01: Take time

"The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time." - Bertrand Russell

You’re Reading Adam Ming’s Daily Blog, This month I’m writing a series about taking time for your creative practice. Each daily post, includes an invitation to spend ten minutes developing your creative practice.

I’m doing this in October to complement any Drawing challenge you might be doing. I will be doing the classic Inktober.

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Today's 10-Minute Invitation: Take Time

Find a 10-minute slot in your schedule for creativity today.

Set an alarm, and when it goes off, engage in any creative activity of your choice. Don't judge the outcome; simply show up and create. If you're unsure what to do, try one of these:

1. Write freely about anything that comes to mind (Free Writing)

2. Sketch or doodle whatever you see around you

3. Hum a tune and record it on your phone

4. Take 10 photographs of ordinary objects from unusual angles

The goal is not to produce anything specific, but to show up and engage with your creativity for 10 uninterrupted minutes.

Take time and ignore the consequences

There is a quote in my bullet journal that says,

Time can’t be made, it can only be taken. It can be taken from you or it can be taken by you.

Here’s a list of ways that time could be taken from me today:

1. Watching youtube

2. Scrolling instagram

3. Worrying or Complaining

4. Tarrying between activities

5. Playing games on my phone

6. Entertaining the voice of resistance

7. Procrastinating on any number of things

Those are some ways my entire day can be eaten up, could I take time from some of that, could I take some time back?

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I already did.

I took ‘Ten Minutes’ to draw the first thing on the inktober list this morning.

1. Start early, Ignore everything else.

It’s a busy day. I have a deadline, and I have to take my kid to soccer practice, and I have to write this post. But it’s way easier to take time early in the day.

Start ten minutes early or be ten minutes late for everything else.

Taking ten minutes for yourself is such a powerful creative force.

Ten minutes scrolling is ten minutes taken from you, any you probably do it every day.

Ten minutes doing something you choose, that’s life changing when done daily.

I thought I could take a course in illustrating picture-books, and be getting work in 5 weeks. It took 2 years to get my first gig. 2 years of taking time daily.

It takes the little daily reps. I invite you to start, do a small project, maybe draw the inktober prompts with me.

Start today with Ten Minutes.

Find a 10-minute slot in your schedule for creativity today.

And for the next 31 Days, I’ll give you more invitations of little ways to develop your practice.

There are obstacles waiting to trip you up, ignore them for today. Start early ignore everything else and make something. Making something good is not the point, the point is to make something.

Hidden Time

I’m sure you can imagine some kind of perfect situation for creating. A cabin in the woods, a dream studio. Time away from the kids.

Would you be content with staying 10 minutes longer after lunch wife a sketchbook, staying in the car after it’s parked for ten minutes, drawing on the bus or subway, creating an imaginary doctor’s appointment.

Can you find a way to be intense about finding ten minutes for yourself when you know that the alternative is time being taken from you.

‘Time is money’ is nonsense’.

Time is life.

Don’t let your life be taken from you.

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2. Backpack

So I drew a backpack and it sucks.

It’s so far from what I envisioned, or what I want it to be. I have a lot of thoughts and feelings about it. But I’m very happy I took the time to draw it and I’m even going to post it on instagram. (I have an account for my ‘ugly work’)

The thing about having a habit is you get to draw lessons from them. I’m going to draw lessons from these ugly backpack.

I’m going to write down all the should haves and criticisms and make it into a list of things I could try tomorrow, and tomorrow I’m just going to do one thing from the list to make this better.

I have this post about making notes in your sketchbook here.

You can use a negative inner critique as a powerful ally.

So on this Day 1 of Inktober 2024, I’m going to take the positives.

• I showed up

• I started

And I’m going to turn the negative inner feedback and turn it into lessons.

Ps: I won an award yesterday ‘Children’s book of the year’, I’ll tell you about it soon.