At the start of this year I set myself a few challenges such as “read 25 books in 2025” and “paint 25 paintings in 2025”. The other challenge I set myself was to write 25 blog posts in 2025 and you are now reading my 25th!

This has been a difficult challenge for me. I have had a blog for many years now but in recent years I have been neglecting my blog in favour of posting on social media.

This year however I decided that I wanted to reduce how much time I spent focusing on social media and short form content. I didn’t want to give up sharing about my art work and my processes but social media was becoming too stressful to keep up with, too distracting and it didn’t really align with my personal values. It took up too much time away from creative processes such as painting and crafting- the things that really give me joy. One of the things that I do enjoy doing however is writing. I decided to use my own blog more, to post less often but about things that felt important to me- not for likes and external validation.

At the beginning of this year I started off well writing blog posts but found I was still putting too much pressure on myself to write posts that I thought other people would want to read. Over the year I began to question what I was posting for and how I could post regularly without compromising my values.

I decided to totally take the pressure off- my posts didn’t need to look a certain way, or follow any arbitrary guidelines or be “successful” to be worthwhile. I decided to put away my perfectionism and just post about the things that I felt interested in or proud of, the posts could be just a photograph or a few lines and more like a sketchbook where I record some of my ideas and processes rather than a polished professional website.

Taking the pressure off in this way ironically has meant posting a lot more, and content that is a lot more meaningful.

And on that note, here are a few of my recent life drawings. Hope you have had a good Autumn and are on the way to completing any goals you set for yourself this year.