30 events and finding it hard to sleep

Gretchen Rubin once said, “Action is the antidote to anxiety.” And honestly? She’s right.

At the beginning of September, I had almost 30 events lined up before the end of the year - and I’ll be real with you - I was overwhelmed. Like, finding-it-hard-to-sleep overwhelmed.

My brain was ping-ponging between excitement and panic. So, my coping mechanism? A good old-fashioned list.

There’s something so grounding about writing everything out. Every job, every prep task, every tiny thing that needs doing. And yes, I absolutely added tasks to the list after completing them just so I could cross them off (you can’t tell me that doesn’t feel good!). It gave me a sense of control and a small dopamine hit every time I marked something as done. If you ever find yourself staring down a mountain of work, especially in the creative or event space, I highly recommend giving it a try. When everything starts feeling a bit too much, action really is the best antidote.

Now, speaking of taking action - let’s talk about practice.

Here’s a little peek behind the scenes of my prep for Paspaley (read all about their event, here). For this event, I ran through a lot of practice sketches (and I mean a lot). Before I store them away, I wanted to show you a small portion of the stages of my face portrait practice. 

You can see I played with sizing, skin mediums, angles. The one second from the left (top) was one of my final iterations which I was finally happy with. 

Practice is one of those things that can feel repetitive and sometimes a bit tedious, but it’s also where you build confidence. Whether it’s managing a full event calendar or perfecting your creative craft, both come down to one thing: taking small, consistent action. You don’t need to have it all figured out. You just need to start, and before you know it, you’re creating your best work yet.