Hi All!

Here is your weekly round up of what I’m pondering and exploring. Feel free to forward along to a friend if you think they might enjoy.

Slow Week

What I’ve mostly been doing is preparing for my book launch in December, finalising my taxes from the last financial year, working at my 9-5 and exercising.

Taking this slower period to learn how to become better at organisation and planning is really helping me to treat my work and what I do as a professional.

If you’re interested here are some free tools I’ve been using that have helped me tremendously.

1. Airtable - This is what I use to create my spreadsheets to keep track of expenses, orders, contact lists, outreach info, leads and more.

2. Miro - This is what I use to create my mindmaps that help me visualise and plan huge tasks like my first art exhibit at the end of the year (wait… I wasn’t supposed to tell you that yet lol)

Also, thank you to all the people who preordered a book last week. It’s great seeing consistent sales roll in as we lead up to the launch.

It always works out, even when it doesn’t

I can’t tell you why, but every single time I try to do something and think I’ve hit a wall, some how by the grace of God, it always finds a way to work itself out.

Take last week for example when Joel and I arrived at the old war bunkers in South Maroubra’s headlands and were met with our photoshoot location being chained shut.

Dissapointing, I know, especially when the week before it was completely open.

However, instead of giving up, we walked to a slightly different location and immediately found a hole, just wide enough for our bodies, that had been hacksawed into the iron door to our new underground location.

A couple weeks prior I was on another shoot with Max working on an ad for my book when one of our actors pulled out at the last minute.

Instead of giving up and calling it quits because of one little annoyance, we looked up, spotted a group of twenty teenagers popping wheelies inside Central Station and walked over to them.

We introduced ourselves and what we were doing and instantly one of the boys eyes lit up. I could tell he was interested so we casted him on the spot and ended up successfully shooting the video.

This also reminds me of when Max and I were stuck in the middle of Indianapolis when we were hitchhiking across America, getting no, after no, after no, from everyone we asked.

And once again instead of giving up, we reminded ourselves, a better ride is coming, and as expected, it did.

So, I guess what I’m trying to get at with a few of these micro examples is that even if you hit a door that’s locked, there might be a window next to it that’s wide open.

Effort does not equal value

I thought what Justin Bieber had to say in the video below was a very powerful, grounded message about all of us being inherantly valuable from the moment we were born, not just when we achieve something, or work hard.

Perfectly Imperfect Humans

Although a huge portion of this newsletter is me giving you pieces of advice I’ve taken from the things I’ve experienced, I want to take a moment to admit that I often struggle with taking my own advice.

I wish I was perfect and could never make a mistake again, but the reality of it is that I’m a deeply flawed, contradictory, human being.

Like many of you, I bleed, I hurt, I get upset, I get persuaded, I get mad, I get anxious, and I often break promises with myself.

Not because I want to but because unfortunately it happens sometimes and that’s okay.

Now, this isn’t an excuse by any means, it’s an invitation to grace instead of guilt.

Doing this has not only helped me accept my own shortcomings, but also become more understanding of others and where they also might fall short.

I will forever be a work in progress and a masterpiece both at the same time. Which sounds like a paradox, I know, but that’s what we are, perfectly imperfect humans.

The Australian Voice is Maturing

It makes me happy seeing videos like the one below of rappers like Sidney Phillips owning the Australian voice using the accent, slang and references, instead of pretending to be something he’s not.

This is important because we as Australians often cringe at our own voice when we hear it in music, or in film.

However, I’m noticing this shifting very rapidly as we mature and find our actual voices, not just the stereotypical, G’DAY MATE, HOW ARE YA?

Australian art is only going to become more authentic as we lean into who we actually are.

Hope everyone enjoys their week.

Love,

Jet Williams

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