33. Prioritizing Your Creativity

My Monthly Stitch Membership is OPEN until July 12th!

The assumption is often that I’m naturally creative, that I spend all my time making art. The reality is - I research and write and teach about creativity BECAUSE it’s hard for me. 

This past few years has been especially challenging, but I've got a few tricks up my sleeve...

In this episode, I've shared some ideas for getting back into your practice after a hiatus, getting more consistent with your creative practice (and why you should!), and working through the resistance and doubt that comes up! 

Transcript

Welcome and Personal Update

Hey and welcome back to Stitch Wish Radio. So last month was pretty wild personally, a lot going on and it just took everything within me to get done the things that I needed to get done and so I wasn't able to do much on the podcast. , 

Enchanted Blooms Stitch Along

I've been putting a lot of effort into my Enchanted Blooms stitch along which I did.

It's still going on right now, we're finishing it up which I might say is pretty fantastic. If this is your first time hearing about it don't worry I'm gonna go ahead and put that up on my website as some sort of like mini course or something, still totally free. So if you missed out on that, don't worry.

You're going to be able to experience it. , you will miss out, have missed out on the community aspect of it, which has been really fun. , I opened up a new community through the school that I have online, but you can still access the teachings within it. So that's been really great to see what everyone's working on, see everyone's sketches, the photos of the flowers that they're working with, everything.

If you're in there, thank you so much for joining. , so yeah, this episode, I really want to talk about. What happens when your creativity feels like it's just not there? So since that's something I've experienced maybe like a thousand times in life. , and I find it really super helpful to think about why that's happening.

And also, uh, I wanted to share a few tools to you that I like to use to make sure that, , it doesn't happen or to work through it when it does.  So let's go ahead and jump in. 

New Mixed Color Monthly Membership!

Oh, but first I want to tell you about this new concept that I had for a membership. I really love all the conversation that's happening around these stitch alongs and the process of kind of having these like long term projects going on with and working with people during that.

I would love to do that on a monthly basis and have, you know, a project a month, a theme a month, and then within that theme talk about how different elements influence our creative process. How the season change might influence that creative process, all sorts of stuff like that, and also learn some new skills and make some art in the meantime.

So I would love for you to join me in there. The first lesson will go out July 10th. There'll be weekly lessons and then we're going to start the membership and I'm going to close the doors so that I don't have to deal with trying to figure out kind of onboarding a bunch of people while the membership is going on.

So if you're interested in that, um, be sure to sign up and. The price that I have it at now will most likely be going up as the lessons within the membership grows. So if you sign up now, you can lock in that rate for life.  Okay. Thank you for letting me share. The offers that actually support this podcast with you  and let's jump into today's episode.

Like we're actually going to jump in at this time. Not like I did before where I said we're going to jump it. Okay. Anyways, moving on. 

Prioritizing Your Creativity

So  today's episode is all about prioritizing your creativity and this isn't about always being creative. This is just about, you know, Within your life taking a look at what are you spending your time doing and trying to figure out how to squeeze a little more creativity into that list of things that you're doing that you have to do, the things that you're doing that you want to do, and um, yeah, just prioritizing it and making sure you have time for your creative acts. 

Now before you say, that's easy for you to say, you're making a living as an artist. The thing is, the assumption is often that I'm naturally creative, that I spend all my time making art. And the reality is, I research and write and teach about creativity specifically because it's hard for me. I struggle with committing to a creative practice.

I usually like binge create and then I'll take weeks off, usually to deal with business or family or something work related. But sometimes I'm just not really inspired. There's not a whole lot coming. And this has definitely showed up over the past few years. Um, my own creative process took a really hard hit, first from a personal loss that I experienced, and then through the past two years of pregnancy, childbirth, raising a baby.

You may be thinking, but you've made so much since then, you've created so much, and yes, I admit, given the circumstances, I was still creative, but honestly, a lot of what I was working on were projects that had already been started. Sometimes years earlier that I was able to finish, so it wasn't like a whole lot of new ideas were coming through, um, until fairly recently.

Um, and as a person whose livelihood depends on this creativity, it was a little bit hard for me to handle.  So, how do we deal when we're dealing with personal issues that feel like a blow to our creative practice?  Now, first of all, I don't want us to feel guilty about the amount of creativity that we are not experiencing.

I don't want us to feel guilty about putting our artistic passions on the back burner. We all got stuff to do. We all have bills to pay, like, forgive yourself. That's a horrible place to start.  

Forgiving Yourself for Creative Breaks

Feeling of guilt towards yourself is not going to contribute to your creative energy. So yeah, just right off the bat talking about that.

Being hard on yourself is not good for the creative spirit. This sort of self criticism is ineffective and ultimately unsupportive and it doesn't actually help you get back to your creative practice. And personally, I would actually say out loud to myself, like, it's okay that I've had to prioritize other parts of my life.

The opportunity to create my art will always be there and I can always return to it when I'm ready. And I remind myself of how many artists I know and love who took years off, sometimes decades, because they just didn't want to force it. Like Andre 3000 being one of them, who recently came back with a totally different flavor than what he's known for. 

It's really a product of our modern consumptive society that we assume artists just keep working and never take breaks or never need to have any lived experience beyond creations. We're humans, yep. All sorts of other things to do. So just want to start with that. But as, as we start to move back into our creative artistic practice, um, we might feel a little bit rusty at first.

Again, give yourself some grace, some forgiveness, and imagine you've got like an on ramp to getting back to where you left off.  It's the laws of physics. When an object slows down and stops, it's going to take a while for that object to get back up to the speed it was going at. Um, I honestly don't know anything about physics, so this might not be exactly how it works, but you kind of get the point.

You can't go 0 to 60 in a car without an unrealistically high powered engine getting you just, so um, just think about this amp up phase. Go with what's easy. Go with what helps you gain confidence again. So for example, sometimes it can help to pick up a project that's unfinished. If it feels like your work suddenly feels foreign to you, it helps to re familiarize yourself with the process.

Re-familiarizing with Your Materials

It may also help to re familiarize yourself with your studio or your supplies stash or whatever that looks like for you. So maybe re organizing or just, you know, Even just going through your materials and kind of trigger all the ideas that you got in your head when you originally got these materials. 

Warning! This can easily devolve into getting distracted by all the shiny things. Please don't ask me about my sequence stash, which currently made its way to the top of the piles. So if you're anything like me, maybe set a time limit on this or focus on a specific topic. Group of materials, um, like just the fabrics or just the paints or organize your paper options, whatever, um, and then commit to picking just one or two projects to start with and not pulling out all the things and dropping them on your desk because you just thought of five new ideas and I could do all these things.

This, that is a recipe for a mess and overwhelming yourself. So just pick one or two materials. Pick one or two projects, give yourself limitations and let yourself expand within this structure. It's also so helpful to look back at your own portfolio of work. So I have a folder in my phone that I keep these in.

Um, since I sell a lot of the artwork that I make, I sometimes forget that they ever even existed. So however this works for you, um, taking a look at where you came from, um, to see where you're headed. If you are coming back to your practice and you've already got a bunch of big new ideas and don't want to be thinking in the past, great, move forward.

But if you are jumping back into your practice, there's a good chance that you're like, where did I leave off? And looking back, to move forward can help to clarify that.  Next up, let's talk about if you feel like your creative practice isn't important enough, or if you feel like you constantly live in a way that your creative practice is at the bottom of the list and you just never get around to it. 

Sometimes you have to get serious with yourself. 

Scheduling Your Artistic Practice

If it's not on the calendar, it's not getting done. As they say, um, you don't find time for creativity. You make time for your artistic practice. Sometimes it's just 30 minutes. And that's sometimes that's gotta be good enough. But you know, if you're an artist or creative, or you just feel that pull to be more creative, that's your soul talking.

That's not just your mind. That's not just some flippant idea. Oh boy, I've got more important things to do. This is deeply important work and it is 100 percent worth your time and effort. And don't let. Anyone, especially not yourself, tell you any different. If this feels like it's hitting an edge for you, dig into why you think your artistic practice is less important than any other form of self care.

Meditation, baths, spending time with loved ones, exercise. All of these are known to make you feel good on a cellular level. Creating, making art. These are deeply ancestral motions, thoughts, processes. We have not evolved to make spreadsheets and phone calls and three point turnarounds.  We evolved to create and surround ourselves with artwork.

This is fully innate in our nature. It allows us to feel more at home in our bodies, in our minds, and in our spaces. It allows us to connect with parts of ourselves that are hurting or longing or have been kept quiet for way too long. And sometimes, sometimes that is precisely why we don't work.

Prioritize our artistic practice because we know that opening up to it could break us open But what if that's exactly what you need? To break open and to bloom into something new  in this way an avoidance of change can Also turn into an avoidance of the creative practice so I recently realized the hoops I was jumping through to avoid making art like all the things that I decided were a higher priority like Taking a writing class which To be fair, it's a different kind of art, but it's not my main focus, really.

Or the feeling of, like, needing to learn everything about a certain material working with it. Like, why? Really ask yourself, what are you avoiding? Like the sequins, for instance. I was like, I gotta figure out all the different ways you can sew on sequins. Just get the sequins out and sew them onto the fabric.

You don't need to study how to do that.  So it's the question that we ask ourselves, like, are you trying to learn more or are you just procrastinating in a very impressive way?  Still feeling hesitant about it? 

Combining Creativity with Other Activities

Try pairing your art making with something else you know that is good for you, like tea, or meditation, or taking your vitamins.

Or pair it with something that you have to do anyways but you don't want to do, like  calling about that warranty that got voided for no reason and you know they're gonna keep you on hold for like an hour. Was that too specific? Uh, fine. Dealing with anything that requires waiting on hold or being in a waiting room.

You know, doctor's office, waiting room, maybe your dentist. Waiting for your dentist and you bring a bunch of markers with you because you know it's going to take them like 40 minutes before they see you, which why did they even make you have that appointment at that time? Um, one thing, one thing that I like to do is kind of like compound habits.

So for instance, I recently I was like, okay, I need to start working out more. And it's not really in my nature. I need to, you know, put a little more effort into moving my body, especially over the winter. And so what I decided to do was, To combine that with my desire to also just like zone out and watch crap TV every now and it's not that crappy It's like  just not educational shows.

So by combining those two things, combining, okay, I need to work out. And what I really want to do is just zone out and watch a TV show right now. Binge watch TV. Um, I will do them both at the same time. I will allow myself to binge watch TV if I'm doing it while I'm working out and that way I was able to do that.

So maybe that's what you want to do with your artistic practice.  Say I need to start making more art in my life because I need it in my soul, but also I want to watch TV. See what's going on on that Netflix. All right. So I will leave you with an idea for a little meditation. I use this for managing anxiety during my pregnancy.

Um, and I realized it can work into many different situations. So 

Meditative Practice for Creativity

getting yourself into a seat and as you start to relax and breathe deeper, imagine that you are breathing in inspiration  and breathing out  doubt and despair,  breathing in clarity  and breathing out confusion. Um,  So feeling these emotions, these energies rushing through your veins and into your body, feeling the oxygen going through your veins, infused with inspiration, feeling the carbon dioxide gathering in the lungs and taking with it on that exhale, taking out all those unhelpful thoughts and feelings as you exhale. 

And just do that for a couple minutes. It's incredible. I mean, I just did that a couple of times and I feel better already. Um, I think it's time to go make something. 

Recap and Final Thoughts

Okay. So to recap, forgive yourself for leaving your artistic practice. Say it out loud. If you need to,  I forgive myself for leaving my artistic practice.

I had other things I needed to do in life, and that is okay.  Next up, imagine you have an on ramp to gain momentum through gently amping up your practice. Gentle being the operative word here.  Next up, re familiarize yourself with your materials, or re familiarize yourself with your own work, looking back at your portfolio. 

Schedule your practice. Let's start with 30 minutes so it doesn't feel overwhelming or unattainable. Um, oh, and I didn't mention this, but allow the first few scheduled sessions to be unproductive. They're just allowed to be unproductive. That way you don't feel defeated. It's called a practice, not a get it done.

We're practicing.  Next up, if it feels like a waste of time, consider why you think your artistic practice is less important than any other form of self care.  And take a look at how you might be avoiding your practice, or even why you might be avoiding your practice. Go beyond, because I don't have time, and even beyond thoughts like, because I don't think I'm good at it, into what happens when I make art that I don't want to deal with. 

Next up, pairing your art making practice with some other must do action. And finally, using the breath to recenter your body in alignment with your innate creativity, with your deep and primal urge to create.  All right. That was a fun one. I'm excited to do more episodes like this. I will be putting them in my upcoming membership.

As I mentioned at the beginning of this episode, which includes a private podcast featuring me. feed for these deeper dives into our personal relationship with our inner creative spirit, along with stitch instructions and prompts that support your art making practice, and even live sessions to discuss these ideas together.

You can learn all about the membership in the link in the show notes, um, or you can just go to mixedcolor. net, not dot com, mixedcolor. net slash membership. And learn more. Doors are now open. The first lesson goes out July 10th and the doors will close shortly after that. Um, I will be back in a few weeks with, um, the next episode.

Upcoming Episode Teaser

I interviewed an amazing company that is basically revolutionizing the way that fashion manufacturing and production is handled. Um, fashion and clothing, as we know, is a wildly conflicted industry, but this company Made X Hudson has redesigned the process from the inside out. And I'm so inspired by them and delighted to share their story.

and their inspired way of thinking and envisioning a better future for industries that we have sort of felt like have entirely failed us, just completely redesigning it. Um, I'm so excited to share that with you. So, um, thank you so much and hope you enjoy this episode. Let me know if you have any other questions or anything you want me to cover.

Um, feel free to email me. My email is info at mixedcolor. net  and yeah, I hope to hear from you and mostly I hope to see you in the membership. Okay.