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! 💬

When it’s 26°F it’s hard to remember what it’s like to wear a swimsuit, amiright? Still love u NYC. ❤️🌃🥶 #remembersummer
Why is my dog so awkward? It’s like we’re related. 🐕 Soaking up these slow days after getting over a loooong migraine. It’s funny—NYC is like a ghost town right now, except in the touristy areas where WAM 💥 the whole Midwest is here. It’s fun to have a different energy here. Enjoy the end of 2018, y’all!
Happy Holidays to ya. 🎄 We had all our fun last week in Belize and are cozying up in deserted Brooklyn for a quiet Christmas with the pups. Considering bouncing over to Chinatown for some dumplings. 🥟
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??

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.

Name *
Name