The next time you get really down and convince yourself that you don't have anything worth offering the world, that your creative impulses couldn't possibly compete with doing something practical, like accounting or nursing or knowing how to fix a car, try this.

Play a song, watch a movie, read a few lines of your favorite book, move to music that makes you feel like you MUST dance, look deeply into the brush strokes of a painting.

Become aware of how your heart beats.

How you feel a little less alone.

How, no matter what you're going through, you can have the tiny comfort of knowing that somewhere in history, someone felt the way you do and instead of letting it eat them up from the inside out, they chose to dig up what they may have perceived as ugly or special or completely ordinary, shake off the dirt, and throw it up into the sun, allowing us all to see that what we most try to hide might just be the best thing we can share with others. 

After you realize how much this song, movie, book, dance, or piece of art makes you feel like you might just belong in this big, messy, hard, tender, gorgeous life after all, go back to telling yourself that what you are dreaming of, making, and putting your whole life force into doesn't matter. 

Notice how you feel. 

The shift won't happen all at once, but almost nothing ever does.

Keep listening, watching, reading, moving and admiring and allow your heart to make room for and consider the idea that, just as your favorite humans and creative souls make the world more beautiful bit by bit, you just might just be part of that, too. ​

 

 








































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​Happy Monday, and welcome to December, Friends! Here's five fun links from around the web that I found that made me smile and feel a bit more playful today. I hope they make you feel a little lighter, too.

1.  This past week, Smithsonian Magazine shared the good news that you can now take a trip back to being a kid and check out the soundtrack to Sesame Street, streaming now via Spotify and iTunes  Go ahead, listen to Cookie Starts with C while eating your favorite cookie. These gluten free chocolate chip cookies  by America's Test Kitchen look brilliant. 

2.  The movie Mrs. Doubtfire turned 25 (!) this year. Where did the time (and the fashion) go? This post over at Man Repeller revisits the movie to see how it's aged and it's pretty fun to look back at the film and themes in ways both serious and silly. 

3.  I have kept a journal since I was seven or eight years old and I am definitely going to do this next time I crack open a fresh notebook to start writing in. Who's your guardian spirit?

4.  I don't usually believe in rules for creativity, but I loved these 33 rules for being an artist over at Vulture. 

5.  More evidence that engaging in crafts and creativity is good for your mental health. Not that you need another reason to plan your next crafty experiment, but still, pretty neat to know that the scientific community is catching up with what our souls have known for a long time: making things just feels good. I've got my eye on a new knitting project.  What are you dreaming of making?

Wishing you all a week full of possibilities and playfulness. Have a good one!

Another brand new week, and no matter if you feel rocking and ready to go, a little worse for wear, or somewhere in between, know that your current state of mind and circumstances are just a season. Whether we like it or not, everything changes and everything shall pass.

Great mood? It will eventually morph into a mood that doesn't feel so great or one that just feels "meh". 

Feeling really low? It's just a matter of time until the tide shifts and you feel better.

Super busy and frazzled with a boatload of commitments, creative projects, and to do's? Time will bring a different chapter that will be slower, simpler, and not as nutty.

In a drought, whether it be creatively, financially, or socially? It won't last forever. Abundance will show itself sooner or later.

It's a season. It's ALL a season. If you're like me, you can get angry about it, deny it, and struggle against it, hoping it will go away. If you're also like me, you've probably learned through hard won experience that fighting against it doesn't make a bit of difference. Just as winter stays as long as it does regardless of how much we curse the snow, our own seasons have their own timelines that aren't moved by our own kicking and screaming. Both have to run their course.

Whatever season you're going through right now, know you're not alone.

Whatever season you're going through right now, know that you are still YOU.

Whatever season you're going through right now, know that there is some action to take to move towards peace, even if that means being still and being with your feelings of being uncomfortable.  

Whatever season you're going through right now, know that it's ok to not be ok.

Whatever season you're going through right now, know that it's ok to feel awesome.

Whatever season you're going through right now, know that it's ok to not be be able to see what's next. 

Whatever season you're going through right now, know that you have the power to make something beautiful out of it someday, even if that someday takes awhile. 

For me, becoming comfortable with uncomfortable seasons is an ongoing practice--sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. For me, learning about and practicing radical acceptance has been instrumental in trying to dance with the changing seasons in a way that feels more like a partnership than a wrestling match.  Remembering it's a big experiment is also helpful. 

I've long told myself that I have to be in a particularly "good" season to be creative. Ironically, the Starving Artist myth also encourages us to find our creative power only when we're in a particular "bad" season  of our life. But the truth is that life doesn't happen at either end of a spectrum, but at every single point along the line that represents the entire infinite range of the human experience. If we aren't required to be in a certain season in order to exercise our creativity, perhaps our creativity can become a practice that we engage in to help us express whatever it is that we are experiencing in the current season of our lives and help us gain peace and clarity. If creativity doesn't require us to be happy or sad, but simply alive and aware of what we are experiencing in the present moment, would we give ourselves more permission to express, to make, to explore more often? What joy and healing might be found in that space? 

This week, you may want to take a few moments to sit down in a quiet place and write down a few sentences about how you are feeling and what season you are experiencing. Try not to label the season as "good" or "bad".  What small action could you take right now to treat yourself kindly? What might you do to express how you are feeling? Could you draw the season? Write a poem about it? Hum a melody that sounds the way you feel? Dance through it in your kitchen?

Wishing you all a week where you honor the season you're in, no matter if it feels like a blizzard or a summer's afternoon.  If you have any wisdom for weathering the seasons of life through creative expression, please do share!

This week on Motivation Monday, I want to pass along a wonderful episode from the Team Human Podcast featuring playwright, actor, director, writer and teacher Jessica Blank. You might recognize her as the creator of such powerful plays such as The Exonerated, Aftermath, How to be a Rock Critic, and Liberty City. In this interview, Jessica talks about the power of empathy and storytelling and how exercising these muscles might actually have the ability to change the way we think about the world and each  other.  And who couldn't use more tools to connect with our fellow human beings and affect change? 

I hope your week is off to a great start and that you plan to take your creativity to the polls this week and VOTE. Creativity allows us to imagine a better world and the right to vote gives us a chance to decide to make that imagined world a reality. Every one of us counts.