After finishing White Fragility on Saturday (SO good, join the discussion over on Facebook), I started Creative Calling by Chase Jarvis.
It popped up on BookBub—a tricky site that offers select Kindle books for a song. This has led to many, many impulse book buys!
Since creativity is SUCH a big part of TDJ, I wanted to share a few things that have resonated (I’m only 15% in):
Ask yourself: Is the way you’re working working? Is the way you’re living working?
Without a resilient creative practice, supportive creative peers, a thriving community, and a powerful mindset, live just does not have the same vibrancy.
Creativity must be released through a regular creative practice. Bottled up, it can go critical, become toxic. Unexpressed, your creativity can poison your life.
Creativity is the practice of combining or rearranging two or more unlikely things in new and useful ways.
Yes, art is a subset of creativity, but creativity itself isn’t limited to specific crafts. It’s the ability to make your ideas manifest in the world. It’s problem solving. It’s business and activism. It’s raising a family. It’s building connections, with others and yourself, that makes life worth living. Any creative craft practiced regularly—photography, coding, cooking—unlocks and activates your larger creative capacity. This allows you to see all the possibilities available to you and then choose among them to create the life you want.
What matters is that you start. All you’re deciding to do is to try. Do whatever you can with what you have. It will never feel like the right time. You will never be “ready.” Avoid preparing too much. Start before you are ready. Start with fear. Start with uncertainty. This is one of the biggest secrets of the most creative, happy, successful people: Just start.
Creators create. Action is identity. You become what you do. You don’t need permission from anybody to call yourself a writer, entrepreneur, or musician. You just need to write, build a business, or make music. You’ve got to do the verb to be the noun.
Good food for thought, no?
As you know, creativity can show up in everything we do.
My go-tos are: personal style, decor, texts (love me some carefully chosen emojis), reading, writing, art journaling, creating love notes, makeup, plant caretaking, flower arranging, meal prep (just joined Daily Harvest), walks, gift buying/creating, bathing (hello, salts), embroidery (shown above), thrifting, exercise, pug care, content creation, farmers’ markets, travel.
Are there any creative practices on your radar? There are SO many classes (and more!) available right now. What can you start or return to this summer?
Consider ONE activity you can commit to for 10 minutes daily this summer.
You ARE an artist and each day/moment is a fresh canvas. Let’s play! Bisous. x
