Inspiration | April 11

April 11, 2014
by Stephanie Pellett
2 min read
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Inspiration April11

I loved this post about working smarter, not harder. The ideas about keeping track of what you’ve done (instead of only what you have to do) and automating your life are so great. 

An awesome reminder of how we can all boost our creativity every day.

I giggled at these feminist pick up lines. They’d all probably work on me!  

The Dear Clementine posts are always on point. I loved this one about what to do if people in your life are constantly being competitive with you. “Listen. Unless you’re Charlie Sheen, there is no winning at life. There will always be someone with a bigger house, sweeter children, and a better career. […] You can’t let others throw you off your game, Player. No matter the cards you’ve been dealt, it’s your hand and it’s the best hand in the house.”

Marie’s weekly video came at exactly the right time for me this week: How to Find Your Passion. 

I loved this article from Nubby Twiglet on building an audience and ideas for creating content. “If you want an audience that’s engaged and keeps coming back for more, create genuinely helpful content.”

I was starstruck (wink wink) by this hand-printed galaxy wall. So great. 

How awesome is this manifesto!?

Stop waiting for permission. 

Leo reminds us that the hard stuff often matters the most.

When I saw this quote my heart said “amen!”.  

New-to-me Instagram accounts I’ve been loving: @getlostwith (a group of creative friends on a roadtrip) and @takeamegabite (colourful and delicious!). 

Some oldies-but-goodies: On being uncomfortable, The Non-Believer’s Guide to Easy Organization. 

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Bon weekend, toutlemonde! 

Around Here

April 25, 2012
by Stephanie Pellett
1 min read
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Around here, there’s been a lot of book-learnin’. A lot of library-goin’. A lot of sitting on a chair. Not a lot of sunlight.

Even still, around here there’s been a lot of small, quiet, magic moments. Like the time I learned how to make poached eggs. Or the time I ordered some pretty labels and a date stamp and some photo paper and made my own day. Or when I made ginger syrup and let it simmer all night, making my apartment smell divine. There was also the arrival of my sewing machine! And the completion of my first sewing project! And there have been a hundred other sweet moments lately: like hysterically laughing with your BFF in a way you only can after studying for hours, or eating a quiet lunch and sneaking in a few pages of a book, or finding great new music on 8tracks.

All in all, even though exams are stressful and sassy (in a bad way), it’s nice to take a second to be grateful for all the goodness I have in my life. Lucky girl.

(But man, am I ready to be done!)

Happy Wednesday.

Creative Coping

April 23, 2012
by Stephanie Pellett
4 min read
8 Comments

It’s paradoxical, but all my best creative ideas come to me when I’m too stressed or busy to pursue them. I remember being so confused by this during my first exam period, but excited too: I kept a notebook open next to my work and jotted down ideas all through my study day. It was a way to cope with my inevitable boredom at the long, monotonous hours of library drudgery. Two years later, and I’m still “blessed” with a surge of creativity right around the most stressful part of my year.

I know that many people work best under pressure, staying up all night to get an essay finished or cramming for an exam. I can’t work like that, personally: the mere idea of it stresses me out so much that it’s motivation to just get to work right now! That’s not to say that I don’t suffer from my fair share of procrastination. But I would much, much prefer to start as early as I can – that way I can try to stay healthy, and be able to take some time off, when I need to, so I don’t get burned out. And no, I’m not always able to do this, and yes, sometimes I have to stay up later than I’d like to finish things I didn’t start on time.

Last night, my brain wasn’t having any of it. I hadn’t cared for my body properly – I’d been eating strange meals, hadn’t gone for a run because it was pouring rain all day, hadn’t slept almost at all the previous night (probably also due to stress) – and so it was rebelling. I couldn’t concentrate, I was tired, bored, unfocused.. My sweet mama urged me to take a break, citing the oh-so-wise maxim: “an hour-and-a-half of solid work is worth 3 of half-hearted”. Amen, mama. So I decided to stop trying to force it.

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Battling Writer’s Block

September 28, 2011
by Stephanie Pellett
5 min read
11 Comments

I spend a lot of time moaning and complaining about how I just can’t think of anything to write about. When I relaunched my website last March, I made a vow to get serious about my content: to be more helpful & insightful.  This was a double edged sword of a proposition: first of all, it’s less fun and a great deal harder to write something important than it is to make a fun list or post pictures. Which means I ended up posting less, and agonizing over my writing. The flip side is that my content became a good deal more useful and hence rewarding for me to write. While I’ve since come to realize that my blog is a space for both types of posts – the easy & the helpful – it’s still hard to write.

And this doesn’t just apply to my blog. I’ve been trying to gear myself up for NaNoWriMo for years now! And yet every time the 1st comes around I just don’t..write. I just put it off. I make a barrier in my mind, with a sign which reads: “I can’t think of anything to write about” and then that’s that.

The thing is, I feel so good when I write. When I finally sit down and say to myself: “write a blog post..now!” and the words start to come, it feels great. I love the feeling. When I publish something, I get giddy. I’ve had blogs since middle school and written short stories since I was very small, but I’ve never made any effort to consciously improve my writing or my writing habits. I’ve never taken a creative writing course, or any type of writing course besides high school English. Yet writing is becoming increasingly more important to me. Which is why I think it’s time to start battling my writer’s block and taking the process of writing more seriously!

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