Fresh Tracks

This morning's walk was after a night of snow that laid cover to all the old tracks. As I was walking, I was thinking that making tracks through fresh snow is like moving from the old year into a new one - venturing into the unknown with the goal of moving forward one step at a time.

I have lots of notebooks, journals, sketchbooks and yes, even a book specifically for GOALS. All of these are mostly blank because, in my mind, I am going to become a daily journaller, note-taker and sketcher, in reality, I may last a week before life takes over and the book moves from the bedside table to the desk, and eventually into the bookshelf. Every once in a while, I will pull one of these books out and find a former goal list. It's always quite funny reading the goals from 5 or 10 years ago. They are basically the same every year!

So I thought I would research some ways to help me move my goals forward from the depths of my bookshelf to actual achievement. Google is such a wonderful part of our lives. Type in a few key words into the search engine and up pops a plethora of articles, posts and answers to our queries. That's how I found this blog post on Skinny Artist that lays out how to make creative goals achievable.

Think Big
Get Specific
Set a Deadline
Make a Plan
Be Accountable

I have been thinking alot about where I want to go artistically in 2017, so I came up with 12 goals to work on over the next 12 months. Somehow breaking them into 12 segments seems sensible, as I can choose one goal a month as a focus. Some of these goals are already in the works and have commitments set; others are dreams at this point and need to have steps defined to work to their achievement.

So with all this in mind, I have set the following as my goals, dreams, ideas and plans for 2017. Some of them are 'thinking big', others have a deadline, but they all require planning and specifics to make them happen. And yes, some are the same old ones I have on those goal lists in my mountain of mostly-blank notebooks.

Be creative every day - show up in the Studio
Blog weekly
Learn to paint alla-prima in oils
Do 3 painting challenges
Cull/organize art books & supplies
Take 3 art courses
Teach 3 art courses
Show my work in 6 Art Shows
Learn to photograph my artwork
Learn to video-tape my art process
Get my art into a gallery
Improve color mixing/color palette

Whew, that's alot! And now that I have shared them with the world (well the tiny piece of the world that follows my blog), the "be accountable" step will, hopefully, hold my feet to the fire.

As it's almost the middle of January, I am already working on achieving several of these goals. In my goals search, I happened across this post for a rotating goal list that uses post-it-notes to keep you on track. Might be something I will try!