Welcome, Creative Human! …(That’s you)

Confirmed! You’ll be the first to know when I drop a blog post, like this one: How to Get Out of a Creative Rut.

For now, let’s connect on Instagram. I’d love to know more about YOU and where you’re at. I respond to every direct message! 💬

It is a huge gift 🎁 to me to be creating things not because I’m trying to prove something, or I’m trying to be perfect, or I want to “build a brand,” or I want to get rich, or I dream of being famous (those last two might be alright), but simply because it feels like the right thing to be doing. Maybe y’all arrived at this long ago, but for me this realization 🧐—that I don’t need anyone else’s permission or approval, and I don’t need to wait to be talented or experienced or independently wealthy 🙄 “enough”—was a long time coming...and it feels good! So happy about @ayoprisco and @noeleflowers joining forces to rock (lol). I shared some behind-the-scenes of us doing a demo in my stories if ya wanna see. 🤔 PS - if you know a drummer/percussionist in NYC 🥁 who wants to be in an inclusive girlband lemme know? All of us in @choirgirlband are solid on the strings but our (my) tambourine skills are limiting, if entertaining. 🤣 Also, I think I’m sick of hashtags. Here’s one. #girlband We’ll see. Pic by @noeleflowers
If you’re a creative person, maybe you’ve experienced this. ➡️ Sometimes, when I’m doing work that feels especially important or personal to me (for me, it usually happens with music 🎶 more than writing ✍️), I get overwhelmed by an avalanche of self-doubt and negative thoughts. It feels like a physical weight crushing me and a voice pipes up in my ear saying: “You’re not good at this, you’re not talented, you’re too old for this, stop thinking you deserve this,” etc., etc. 🥵Things I would never say to other people. _____________________ I used to believe that voice and quit when this happened — I thought I needed to face the facts and accept reality. 🙄 But the desire to do the creative work would always come back later, and I’d end up at the bottom of the mountain 🏔 all over again, starting over when I used to be halfway up. Now I‘ve realized that when I really feel called ☎️ to do something, I have to let myself feel this self-doubt and keep going anyway. _____________________ If you’ve ever had that gutted, I-don’t-belong-here feeling about something you know on a deep down soul level you need to do, you’re not alone!! 🙃 Hope it helps to know that. ;) Any of y’all ever dealt with this kind of acute imposter syndrome? I’m dubbing them ⚡️Imposter Attacks⚡️. I don’t think Xanax works on them, though, sorry. 🥴 PS - my new telecaster!! 🥰🤩🔥
I know we’re all done being thankful and have moved on to (a) sales and (b) hating sales, but I still wanna express some gratitude—for my always supportive husband, my kind friends, my enormous family, my new band (!!), the freedom I have to make money and live how I want to, my body that keeps healing itself and carrying me along, and the way my life has changed since moving to the best the city in the world. Nothing I do here is too weird. There’s always stuff wrong that we don’t share here, but the good stuff is so so good. In the words of my fave @imwithherband song, “Some folks got it better, but, oh, we got it good.” Pic by @writingonglass ❤️
This is the face of someone finally starting to do what they wanna do in life. Only took a few decades and a year and a half of therapy to penetrate this stubborn exterior. 💥 💥 💥 Pic by @feministglobetrotter 🥰
Somehow even when I can’t follow my routine I still find myself looking at a coffee every afternoon? 🤔... _____________________ I’m finally on the mend after my monster cold and feeling so happy! But since being sick 😷 my daily routine as a freelancer has devolved into: sleeping late 😴, skipping the workout 🛌, staying up late ✨ working on freelance projects, and eating Justin’s peanut butter cups 🥜🍫 every damn day. All my good habits stopped being habits while I was prioritizing sleep and cold meds, and now I need to re-initiate myself into waking up early ☀️, lifting heavy things 🏋🏻‍♀️, working only during the day 💻, and eating real food for dinner 🍽. What do y’all do to get back in the swing of things after breaking your routine, besides summoning all your willpower? 🧙🏻‍♀️
Hello from nerdsville!! 🤓 I started listening to a new podcast last week I wanted to talk about: But That’s Another Story. Have you listened? In it, the host @willschwalbe interviews writers about what authors/books influenced them early in their development. 📚 I like hearing how many writers took a while to find their way, took massive (decades long) breaks from writing, struggled through drafts that never saw publication, etc., etc. My favorite episode so far has been with Jen Doll, because I saw some of my story in hers. 🧐 This quote from that episode really stuck: ✨“How do you do what you love and allow that to give you some power over the stuff you can’t control in life?” –Jen Doll _____________________ So far my other favorite episodes have been: ⚡️ @lee_minjin on imposter syndrome, feeling out-of-place, searching for wisdom, and reading George Eliot’s Middlemarch. This episode was SO good! ⚡️ Brittney Cooper @professor_crunk on growing up and evolving with faith, risking being wrong, and reading Rachel Held Evans’s Faith Unraveled. Loved how honest Cooper was about her experience growing up steeped in church and how that played out as she grew up. ⚡️ @kevinkwanbooks on moving, ditching an accent, becoming funny, and reading Joan Didion’s ❤️ Slouching Towards Bethlehem. 🎧 Planning to listen to every epp!! Any favorite pods??
May you let yourself indulge today. 🙏🏻 And if you can’t do that, give a friend a treat! 🍦
Happy bday to moi! 🎁🎂🎈🎃 Feelin spooky! 👻 Are you a “birthday” person? I don’t typically have a massive party 🎉 , or go on about my “birthday week,” 🙄 but I do feel like it’s a significant time for me personally. It’s my New Year! 🎊 I tend to get (more) introspective 🤔, turn to my journal 📓, and produce more creative work 🎶 around this time. Also, since I was born on Halloween 👻, it feels like an especially charged ⚡️ time to get spooky 😈 I mean thoughtful and perform incantations 🧙🏻‍♀️ I mean set intentions. In that self-searching mood, I took a look at the words that were added to the Merriam-Webster English dictionary 📖 the year I was born. Here are 11 of my favorites: _____________________ 1️⃣ Acid-washed: YES!!! I relate. 👖 My soul’s not acid-washed, but it will be by the end of the Trump administration! I’m kidding, but I did just purchase some acid-washed jeans to get in touch with my late 80s roots. 2️⃣ Ceterizine: A.k.a., my old friend, Zyrtec! 💊 The drug that keeps me functioning in the world on a daily basis. I guess we go way back. 3️⃣ Degenderize: Great! I guess this one is still in progress. 4️⃣ Emoticon: :) OH HEY 5️⃣ FAQ Fitting, since if I do anything, it’s frequently ask questions. 6️⃣ GIF It’s pronounced “jiff” 🙊 don’t @ me. 7️⃣ In-line skate Otherwise known as ⛸ rollerblades?? 8️⃣ Messenger bag Probably the reason my right shoulder 🙋🏻‍♀️ is higher than my left. 9️⃣ Tatsoi A delicious green vegetable. 🔟 Technopreneur Defined as “An entrepreneur involved with high technology.” 🧐 I think this one might be outdated already… 1️⃣1️⃣ Thirtysomething Well well well well well well welllll. _____________________ Do you want to try? I used Merriam-Webster’s Time Traveler tool that my copywriting idol @talkingshrimpnyc just posted about for her own birthday—Happy B-Day, Laura!
🧐 Is this @chipperthings shirt an existential truth or an actual text message📱I send about 3 times a week? _____________________ I got this shirt as a gift from my friend @beckymsimps who is an amazing artist and illustrator and founder of an online store I'm addicted to, @chipperthings. Becky used to live in Waco like me (back in the day she had a party for her book I'd Rather Be Short at @shortyswaco 🍕, our pizza place!) _____________________ It's fitting to think back to that time, because I remember when I lived there being frantic that I was running out of time to do all the things I wanted to do in life. I was sick of being “on the way” and ready to have “arrived,” in the words of Siri. And I've always been like that. Drives people nuts. 🙈 At 15, I thought I was too old to join choir (I wasn't, obviously). 🙄 At 16, I was too old for orchestra (still no). 😑 At 21, I was too old to take up blogging (what?). 🤭 At 25, I was too old to be getting my first "real" job (nuh uh) 😶 At 28, it was too late for me start writing again (nope!)... 😪 Today, I’m still finding stuff to freak out about. _____________________ I've always been acutely aware of how precious every year of life is—it means I've savored a lot of things and gotten a lot done—but it's also made me more focused on what's next 🔜 than what's happening right now. 🎈This year I'm trying to stop worrying about the clock ⏰ and start thinking more about the present. Rather than focusing on what I want to check off ☑️ a list of accomplishments, what will make me richer 💰 in 20 years, or how far behind 🏃🏻‍♀️ I am when I start 🏁 something new, I want to think about what feels right, right now. _____________________ PS - it’s almost my bday aka my personal new year 🤣, and it gets me in a resolutions kind of mood! Do y’all do that too? #scorpioseason 😈 My friend @writingonglass took this pic in front of The Wing in DUMBO! 🐘

PS - I’M BUILDING THIS FOR YOU

Anything in particular you want me to cover to help you live a more creative life and achieve a more fulfilling career? If so I’d love to learn more about it. Drop me a line so I can add it to my running list.

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