Making time in your day for what you value.

I’ve been wanting to give myself a 30-day challenge that will support both my writing and image-making and that doesn’t feel too overwhelming. I decided to do 30 days of black-out poetry with a simple image – and to spend no more than 30 minutes on it.

Black out poems are created when you take a text – could be from a book, a newspaper, or magazine, and you cross out the majority of words so that you end up with an entirely new text – which could be a couple sentences, a poem, any message that you find interesting. Austin Kleon is well-known for doing black-out poems. Check out his article about it here.

With these parameters I started. I found the process surprising and interesting, and really enjoyed allowing the imperfection and treasure hunting qualities of searching different texts for jewels. 

You can follow my progress here.

30 day challenges are one of the ways that you can create a structure to support a learning goal or a habit you want to cultivate.

I’ve talked before about why a life-long commitment to learning is so important. If you are feeling like it’s too late to learn something new, read this post for five things you can do to help you begin.