CoStarting Week 1

The most obvious realization I made during this first week of CoStarting is that if it were not for the program, I would have already given up to some extent. I don't mean that I would have totally stopped working on Giglet's Garments, but I tend to have a pattern to getting overwhelmed with my projects: I overthink my goals and come up with grand visions of what I want my endgame to be, then I set more realistic milestones but end up still unsatisfied with my progress, so I don't follow through on them, then finally I get frustrated by the fact that I didn't meet my own goals and throw in the towel. In a nutshell, it's overthinking and fear.

But, what's cool about having the Costarting cohort is that I've made a commitment to work on this project every day, regardless of what the day before held. Because I have these other four holding me accountable, I feel more motivated to get back at it, rather than just accepting defeat when something doesn't go my way. As I went to release my first video blog today, I took a moment to pause and notice that I would not have publicly released the video if it weren't for coStarting. My hair was a mess, I sounded like a dweeb, and it just wasn't that thrilling (or so I thought). But, the point is that I did it. And now I have a starting point. Had I not made the step to release this first less than perfect video as well as the subsequent ones, I wouldn't be able to get better. Hopefully I'll be able to look back on my videography progress with esteem at the end of the cohort.

Here's the nitty gritty from this week--

I've had a migraine for most of this week, so working has been tough, but it's what I want to be doing, so that makes it easier.

Here's my daily breakdown:

Day 1: Going to Orlando to pick up the school bus. Attempted to set up members on my blog/website but I needed more help with that. Mapped out the content that I need to create over the coming week. Realizing how much work I have ahead of me with all of the content I'm planning to release.

Day 2: Finished and listed my first human upcycled piece, a mini skirt! Finally got membership fully set up on my blog as well as gaining my first subscriber. Began to lay out my room to begin filming on Monday.

Day 3: Shot the footage for my first video. Several hiccups– my machine kept getting jammed and it took forever for me to finally fix it. Feeling a little overwhelmed by the commitment to shoot two videos per week. I'm thinking that I'm going to have to make shorter videos so I don't spend quite as much time editing. Hoping that I can get this video edited tomorrow morning so I have the afternoon to work on some other things.

Day 4: Spent the morning editing my video. Got it down to 9 minutes. Took quite a while and several tries to finally upload it, but it's there! It was hard to finally take the leap and post something that I didn't find perfect. In the afternoon I worked on a new project, matching headbands and dog bandanas. I'm working on being able to upcycle as much of a garment as possible. So far, a button down shirt can become: one mini skirt, two headbands, a bandana, and a bow tie!

I'm going to have to use the rest of the week wisely to finish all the content that's planned. I may not get to creating week two's videos like I had initially planned, so we'll see where that puts my timeline next week.