Monica Grace

Monica Grace, Bricks, Drawing, Illustrating, Monica Leonelle, Nurturing Your Passion, Passion, Production, Reigniting Your Passion

Making Time For a Hobby That Takes a Lot of Energy

July 10, 2023
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by Monica Leonelle

Years ago, before I had my first child, I took numerous art classes. I mostly worked with pencil and practiced sketching and drawing. Right after I had my first child, the pandemic hit, so just as my kiddo was hitting 4-5 months and I was feeling ready to emerge from our cocoon, everything in-person was cancelled.

I stopped drawing. It wasn’t a good excuse, because let’s face it—there are thousands of online classes and drawing is a solitary affair that can be done from anywhere. The in-person classes were very motivating to me though. Being told what to draw, and really, being given the time (by myself) to meditate on my drawing, was so fulfilling to me.

This was a project from my very first class. It is probably one of my best ones that I ever produced, but the reality of why it is so strong is that we spent four weeks on our capstone instead of two, as we did in future classes. Putting double the hours into something while make genuine efforts to be better at it simply produces a better result. This was a *huge* creative lesson for me that I still think about on a regular basis.

Trying to draw while surrounded by the mess of my life—physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually—just overwhelmed me.

A year or two ago I tried to get back into drawing and was taking online classes that truly excited me. But I kept running into the issue that drawing was challenging for me. It was hard to level up my drawings without significant energy expenditure. And it was energy I did not seem to have or be able to maintain.

I longed to be one of those people who sketched everything around them, from pictures they had taken, to inspiring landscapes. But I simply wasn’t. I was too tired. And I already had a job—writing and running multiple businesses—that took up a lot of my creative energy. So even when something was fun to sketch, I didn’t feel like I should be spending my energy sketching. (Whether that is true or not, I still don’t know.)

One night after nursing I sat in bed and sketched this from a picture. It only took about 30 minutes, if that. It was fun, and I thought, “If I could do this every day, imagine where I’ll be in five years!” But I could not do it every day. Eventually, I had to accept that.

I learned a few things about my efforts to restart my hobby:

You can usually make an amazing piece of art with time, once you have the foundations. I learned how to draw very quickly. My main struggle was and is to this day having the patience to sit down and draw. Drawing to produce anything of commercial quality simply requires putting in a ton of hours, which I don’t feel like I have right now.
I could not maintain my writing schedule and practice drawing even 20-30 minutes a day. I tried several times. It was exhausting me. I ended up switching my hobby to LEGOs because it was also meditative without having to be creative. (Don’t get me wrong, you can be creative with LEGO, but you can also just follow the instructions. It feels a lot more like reading a book versus writing one, energetically.)
It was okay that I failed. I had started lessons to become a commercial artist and incorporate more art into my work. I just…Couldn’t. I couldn’t do it all at once. But I know my skill is still there, and I know my progress is beautiful and incredible, and I know I will return someday…Just not while raising small children. In the meantime, I’m working more on my writing and building upon my already fairly extensive catalog of books.

So much of my illustrating efforts have actually been a huge failure. I’m not the artist I want to be. I’m not doing what I want with my art yet. And I have no idea when I will be doing so.

I drew this in 20-30 minutes on Procreate and still love it to this day. I made a special laser-cutter pin edition with my husband’s help. (He’s a maker and engineer so we have everything—3D printer, laser-cutter, electronics, woodworking shop, etc.)

Since we were running our first Kickstarter campaign, I also drew this one so that there was something unique that we could hand out at 20Books. Russell Nohelty (my business partner) ended up giving away all of these to people he met.

But it’s okay. My journey in becoming a visual artist has brought me back to a childhood love of building, and I am much happier having LEGOs as my hobby right now. I can see a future where I have the book catalog I want and can slow down a bit with my writing, where I have more time throughout the day and can spend time drawing and illustrating things, and where I also have time to build LEGOs and play with my LEGO city too.

I think this is such a part of being an adult…Figuring out how to handle all of your responsibility while also carving out the smallest bit of time for yourself. One of my biggest fears is dying too young, and my second biggest fear is reaching retirement age and not being able to retire. But my third biggest fear is reaching retirement age and having nothing I’m excited about. I feel like that third fear is handled, at least. I have so much I’m excited to occupy my time with, and I’m able to do quite a bit of it now, while also feeling so excited to have more time to do more of it later.

Some live for travel and adventure, but for me? My dream is a wraparound porch, enough sunlight for a garden, and lazy mornings sipping tea, reading, and creating. And I’m planting the seeds of that dream today.

Monica Leonelle, Lifestyle, Monica Grace, Pursuing Your Passion, Spirituality

How To Set Emotional Boundaries

June 14, 2023
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by Monica Leonelle

What does it mean to not take responsibility for other people’s feelings?

Especially when they are pointing the finger at you, because you made them feel a certain way based on something you said or did?

It really just means a few things:

That you believe in them and their ability to handle you bringing your full self to the conversation—you don’t need to censor yourself, you don’t need to treat them with kiddie gloves
That you trust them to emotionally regulate themselves without getting involved or falling into a parent-child relationship with them
That you put them in charge of their own feelings—they get to process them and they get to take responsibility for their actions while processing them

It also means that you set emotional boundaries within yourself:

That you know your intentions—Were they to harm another? Were they to convince or persuade or cajole? Were you trying to get something from this person? (These are all for your to work through, regardless of the person’s reaction)
That you know your source of truth—not this other person, but yourself and (if relevant) your Higher Power (God, the universe, source, whomever)
That you let go of any responsibility for this person’s feelings (their feelings are their responsibility) which usually means working through any of your own trauma around shame (which also comes up as blame and guilt) or, if it’s not shame, looking at the five other core wounds: betrayal, rejection, control, abandonment, or injustice to see which fits

If you get into a situation where you need emotional boundaries, there is absolutely work for you to do—but many of us fall into the wrong work and instead believe that our trauma response—fight, flight, freeze, or fawn—is the work we need to be doing. But the real work is setting the emotional boundary, which usually means:

Checking in with ourselves about why we said what we said to make sure that our intentions are sound (and if not, that’s okay—just something to work through)
Figuring out why we feel any responsibility for the other person’s emotions, which is usually due to trauma/wounding that again, we are able to work through
Fighting the urge to react from a place of trauma; instead, choosing to go within and heal the trauma/wounding that is coming up, then respond

A few more important notes about this process:

It’s okay to mess it up—and you’re absolutely going to…The good news is you get to be human! You don’t have to be perfect or do it well, and your efforts to do this will look messy for a while
This is absolutely not a license to say anything you want or make personal attacks against others with no consequences—that is a completely separate thing that I do not condone at all, and it’s definitely something you want to check in with yourself about regularly
While I’m a believer that you should always at least do the work of setting emotional boundaries, it doesn’t necessarily mean you need to communicate those back or continue to have a relationship with the person—relationships are earned through trust and desire of both parties to make repairs in the case of a break
A lot of people claim to have emotional boundaries when all they really have is a trauma response (usually flight or fawn); the value of doing this work is that emotional boundaries give you actual peace, while trauma responses merely give you numbness to your emotions

This process have been incredibly valuable to me over the years, and I get better at it with practice.

It’s not easy being a human, but I am so glad that I have these incredible tools with which to not only be a better human, but be better to other humans, too!

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Making Time For a Hobby That Takes a Lot of Energy

How To Set Emotional Boundaries

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