Last spring, I wrote a blog post about practicing that I’ve been thinking about a lot this week. You can go read the original post if you want - in it, I talk a lot about how facilitation is a practice, and reflect on pulling a daily oracle/tarot card as a supportive practice/what it looks like for me/how I level up that practice. Since then, I’ve achieved keeping it up - posting a daily card online for almost 6 straight months! I’m really proud of myself for maintaining the streak (though, somewhat ironically, I did not post a card today).

Other daily practices I’ve kept up with: note-taking at staff check-in, and journaling before bed. Daily practices that have fallen by the wayside: personal kanban, and mosaic-making. Interestingly, I feel equally good about putting down the ones that aren’t serving me as I do with keeping up the ones that do. Doing something daily strengthens my (mental) muscles in a way that I’m only now beginning to appreciate. In putting down practices that aren't serving me, I'm practicing being kind to myself as I figure out what's working for me and what's not - an equally powerful, though somewhat more ephemeral, set of skills.

Recently, I’ve added new daily practice: drawing! I’m participating in Inktober - which is essentially a challenge to draw something and post it online for every day of October. It’s been incredibly fun, and in the last few days I’ve realized my drawing has improved tremendously. In my school district, students had to choose art or music when we were 10 - I choose music and, subsequently, told myself the story that I couldn’t make art. It was a powerful story and it’s taken me a long time to unlearn it - even still, sometimes I find myself telling people that I’m not an artist despite all the evidence to the contrary. It's particularly interesting to me right now, because I've had lots of people tell me that they could NEVER make art like that - the exactly story I've been telling myself until recently. Only daily practice has helped me change that story; I feel really trite when I tell people that, even if ti's true.

Here are this month’s drawings so far (starting with day 1):

[embed]https://www.instagram.com/p/BoaS6puAAfP/?taken-by=mel_icorn[/embed][embed]https://www.instagram.com/p/Boc1fISAtf6/?taken-by=mel_icorn[/embed][embed]https://www.instagram.com/p/Bofi3POH6CW/?taken-by=mel_icorn[/embed][embed]https://www.instagram.com/p/BoiCQJ9AzQJ/?taken-by=mel_icorn[/embed][embed]https://www.instagram.com/p/Boj2ZEsg1nl/?taken-by=mel_icorn[/embed][embed]https://www.instagram.com/p/BonBzOVAosE/?taken-by=mel_icorn[/embed][embed]https://www.instagram.com/p/BopzciiA7yJ/?taken-by=mel_icorn[/embed][embed]https://www.instagram.com/p/BosTSVAAfUm/?taken-by=mel_icorn[/embed][embed]https://www.instagram.com/p/BouPQzAAn5T/?taken-by=mel_icorn[/embed][embed]https://www.instagram.com/p/BoxoxQhgl78/?taken-by=mel_icorn[/embed][embed]https://www.instagram.com/p/Bo0DRLcgpMn/?taken-by=mel_icorn[/embed][embed]https://www.instagram.com/p/Bo1tlTTgwL2/?taken-by=mel_icorn[/embed][embed]https://www.instagram.com/p/Bo41XHhgUMC/?taken-by=mel_icorn[/embed][embed]https://www.instagram.com/p/Bo7Xe2fgez1/?taken-by=mel_icorn[/embed][embed]https://www.instagram.com/p/Bo-X0LMAFEa/?taken-by=mel_icorn[/embed][embed]https://www.instagram.com/p/BpBFWQygg_n/?taken-by=mel_icorn[/embed][embed]https://www.instagram.com/p/BpCkkSHg_AN/?taken-by=mel_icorn[/embed][embed]https://www.instagram.com/p/BpF0bRWgX1z/?taken-by=mel_icorn[/embed][embed]https://www.instagram.com/p/BpH-QhTgdlQ/?taken-by=mel_icorn[/embed]