60-Day Financial Fitness Challenge: Day 16

Emily Reno

December 15, 2022

Today’s task:

Create a Behance portfolio

Having outlined some of my financial goals for the next year, I thought it would be a good exercise to identify all of the subtasks associated with them, and start to block off time on my schedule weekly to make small progress towards those.

One of the subtasks for getting a digital asset up on Creative Market is to create a digital portfolio. Given that I’ve already got an Adobe account, this seemed like a no-brainer in comparison to building out a whole website for myself or using another platform to showcase my work.

I’m going to focus on just one goal today, and flesh out the others in the coming weeks:

Earn 3k per month in passive income by October 2023

Subtasks:

Create a digital portfolio
Develop 1 new digital asset per month for 6 months and upload to Creative Market to be sold for at least $5 each
Create 10 sketches every 3 months and upload to Creative Market to be sold for at least $10 each
Take 25 photographs per month of nature and post to Adobe Stock to be sold for $0.30 each.
Write 2 blog posts a week for 6 months (either to my own platform or someone else’s)

Things I need to prepare to get a digital portfolio ready:

Select 2-3 projects from which I can develop a case study
Write the content in a Google doc for editing
Sketch out the layout
Export any images from Adobe suite as a png to import into an InDesign document

Given how many steps there are to this task, I’m likely going to spend the next few days working on getting this put together as part of my challenge. And I’m not using that as an excuse not to do other things! I think that this is just me being realistic with myself about what I can reasonably accomplish.

What I accomplished done today was choosing a case study and starting to draft the language that will eventually go on the portfolio. Hooray!

On a somewhat related note, I enjoyed listening to several podcasts today and a few videos about setting intentions for the year ahead, as well as taking stock of all that I’ve accomplished in 2022. I think what I appreciated most was Marie Forleo’s question of “What can you let go of in the year ahead?” This is not often something that gets put on our list. All of the things that we should be getting rid of, releasing, eliminating from our schedule. But the more you say no to, the more space you’ll have in your life for the things that truly matter.

Here’s a few things that came to mind for me of what I want to release:

Volunteering responsibilities that aren’t giving me life (there’s one committee I’m serving on and I don’t feel like I can put the energy towards it that I want). I’m likely to let this one go next year
Board responsibilities (I currently serve on two, and it’s two too many). I need more time for me. And this is one of those things that continues to take up my time outside of work. I’m likely to let one of these go.
Friendships that are one-sided. I spend a lot of time working to maintain relationships with people, but I’ve realized that when the other person doesn’t ever follow up with me, it’s probably not a relationship worth preserving.
Any ideas about who I think I am. The stories we tell ourselves about who we are often are the very things that keep us stuck, playing small, connecting with the same social circles that make us feel trapped. I want to start telling a different story about myself and my future. Which means letting go of whoever I thought I was and embracing the much more confident, courageous, self-loving woman I’m becoming.

Now it’s your turn! Take a stab and see where you end up. And listen to the full video(s) below for the rest of the exercise. It’s good stuff, I promise.

In the meantime, please enjoy the following videos & podcasts to keep you inspired: