Fighting paralyzation

Monkey here, to talk about a recent experience of mine fighting fear/inaction, and how I got out of it.

So the other day (on my day off from my retail job), I was sitting around compiling my list of things to do, and it sort of got overwhelming. It was all great stuff, but I also tend to put huge projects on my to-do lists, which I find I need to stop doing. My list was looked like this:

-rebrand Little Yeti
-finish Hyphen paintings
-digital illustrations
-card designs
-zine fest reg. update

Now while all this stuff sounds good, besides the "zine fest reg. update," these are all quite hefty projects. "rebrand Little Yeti" probably consists of at least 10 hours of design work, 5 hours or so of photo editing, and about a week's worth of me stumbling through html and xml trying to hobble together a working website.

Note to self and to everyone else: don't put items like this on your to-do list. On top of that, my enormous students loans are going to start coming into repayment, and my retail job definitely does not cover them, so I'm going to have to figure out some way to make more money pretty quickly. This anxiety, plus a monstrous to-do list did not bode well, and it just stressed me out and made me sit and stare at the computer screen.

Thankfully, Eve was around to let me talk things through with her, and then I quickly just had to start doing something. I started by throwing away the to-do list and just working on a digital speed paint. Even if it was just a quick little in-color sketch in photoshop, it was the act of creating something and finishing it that sort of broke me out of my slump.

I know I'm extremely fortunate that I have someone supportive that I can talk to. If you don't have someone you can share with, talk it out in the comments below, or stop by our facebook page and drop us a note. We will certainly do our best to send some positive energy your way and some encouragement.

If you don't feel comfortable reaching out, we highly suggest keeping a journal, or writing it out, or finding a quiet place and talking it out to yourself. Just getting all your anxieties and fears and worry out is the first step to overcoming them. When you can "get it all out" and really go back and realize that it's probably not as fatal as it seems, that's when you can push forward and start doing small actions that will help propel you forward towards big actions.

Take things in bite-sized chunks. Although I'm not going to completely rebrand Little Yeti tonight, you can be sure that I might just double-check the typography in one design, or I might make a little tweak here and there to another. It sounds stupid, but really just putting one foot in front of the other works.

Anyway, I hope this helps and keep on keepin' on!