Content Creation Challenges

In this newsletter:

• Praxis Work: Creating Content & Welcome Email Campaign

• Praxis Reading: How to Win Friends and Influence People

• Youth Group Game Night: Two Rooms and a Boom & Improv

• Art of the Week: WIP, Stained Glass Painting and the Mural

• What in the Work?: Starting the Mural

Praxis Work

I think I underestimated the amount of work that I needed to complete for Praxis this week, which ended in a mad scramble today trying to complete everything. I’ve been exhausted from everything else going on, but sleeping has apparently hindered me from my work, as the last couple of hours have attested.

Creating content. It can be dreaded, it can be feared, or it can be approached as a challenge, with a creative’s intuition. I choose the latter. This week we were tasked with making fifteen different pieces of content, centered around one social media platform, that we could use for the business of our choice. I chose Instagram as my platform, and my apparel shop, as the business. I created the content and an optimized posting schedule and began posting my content.

The second bit of work this week was creating an Email Welcome Campaign. The purpose of this is to create an immediate connection with someone who has subscribed to your email newsletter and encourage them to purchase your product by pointing out a problem and offering them a solution. Next week will be a documentation of what I’ve covered this month.

Praxis Reading

In How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie: He recommends that people avoid arguments like the plague. In his opinion, you can not win an argument. You might win in the sense that you convince the other person of their wrong stance, but you will always lose in the sense of making the other person dislike you. Respecting other’s opinions is another piece of his advice. He advises that you never tell someone that they are wrong, because it will only create resistance to anything that you have to say after that. On one hand, I agree with him, we should respect that we can’t control anyone’s opinions, but on the other, we should be able to express ours.

One of his principles that I can fully get behind is the idea that if you are wrong, you should admit it quickly and emphatically. I think that many arguments spring from one party being too prideful to admit when they have made an error. It would greatly streamline our relationships, and even our world, if everyone would follow this principle.

Youth Group Game Night

Instead of a lesson, this week we had a game night. I am reminded weekly that they love it when we do game night by a couple of the kids, so we “gave in” and did something a little more fun. The games we played were Two Rooms and a Boom and some improv scenes, which the kids really enjoyed. Next week we’ll have a Q&A night.

Art of the Week

Continuing work on the stained glass painting has been slow, due to the other art project that I started this week. But here is an update photo nonetheless. I added some texture and started on the wood.

Here is the second project I am working on, as described below.

If you want to see more artwork from me, including previous progress photos of the art above, check out my Instagram page, Lucid Ace Art. I am posting update photos of the mural nearly every day.

What in the Work?

This week we started the entryway mural. This project is going to be a lot bigger than I thought originally. Scaffolding under the mural is only able to be under half of it at once, so we are left trying to work one side, switch, and repeat. We spent a good chunk of Wednesday getting it taped off and colors picked out. As seen above, we’ve been making progress on the painting part, covering the white underneath and then the blue layers with a light glaze. Today we stopped over at another place where Cheryl painted a similar mural on a dining room ceiling. I’ve really enjoyed learning from her and hearing her vast and colorful stories about all the individuals she has met over the years.

Cheryl’s previous mural. It’s pretty cool.

That’s all for this week. Thank you so much for reading!