Creative Mock & Submit - Jan

 

For this year's monthly challenge, I'm setting the goal to create a design every month with the added caveat that I have to submit it to a company I love as well.  I walked away stronger, after doing my 2019 fear-based challenge.  In 2020 my challenge revolved around sharing my poetry publically (big fear!) and again facing my fear, head-on, was super rewarding.  For 2021, I'm embarking on something I've always wanted to do (design work) but have conveniently side-stepped putting myself out there.  My plan is to work on a new design every month, publish it on my blog and submit the design at the same time.  I'll give updates during the year if the designs end up being used (or not).  I have a huge fear that my work will be rejected.  The idea of doing this behind the scene sounds very comforting but the blog's accountability hopefully stops me from chickening out!

*deep breath*

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Monthly Poetry Challenge - January

in the depths of
the bush sings
winds which
carry tiny finches
through who in silence
dive and speak
the cities are burning
dry earth, red sun
and another bird
with frantic flight
trapped by it's
own constant sight.



Note: It's been hard not to think about the bushfires happening in Australia.  I got the imagery for this poem as I was driving back from our local swimming hole, past some bush that had burnt and past others that hadn't.  

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Monthly Poetry Challenge 2020

So *drum roll* my new monthly project for 2020 is to complete one poem per month.  I stepped away from a lot of things when dad died, almost all of my creativity pursuits except for writing, I wrote a lot and found a bucketload of joy in it.  Writing doesn't demand an investment of money to get started, you can do it anywhere and you just need to tap/pencil/pen/think away.  There's a bigger dream that's been brewing of having a published poetry book and I think I'm going to explore that idea more.  It's just a little seedling of a thought right now but I'm a big believer in putting things out to the Universe, doing the work (as Steven Pressfield would say) and seeing where that journey will lead you.

As always, you're all welcome to join in on the monthly poetry challenge.  

Very very loose guidelines - totally okay if you fall off the bandwagon, just take that leap of faith and give it a go, that's all that is required :)

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Year of Fear - January

I hopped across the rocks to carefully position the camera on the other side. There's this moment where I almost slip and I tell myself to slow down and be calm. My heart is pounding, I have an instant headache, a sudden urge to visit the bathroom and all because I'm really afraid to do the next thing coming.

Okay, lets do a little catch up before I literally dive in. Firstly, some perspective, I never put my head under in the shower. To wash my hair I just lean back to rinse never letting the water run over my eyes. I've developed a set of swimming styles that let me avoid putting my head under, which means I feel like a really inadequate swimmer and I'm also scared of heights. All of this means, when I go for a swim I find the spot closest to the water, slide my body in (slowly!) and make sure my head stays well above. When I thought about doing a year of fear project, jumping into water was a non-brainer, a definite fear for me.

This Summer (in Australia) we've been swimming in our local water hole daily and I've been talking about my fear challenge and thinking about which rock I would jump off. I'd also began to pay attention when Ben and Lowy would jump in, asking questions and getting some solid pointers. Somewhere around the end of December I did my first mini jump in preparation which was utterly awful, I didn't hold my nose, I jumped in a weird, forward-leaning, style which meant I had water go up in places it shouldn't. Ben and Lowy suggested I try not to replicate whatever style I performed during that mini jump. When the first of January rolled around I chose a slightly higher position to jump from but this time, my brain decided mid-way through the jump that I actually didn't want to jump which resulted in an especially uncool jump style. Ben told me what I did, was probably the only thing I could do that would result in being hurt, oh yeah and my boobs didn't enjoy the landing (tighter swimmers next time!). Which brings us to today's jump (or at least from when these notes were written!) where I went down by myself, set up my new camera and came back around to do my jump. I did a lot of pacing, playing with my ear buds before I yelled out “year of fear” and committed to diving into nature knowing she had my back. Guess what? It went really well, it felt super amazing after I had jumped to then swim up to the surface and open my eyes in the process (goggles help!) a slow stretched out moment of bravery. As I surfaced I turned to face the camera and gave two thumbs up. I or you will never see those glorious two thumbs up because when I went to retrieve the camera it had only recorded 5 seconds.

I've since jumped this rock or jumps like it almost everyday of January. We have a handful of swimming holes we rotate and so the footage below is Ben recording the day after the failed 5 seconds of footage. To look back on the clip is completely laughable and so crazy to think I was (or still am) scared to even just step into the water. I've set higher jump goals for the year and one really really big jump that I have given myself till December to concur which I'll get Ben to film when I do it. Mostly I'm already so hugely proud of myself. Even though my step down is laughable it's this really big deal to me and I'm proud for literally stepping through and past what was holding me back previously

So the year of fear, is my new monthly challenge. I'm still trying to piece together what fear I'll pick each month, I already have a handful of ideas and realising a lot of my fears are based in social interactions so it will probably fall heavily into that scary social anxiety arena – eep!

Wish me luck!

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Floral Friday - Flower Arrangement

After a long hiatus on the Floral Friday front I'm happily back for this month's flower challenge. July's theme was to make a flower arrangement :) I'm sure, like a lot of creatives out there the thought of being a florist sounds super fun, so I loved this challenge.

I went with flowers and foliage from our garden and although the Australiana type bouquets are not typically my favourite I think it still had some charmed :)

I also used a glass juice bottle for a makeshift vase because my vase collection is rather minimal/non-existent.  Also, despite hinting at needing my little floral arrangers (I got whilst thrifting here) I found them not the most helpful :P Oh well live and learn!

Floral Fridays is a monthly photography project with different themes each month. This series is about fun and taking time out to smell the flowers. To play along, please email Trishie (trishie@underlockandkeyblog. com) for next month's theme

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Floral Friday: Made Me Smile

This week's Floral Friday is all about flowers that 'made me smile' which I love. I've chosen a photo I took on our trip to Port Macquarie, a couple of weeks back now. Having just dropped Ben back at the airport on Wednesday (gone for another 6 weeks) it was a nice way to cheer myself up, looking through our holiday snaps.

I feel like I've been choosing quite cliched flowers for my Floral Fridays but I'm not going to lie big colourful hibiscus make me happy and definitely remind me of my favourite season, summer. By the way, I'm desperately trying to hold onto any glimpse of Summer - unfortunately I'm also currently wearing a jumper :P

I took this photo using my canon eos 3 film camera and 800 lomography film.  I'm really loving lomography's film, I feel the colours are so nice for the price :) When I was researching hibiscus flowers I read about how they are unfortunately attacked by a variety of bugs which made me focus in on all those poor little leaf holes - get better plant!

Floral Fridays is a monthly photography project with different themes each month. This series is about fun and taking time out to smell the flowers. To play along, please email Trishie (trishie@underlockandkeyblog. com) for next month's theme

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Floral Friday: Something Romantic

This month's floral Friday challenge was something romantic so I went nice and cliched for this one with a pink rose *cheese*

I love the month of February - Ben and I recently celebrated four years together and although he isn't physically here to do fun date things, I can't wait for his return - less than a week! I'm sure there will be much romance to come :)

Floral Fridays is a monthly photography project with different themes each month. This series is about fun and taking time out to smell the flowers. To play along, please email Trishie (trishie@underlockandkeyblog. com) for next month's theme

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