As you may know, I joined Seth Godin’s first run of The Creative’s Workshop last year because I wanted to start a daily blogging practice. Once I started writing every day in the workshop, my memoir began to come to life.
In typical Laura fashion, I gave it all. Piling on the new to-dos, I wrote daily for my blog and my book. It seemed like the correct approach at the time, but that volume of writing became unsustainable – especially once the pandemic hit and I simultaneously manifested an eye infection.
While the entire world hopped on Zoom, I was forced to a daily routine of trying to get medical help in midst of a global pandemic. There were multiple trips to the emergency room because no doctors would see or take me seriously over the phone. Then there were hot compresses, baby shampoo eyelid washes, drops and ointments several times a day. I was finally seen by an ophthalmologist in late July.
Jumping forward to now, last year seems like a bomb went off, followed by months of cleanup. So many things were purged out of my life – fruitless networking events, superficial lunches and drinks, putting on pants and makeup every weekday, stagnant relationships, a storage locker full of pointless stuff, three hour visits to the hairdresser…the list goes on and on.
It wasn’t just the pandemic. The insidious infection forced me to choose how and where I would expend the precious little screen time my eyes could afford. For the first time in a long time, I put what I needed ahead of how I could support others. That meant I took a big step back from my public online presence and directed my energy towards two things: keeping my podcast alive and the relationships that were birthed in the creative community of the workshop.
There were other disruptions along the way, but in the midst of the relentless outside world, a new sense of centeredness took hold within me. It was the peace of having fewer commitments, the relief of rediscovering my passion for writing, and the joy of connecting with other creatives. Their outburst when I put my writing together with my long ignored photography kept me going.
At my core, I am a creative. I love to explore, figure things out, and make stuff. I create words, pictures and awareness-raising conversations. And I’m ready to create more in public.
Knowing this, I identified one more obstacle to becoming sustainable. My website had become a dog’s breakfast of remnants and placeholders. I had moved the Free Your Inner Guru® Podcast to its own site in November, but what remained was a cumbersome mess.
I revamped the site over the weekend. (Remember, I like to make stuff!) My criteria for choosing the theme were different this time – anything to make public writing easier and bring my fine art photography back in a meaningful way.
(I also needed to put my role in Wondery’s Guru podcast into proper perspective, but that’s a story for a different day.)
Counterintuitively, I need a blog that isn’t reliant on a giant hero image for every post. My old theme looked like crap if there was no featured image. Most days I want to share a photo, but some days I just want to write.
I took Seth Godin’s blog as an example. As I discovered during his recent interview on Free Your Inner Guru, he’s been blogging every day for over 11 years. No one is sitting around choosing and setting up a new image for a new blog page over there every day! Taking heed, I veered towards a minimal design.
The home page of the refreshed site is – how shall I say it – a little“face forward” for my current comfort zone, but I’m willing to stretch. It is lauratucker.com, after all!
The last 9 months have been a gestation period, filled with behind the scenes creating, organizing and healing. And writing. While there’s a list of tweaks as long as my arms, there nothing left…
…other than begin again.
