I think I have mentioned that when I am not spending time on my own creative practice I work as a Digital Strategist. That means that I have spent 20 years developing visions and strategies, roadmaps and plans, for corporate customers. Imagine what a head-smacking moment it was recently when I thought, “I should use all of that experience for myself and craft a vision and strategy for my quilting work!” Duh. You’d think I would have thought of that before now. But I hadn’t so I decided that sometime before Q1 was over, I would sit down and think about my vision. And then, what do you know, I suddenly had lots of quiet time for reflection before the end of March while I was sheltering-in-place.
I know that there’s been a lot of push-back on the idea that people should consider this time as a blessing and be using it for all sorts of productive things. So just to be clear, I recognize the reality that just getting through these monotonous days should be considered productive enough. If you are not sitting at home writing the next “King Lear” but are instead binge-watching some frivolous show, good for you! However, if you are sick of Netflix and do want to spend some time thinking about the vision for your creative practice, I can help walk you through it.
The first thing that you should know about setting your vision is that it sounds a lot more difficult than it is. The word “Vision” can bring on trepidations because it seems like it should be something profound, something that one labored over for weeks in order to craft the perfect statement. It’s not. I mean, yes, if you have to inspire soldiers to march into battle or thousands of employees to come together to do the impossible, you might want to wordsmith it a bit. But, for your own purposes, you merely need to sit down and think about what you want your creative practice to look like in ten years and then back up to consider your practice in five years and in one year. Close your eyes and imagine, envision yourself at your creative practice in ten years. What are you doing? What’s important to you at that time? What milestones have you achieved? How about five years from now? Next year? When you have a clear picture, write it down. Done. And, I have even made a template that you can fill out.
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