Kate Townley Smith

I’m really not a great blogger, and in the next few posts, I’ll be playing catch-up. I mostly want to get this down so that I have it later. I also already like reading the posts I’ve already written. It’s good to do when I feel overwhelmed or uninspired.

Something that I notice happening is that opportunities I had never even thought about are coming my way with increasing frequency. I’ve been at this one month, and I’ve made a lot of progress. Part of the progress I’m making has been planned, and I’ve followed steps that I outlined for myself. But a significant portion of my progress can be attributed to things I didn’t plan. It’s almost as if by declaring myself to be an artist has attracted opportunities.

I mentioned earlier that I took a course at Chattanooga State on Dan Miller’s 48 Days to the Work You Love. I signed up for this before I was done with maternity leave, and even before I’d decided to pursue art full-time. This course was very good for me for many reasons. Obviously, the course material was immediately relevant. Dan has a good way of organizing material – his book is very encouraging and motivational, while still providing concrete action steps. So often, books are either full of inspiration, but I’m left with questions about how to move forward, or books are full of dense, hard to slog through data that I really don’t read.

I had already read Dan Miller’s book – my sweet husband got it for me last year when I was struggling with career direction. I knew I wanted to change careers, but I didn’t know what I wanted to do. Of course, I did know, but I was discounting the option of being an artist. I read Dan’s book, but I still wasn’t ready to commit to the artist idea. I was so negative that I didn’t see how I could make a living as an artist, never mind that many others did exactly that. I didn’t even do the exercises in the book. The class helped me take the material step by step and the “peer pressure” of being in the class forced me to actually write out answers. This was HUGE and make the class well worth the money. I highly recommend a class if you find yourself procrastinating or skimming through work.

Meeting each week was also a big boost – the class was full of supportive people who listened kindly to other folks’ ideas. But even more motivating was that I had to give a status report each week. Now, there was no actual penalty for not making progress, but I know myself well. I would have been terribly embarrassed if I had to say out loud that I had figured out my dream, but in a week’s time I had not made any progress towards it.

Most signficantly, I met a very energizing person in Chattanooga – Jamie Rohrbaugh, the leader of the class. She is a very good class leader and coach because she’s a very positive person. One thing I really believe (even though it’s tough in practice sometimes!) is that surrounding yourself with positive people improves your own energy and outlook. She has a coaching website that I recommend checking out. She’s going to start up an Eagles group for people who want to start and/or expand their busiensses. I would never have know about this if I had not signed up for the class. AND, she and her husband have a photography business. Not only is she familiar with start up businesses, she knows about art-related business as well.

Overall, it’s amazing how things start to fall into place, even when you don’t plan it out.