Love Yourself. That phrase can be defined in a few different ways. Today I am defining it as self care. It’s something that is easy to neglect. We have a finite amount of time in our day and we have to choose how to use it.  I am a homeschool mom to a teen, a wife and a blogger. I need to do the housework. I have hobbies( many of which also get documented on my blog). I feel like I am always planning what fills my time. That can very well mean I sacrifice taking care of me. There is a lot of advice on the internet about organizing your time. This isn’t a post about that. Rather, I am choosing to focus on sharing something I find both relaxing and energizing.

Within the last few years, I have turned my attention to art journaling. It wasn’t always an easy thing for me to do. For a long time I felt as though an art journal page needed some sort of deep meaning behind it. It felt forced and the pages just didn’t get made. As I relaxed and just began to experiment, pushing paint around the page,I stopped worrying about what the page needed to be and I just created. There was no ulterior motive and the page didn’t necessarily have an end goal. It just was. A concept that was very freeing. I began to crave more structure to my pages. I wanted to improve my artistic skills. To do so, I signed myself up for a few classes ( ok, a lot. I have issues with wanting to do all of the things).

I am not saying you need to start art journaling too. What you probably need to do is to choose one thing, one hobby which allows you to just create. It doesn’t matter if it’s crochet or quilting. You need to allow yourself the freedom of creating without self criticism. When I say self criticism, I want to emphasize that I mean it’s not ok to beat yourself up over a project. It’s ok to say something like ” I wish I was better at drawing noses.” That kind of criticism gives you a goal to focus on. It’s not ok to tell yourself the project sucks or that you will never be good at drawing.

Once you find your one thing, create for awhile. It doesn’t matter if it isn’t perfect. Over time, you will find you can choose an area to focus on for improvement and you can do so in a constructive manner. At this point, you can find help. Look to the internet for advice on how to improve. Take a class. Find a friend or mentor. The result is that you practice self care. You love yourself by focusing on a nonessential part of your life. It helps you relax and re-energize your mind. It’s crazy but, when you take the time to do this, you actually become more effective at dealing with the everyday planning and activities. More stuff gets done.

This year, I have made it a personal goal to improve my portrait drawing. I feel that my challenges are creating proper skin tones, drawing facial features and drawing hands. I chose to sign up for a few classes to continue improving my art skills in my art journals which include: Lifebook 2017 and Let’s Face It 2017. I chose to practice self care and love myself by gifting me time to create and explore a specific art skill. The art project you see today is one of the first completed lessons. It’s a self portrait based on a photo of me. I am hoping by the end of the year to see improvement in my work. I will be sharing much of what I do here on the blog and I hope you will join in a similar journey. What will you gift yourself? Feel free to share what you do to practice self care and  re-energize your mind in the comments below.