This chapter in my life is like the others. It is not what I expected.

My goal for this chapter is to pursue my ideal life, my passions, and God’s will for my life.

At the moment I am being torn down in negative areas of my personality, struggling with my motivation, and I’m learning to be more flexible in multiple areas of my life. It is a trying point in my life. I do not want to face the areas of myself that I don’t like and should change. It is not easy to let things go that annoy me or frustrate me.

I do know that the reward for going through all this will be worth it. I will hopefully rid myself of the parts of me I do not like and become more flexible with things that don’t actually matter in the long run of things. I’ll be a better version of myself and living a better version of my life.

Also, although it is tough I am still less stressed and not emotionally drained each night. It is a better life for myself already.

Plus, I can actually have a full day to rest, which is a new thing and one I’m still relearning how to do. It is strange that stopping and relaxing is hard for someone. It seems like it should be easy to do, but I’ve spent years only really stopping on vacations. If I was not on vacation I had something to do; I had something to create or a to-do list item to check off. Now I have a day for that stuff and a day to stop and take care of myself. I still want to keep going and going, but I know we all have to take a break now and again, so that is what I’m doing. I will learn how to do it well eventually.

 

DreamWard Bound (November 22, 2014)

success

I want to start this post off with some sort of creative and intriguing statement that will almost force you to continue reading. However, I am already writing this late and have a bunch of other things to do. I mostly am just excited to be editing today. I am putting aside all my excuses and reasons not to edit my novel. I am just going to sit down and edit it, once my to do list is done.

That being said, let’s get into what I did this week. First I revised my goals. I took off the painting goal and the Goal Getters goal. I took off the painting goal, because like I said in another post I want painting to be unforced and from my heart. I don’t want to have any pressure to paint.

I took off the Goal Getters goal, because I finished the steps and realized I was not getting the reaction I wanted. I will continue to post short videos on that and redo the steps. I am planning on recording another version of my steps and having it all be one video. I also took it off so that I can feel comfortable either adding more videos each week or less. If I don’t have a tip I won’t need to come up with it.

I also revised my reading and instead of reading the Bible in a year I am going to focus on just reading the Bible. Basically, I broke down this goal and made the “I will read the Bible in a year” goal the end goal. I realized I needed to take other steps to achieve that. The first step will be to read a book in the Bible in a month. That is more manageable for me now.

My goal about getting better family communication is still there. It is exactly the same, except I added a weekly reminder. Also, my acting goal is the same. I am almost there and I am excited to be almost to the point where I can schedule an acting coach. I will be really happy to figure out where I can go from here and what a professional thinks.

I did change-up my creative writing goal. One thing I changed is that it is now officially all creative writing posts, not just poems. I also made an end goal. After 85 posts with 5 likes or more I will start to make another book focused on poetry, but with short stories thrown in there too. I do have one poetry book out there already. It is on the shorter side and I found with publishing it you need at least 85 pages in order for it to be available to publish in a hard copy with Lulu. Once I have the 85 creative writing things I will edit, polish, and basically create even better poems from them. I will also try to add more content that explains the poetry or short stories, so you will not just be buying my blog. I do want it to be different and worth your money.

As for my other goals, I changed the deadline for my weight loss and moved it down the list of importance. I still want to lose weight and reach that goal, but it’s not as important as my creative career.

My last goal is my novel which is exactly the same. I just freed up a few goal slots so should actually be able to do it, now.

Other stuff I did this week was write five posts, publish 2 tip videos, and a reading video to my creative channel. Here is the list of all that stuff.

Tip: Plan your week (video)

Tip: focus on your behavior (video)

Reading of Proverbs 31 (video)

Bring Down The Storm (poem)

If I See You (poem)

To The Beach 

Here I Stand (monologue)

Timed (poem)

I love when I post more than one thing a day. Also stay tuned because I will be posting more tips on my Goal Getters channel, today.

DreamWard Bound (week of July 19- July26)

success

As I start to wake up on this Sunny Saturday I’m finding it hard to get out of bed. It’s not because I don’t want to do this the things I am going to do today. I am plan on recording seven poetry readings and two original monologues, that I will be able to post during the week. I am plan to buy a new camcorder today, as a reward for meeting my goal of a weekly video and blog for two months. I also plan on painting a background painting for my twitter, Facebook, and this blog’s header, to join all my sites together. I’m looking forward to these things, I just don’t want to start the day. Yet, the day has to start so I will start it now.

Now onto this past week.

I am still trying to get back into the swing of things and getting back on my schedule with writing and creating. I did write some, but my television shows dragged me into a state of unproductive behavior. I still did write a poem and made sure that there was a post every day.  Most of the posts were left over from my vacation, but I still edited them this week and posted them.

This next week should be interesting since I will be recording so many poetry readings and videos today, that I’m excited to do. I am also excited because starting this week the DreamWard Bound series will become more useful. I am going to  stop posting every video that I make on this blog and have this blog focused on my writing more. Instead I will post the videos I did during the week here, under “the list of things I posted this week,” or whatever I decide to call my recap list that week. This change will free up some of my time and organize this blog.

If you have watched all my videos on this blog, you can still check to see if I posted things here. You will just have to look under my twitter or Facebook page, which is now on the side menu bar. You can also follow me on either one using those widgets. The twitter one you simply have an extra step of clicking on my name then you can click follow, if you are logged into twitter. I typically use them to post announcements of my videos being posted on YouTube (which you can also follow me on).

 

List of things I posted this week.

Where Magic May Grow
Plane Poem
Mindless Monologue
Out The Window
Intro To YouTube

DreamWard Bound (week of July 12- July 19,2014)

success

As  most of you know I went on a week-long vacation last week. As I stated in my “I’m Back” post I got a bunch of writing done. I still have a few more things that I will be posting, but I edited and copied them on this blog all in one day. The lack of finishing posting the other posts is because I was switched over to a normal employee at work, instead of being in training mode, which meant more work at my day job causing me to be burnt out when I got home.

I also took an evening to change-up the site a bit. I realized that my footer was very hard to see in the last layout so moved it to the sidebar. I also took away the image header, since I’ve posted images in each post.

That is all I did this week though, so here are some things that I am planning.

The first thing is that I will be recording a video later today that will explain what my YouTube channel is for. I will also be inviting my audience to give me suggestions of things they want to see, which you are welcome to do here, also. This video will be the start of a revamping of the channel. It will be more focused in a way, but also more free. My idea is that I will use YouTube as an extension to this blog, which means there will be more truly original stuff there. I will be reading my poems, short stories, original monologues, and talking about my journey.

With these changes, this blog will be seeing a few changes. Your likes or comments will be how I choose what original content I will be recording. Plus, you will be seeing more videos (hopefully). I will also be trying do write more. Basically I will be trying to do more than I have. I have a long way to go to reach my end goals and will be pushing towards that.

I will also be starting a more interactive series on YouTube that will have you and my watchers picking what I write. I will record short little videos that explain a story idea. Each video will have a main character idea, basic plot idea, and what I envision the final project to be. At the end of each video I will ask if you would want to see or read it. If someone does, I will write that story, and unless it’s a novel or a script that I can actually make I will post it here.

My focus is on growing my YouTube channel right now because that is where I have the most to grow. I write, post and am getting views on this site already. Right now, with this blog I feel like I just have to keep on keeping on. My YouTube channel is in rough shape and it’s time to make it better.

Now for my long list of what I posted this week.

A Beach scene
Lost Colony (a Play Review)
Goes The Clock
Self-Searching
No Sleep
Thoughts on Flying
Late Fourth Of July
I’m Back

Let me know what you are thinking about all of this and thank you for reading.