I am going through Darren Hardy’s Hero’s Journey: A Growth Adventure in Becoming a Modern Leader.  The objective is to prepare to be 21^st Century Leaders.  If his name sounds familiar, maybe you heard of him when he was the publisher of Success Magazine.  Maybe you have read one of his books; The Compound Effect, or The Entrepreneur Roller Coaster.  You can also check him out on his podcast, Darren Daily On-Demand.  During Hero’s Journey, one of the concepts that he presented is that if you have more than 3 priorities, you have too much on your plate. 

I have too much on my plate.

Art is always my first priority.  It’s what I want to do.  I recently accepted an opportunity to do caricature work.  It was a little bit challenging.  I had to approach the work in an entirely different way.  For one thing, I was used to building up the values (varying areas of dark and light) to evaluate my success at capturing a likeness.  Doing the caricatures, I was limited to 5 minutes and a sharpie marker.  Thankfully I caught on quickly and I was able to capture a likeness!

During the down time though, I decided that doing caricatures was another bunny trail, another distraction that took my focus off of my top 3 priorities; one of which is nurturing my creative soul.  I want to create work that others enjoy and even desire to own.

So, I am remembering my purpose, my goals, what really makes me happy.

“Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is the noble art of leaving things undone. The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non-essentials.” ~ Lin Yutang