Death and Deadlines

Playing hide and seek with motivation

Ta-dah! Look! It’s my first Substack post! The process of switching over has been pretty simple and (fingers crossed) you won’t have any problems reading my posts. There’s no need to subscribe again and you can always read these notes in your email—it just looks a little different. There are still details that I have to work out, but I wanted to publish this and get started. If you have any questions please reach out and I can help. So are you ready? Let’s go!

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Death and deadlines: sometimes it’s easier to find excuses than it is to find motivation.

Do you ever ask yourself why motivation is so hard to find? According to the ever-growing to-do list there are so many things we need to do that it’s easy for creative work to take a backseat. When it comes to doing the work, we find excuses more easily than inspiration. Anyone else feel this way? Any others out there “procrasti-cleaning”? 🙋🏻‍♀️

When I’m struggling, two things that motivate me to get more done are death and deadlines.

Why death? Because when I think about dying I realize I don’t want to die with so much of my art still in me. There are lots of things I want to make and, while I think I have time, I might not. Better not waste the opportunities I have thinking I’ll get to it eventually. Better not wait for the perfect time, because there’s really no such thing.

Thinking about death may be a morbid way to get motivated but if I’m being honest it’s something I think about more often now as I’m (ahem) getting older. At some point I won’t be able to make art. Do I want to regret then the things I wish I had done or seen? NO!

Future me would be really angry if she saw me wasting all my time.

Nature Meditations

Now onto deadlines. Things like an art competition, an event, they have a deadline imposed by someone else. You can put off the work until the very end if you work well under pressure or you can work at a slow and steady pace. It doesn’t really matter as long as you make the deadline.

Deadlines are great motivators for me. Give me two weeks to finish something and I can get it done. Give me unlimited time and more than likely I will accomplish nothing.

The freedom of no deadline means I waste a lot of time thinking and spend very little time doing.

The pressure and the fact that it’s a non-negotiable time frame are what get me working and not wasting time. The photos in this post are an example of work created for a deadline. Minted.com has lots of challenges for artists and graphic designers. They’re free to enter and offer the possibility of winning prizes and licensing opportunities. There’s a calendar that gives you an idea of when challenges launch and once they do you have two weeks to submit your work.

Without the motivation of the Minted challenge these images might never have been completed.

Layers of Skye

Wonder and Serenity

And speaking of deadlines, there’s this newsletter. My goal is always to send it out before the end of the month. Well, I’m still writing on September 29! Oh, the pressure! This deadline is negotiable and self-imposed but I still want to honor it and usually get the emails out on time.

What do you think? Do death and deadlines motivate you? Do you have a different strategy or frame of mind to get motivated? Let me know in the comments!

• Skip to the Fun Parts: Cartoons and Complaints About the Creative Process. This is a funny book we can all relate to. After buying and reading many motivational-type books this was just a fun read.

• The Business of Fine Art Photography: Art Markets, Galleries, Museums, Grant Writing, Conceiving and Marketing Your Work Globally a much more serious book that I just started and that looks very promising.

There you go: my first newsletter published on Substack. I’d love to know what you think, please leave a comment below.

Thank you for reading, I truly appreciate it!

Next month... Washington discoveries and magic pills.