"Reverse January" and turning up the heat on dreams

Written by Amber -

As creative people, we've always got fresh, new ideas simmering. You know, the 'hit me in the shower,' 'woke me up at 3am,' 'wrote it on a paper napkin' kind of ideas. They were super exciting at the time and they're logged in a pile of sketch books somewhere, but unfortunately, somewhere in the "regular routine" of life, they get lost in the mix.

Reversing our time:

We're both "all in" people, so when we promise a design project or photography session/event to clients, we give them our 40(+) hour work-week-focus. As much as we love doing that (and fully realize we are working our dream jobs), we've also noticed that all of those personal ideas have been getting cold on the back burner. We decided that wasn't okay. Like money, I believe we can easily slip into the habit of flippantly spending our time on things that don't matter.

Please don't hear me say, "Our work / clients don't matter." That's not what I mean—we love our clients and the projects we produce for them! BUT, if we really want to turn the heat up on some of our own projects & ideas, we have to be intentional and prioritize what's most important to us. SO, we've decided to rearrange our month in order to make space for creativity and brainstorming.

We've been calling this month our "Reverse January." We've reversed our 5-6 day work time / 1-2 day personal time so that instead, we're spending those 5-6 days on personal projects and 1-2 days on our clients. In order to make this work, we certainly had to plan ahead (again, intentionally). We still wanted to serve our individual clients well, so we had to pick and choose the projects we'd accept and we worked ahead accordingly. 

Turning up the heat on our dreams:

Alright. So what have we been doing with our "Reverse January" so far? Well, we've been sleeping in more than normal, working out & exercising, watching Netflix less often, spending much more time in prayer, reading our Bibles more, spending time daily on individual learning / reading topics, scouring magazines / articles / websites for the latest trends, doing creative exercises (like coloring, Legos and nature photography), watching sunrises and sunsets, playing games, doing some self-evaluation, and opening up all of our old sketch books of ideas that have been jotted down. Honestly, it's been the most revitalizing, refreshing, healthy time of my life! 

Yesterday, Chad and I spent a solid three hours hanging out at a coffee shop discussing one of the biggest ideas we've had in a long time. If you follow this blog or our social media channels, you've probably seen the minimalist posters Chad has been creating about the stories of the Bible. He's been posting them publicly since March of 2013, but he's been creating them on and off since early 2012. He was leery to share this very personal project at first, because it was just that—personal. It was a small creative outlet he felt God had given him at a time that he needed one.

After a couple years, it's impossible for us to ignore the fact that this project is far from small. The positive response we've received on individual posters, blog posts Chad has written and on the project as a whole has been a little overwhelming, actually. In a good way!

Mid-2013 we began realizing that we may really have something here with this idea! And imagine... how cool would it be to make this an actual "thing" so that the greatest stories ever written could get out in this fresh, creative way to even MORE people?! Over the last several months, some of our closest friends have become our sounding boards, we've talked with some professionals, and we've collected all kinds of chicken-scratch thoughts. Yesterday though, we recorded all of that in one place and discussed the logistics necessary to make this a "thing." We're pumped. Seriously.

We can't wait to share with you what some of those logistics are and some of the ideas that surround these Minimalist Bible Posters Chad has created. We think it's going to be a pretty BIG deal, God-willing and with your support and buzz-spreading. 

Stay tuned!!! :)