This week I’m reclaiming small pockets of time for creativity. A simple list of joys turned into a reminder that I’m already living the rhythm I hoped for. Today, I’m digging back into my Liminal Days journal and working through The Artist’s Way Week Two tasks, starting with listing twenty things I enjoy doing, and then narrowing it down to two of those things to focus on incorporating into this week. The goal is to train myself to start grabbing bits of time to squeeze in creative acts or other activities that feed my soul.

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100 Liminal Days is an experimental project of embracing my current transitional season after exiting my business by sharing an honest, real-time account of my self-initiation experience in daily posts. I’m sending shorter weekly recaps only via my newsletter. Visit Day 1/100 to learn more and sign up in the footer of this page to get the weekly recaps delivered to your inbox.

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Twenty Things I Enjoy Doing

The exercise is to list twenty things I enjoy doing and then put a date next to it to show the last time I did that thing. This list can also become inspiration for my future Artist’s Dates.

1. Hiking – 9/9/2025
2. Painting – 8/9/2025
3. Writing – today and every day
4. Reading – today and most days
5. Meeting new people – 9/10/2025
6. Listening to live music – 7/18/2025
7. Making waffles – 8/9/2025
8. Taking roadtrips – Family Reunion – 6/7/2025
9. Drawing – here and there – drawing my MJ art on Saturday this week!
10. Bike riding – ??
11. Swinging outside – ??
12. Going to the library – ??
13. Gardening and playing with plants – today
14. Learning new things – always
15. Trying new foods – 9/10/2025
16. Dancing to EDM – been a minute
17. Hitting golf balls – probably more than a year ago – need my shoulder in working order.
18. Swimming – 8/6/2025
19. Baking sweets and giving them away – ??
20. Making birthday cards for my friends – 8/28/2025

The idea behind listing out things I enjoy is meant to give me something specific to aim for in my Artist’s Dates and as I go about my day incorporating little creative moments. Looking at my list, most of what I came up with are things I am already doing fairly regularly. But the two things I want to work into my week for the next couple of months are hiking and baking sweets.

This week, I’ve already been on a glorious hike and realized I want to do that weekly until it gets too cold for me. And the fall weather also has me wanting to bake! Maybe I’ll make some chocolate chip pumpkin bread soon. Yum.

So today’s emergent action is to add one hike per week to my schedule and order ingredients to bake a chocolate chip pumpkin bread loaf. I can already imagine the smell of my favorite fall treat as it cools on the counter!

A Mindset Shift About My Time

The purpose of this task is to start winning more autonomy with our time, but as I’ve reflected on this, I am overwhelmed with gratitude because I have such a beautiful gift of spacious time. Something has shifted in me as I’ve worked on this project. Where I previously have felt like this liminal space is uncomfortable and never-ending, now I am beginning to see it as the gift it is.

In my Daily Pages today, I wrote about how I was feeling resistance and procrastinating to write the blog post for today. I am totally enjoying writing these posts, but for some reason today, I just wanted to mess around the house and not be productive. The thought trail started when I made a comment about most of my days being slow and flexible and how Mondays are my favorite now. Then I asked myself this question:

What would I do everyday if I didn’t have this 100 Liminal Days writing project?

Here’s a short excerpt from my Daily Pages:

I think I would read a lot. And for damn sure I’d still end up writing in my journals at least! So I’m literally already doing exactly what I’d do if I could do anything in the world. If I could take care of the house, pets, and plants, talk to neighbors, go for walks and hikes and coffee meet ups, journal, read, and write shit that people care about, visit family, go to church, take classes, get massages and IVs and time in the sauna, go to breathwork, cook dinner, meditate, do qigong…these are things I am already doing every single week! I am living such a dream.

But I also still want to earn an income doing work that aligns with my soul. I want to make the world a better place and offer my skills to others.

I also wrote a bit about this in my Liminal Days journal in the financial section, because what is coming up is this elevated awareness that having the financial stability to take my time in this liminal season is such a blessing.

Gratitude for Debt-Free Commitments

This morning, I was talking to my backyard neighbor over the fence as we do, and the topic of debt came up. I told the story of the moment I offloaded the last of my consumer debt for the first time in 2018. (This was before I borrowed money for my business!) Emily and I were following the Dave Ramsey debt snowball method, and the last thing I had to pay off was my 2015 Nissan Altima, a car I had purchased new and really loved! But since I was working remotely and dropping Emily off at the airport for work every week, it no longer made sense to have two parked cars at home when I was paying nearly $600/month to keep mine running, registered, and insured.

So, I became debt free when I drove my car to Carmax and sold it back to them, then took a Lyft home.

Emily and I have both been strongly debt averse, but I told myself that I could justify it when borrowing for the business. Borrowing money that I invested right back into payroll for my team felt like the right thing to do at the time, but in hindsight, I can see how I was not prioritizing myself in that repeated decision to lean on my business line of credit and allow the balance to grow too quickly. I’m grateful we’ve been able to pay off that business debt now too.

Paying off debt didn’t just change our financials. It bought me the spacious days where my work now begins. Getting debt free and diligently saving money (and let’s be honest, being married) has afforded me the opportunity to linger in this in between stage of my vocation, and when I think about the autonomy of my days and how much time I already have, I have so much gratitude for Emily and my past self who chose not to use debt for material belongings. Today’s tasks in The Artist’s Way have just reminded me of how much I have to be thankful for.

And still, I feel some guilt for indulging in this season. This is one of those things that keeps bubbling up to the surface. I just ordered a book my friend, Andrew, has been reading – You Are a Badass at Making Money by Jen Sincero. It’s time to start taking a closer look at my relationship with money.

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