Have you ever been in one of those jobs that just takes over your brain and sucks the life out of your soul, leaving you no time for you?

Maybe you have a long commute, or maybe there’s a lot of national or overseas travel that forces you to spend all your time with other people, often talking about things you’re just not that interested in.

I’ve been there. I was in that situation for many years, sometimes both the long commute and the extensive travel combined.

And the thing that woke me up to the fact that I could live differently was the first 30 Day Challenge I did. During that month I spent 15-20 minutes every day doing something creative, writing blog posts or creative snippets.

I enjoyed it so much that at the end of those 30 days I just carried on doing the creative stuff, and finding time to take and share photos.

The contract I was doing came to an end, and I decided to take a part-time one after that to allow me head space and creative time. I’ve only had one period of working full-time since then, and that was only for two years.

During that time I set myself photo challenges and creative writing challenges, even when it got busy, because I knew it was something I needed. I enjoyed the job and really liked the team, but it was a bit of a rollercoaster at times!

So these days I arrange my work to make time for creativity. Even if I sometimes do contracts that take up a large proportion of my time, I never do them for very long – usually only a few months until I’ve built up more money and can step back and allow some space into my weeks again for a while.

If I don’t create for a while, I miss it. At the time of writing this I have just got back into my weekly walks after a few weeks where I wasn’t able to do them. So I’m especially enthusiastic about photos and photo challenges right at the moment. I sent a newsletter to my e-mail list recently with a photo challenge – which I’ll share with you here too in case you fancy trying it!

Photo challenge

One of the things I like to do every so often is to pick a theme for the photos I take when I go for a walk. It focuses my mind on finding things to photograph.

There was one specific day a couple of months ago when I was feeling fed up. So I went for a walk around lunchtime to get a bit of perspective on the thing I was thinking about. As I crossed the main road, I saw a road sign. It was round, and it gave me an idea. I would take photos of anything I came across that was round.

And this was the result. Quite a lot of round things in a walk that was less than half an hour.

When you’re out for a walk one day, see if you can take a series of photos of circles. And then share the results on social media. You can tag me on Instagram using @ninalentonbusiness.