Permission to be Creative // UPDATE

087. As we approach 2024, the Marijanel Show is ready to embrace a new theme - creativity. Reflecting on our journey so far, we've covered topics such as purpose, mentorship, journaling, and self-worth in the past year. The journey hasn't been without its challenges, and personal setbacks...like my burnout this past summer... have shaped the narrative of my show. But remember, seasons don't last forever. The future promises an exciting new chapter, and trust me, you wouldn't want to miss out on the creative evolution that's happening.

Have you ever wondered about the intertwined connections that bind different facets of my life to the Marijanel Show? Let's take a stroll down memory lane as I share my own personal story of how the first 50 episodes of "Curiosity's Apprentice" served as a memoir of sorts. But, there's been a piece I've always held back: a significant failure from my days as a children's content creator. With my recent step back into children's book publishing, I'm ready to open up that vault and inspire you to embrace your creativity without fear of failure. So, grab a cup of coffee and join me as we embark on this journey of living wholeheartedly and creatively.

00:00:00 Intro 00:00:56 Whole doesn't mean perfect 00:02:37 My Intention Word for 2024 00:03:43 Looking back through the year 00:04:49 The other part of my burnout 00:06:42 I had a stirring 00:08:48 About the Hedgehog 00:10:11 Why I started Kid's YouTube 00:13:16 Journaling Resources still happening 00:14:36 The Failure I wasn't over 00:15:53 The story I left out 00:16:44 Why I closed a vault on my creativity 00:18:06 My soul has been in rehab 00:19:32 Creating a safe space for kids 00:20:41 Closing

✷ Kid’s Book From Amazon→ https://amzn.to/48pwHOQ

✷ Kid’s YouTube Channel→ https://www.youtube.com/@mjandmissymay

✷ Website → https://marijanel.com/

✷ Companion YouTube Video →https://youtu.be/Qsag9iesBoE

✷ Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/marijanel/

✷ Support the Show → https://www.buymeacoffee.com/Marijanel

✷ Music → https://www.epidemicsound.com/

Transcript

Marijanel: 0:00

Hello and welcome the Marijanel the show. This is a podcast where I talk all about living whole and creative, and today it's going to be a little bit different than my typical episode, because it's gonna be like having coffee with a friend, catching up on life and catching up a little bit on the direction of the Marijanel show as we quickly approach the year 2024 and you all know I like to surprise you with big things at the start of every year. You woke up last year, at the start of 2023, and I had a whole new name for the show. You were like what? I was getting texts and messages that were showing the new graphic that I posted. You're like what? What happened around here?

Marijanel: 0:43

Yes Marijanel the show changes and fluctuates with pretty much what's happening in my life Marijanel I'm and I am living whole and creative. And whole doesn't mean perfect. Whole doesn't mean I have it all together. It means that my quest is to be a wholehearted individual and fully, fully embracing my life here on planet Earth, the limited time that I have, and living creative, because that's who I was created to be, and I like to let that spill out over in all my work, including this podcast where I encourage you and inspire you to live the same way, to live your story authentically, to find out where your self-worth and confidence is truly taking its foundation.

Marijanel: 1:33

And now, as we begin to approach the year 2024, I'm digging into, like, what is my new word gonna be? You know, in the year 2023, my word was purpose. In the year 2024 I want to scare you, but my word of the year it's looking like not a hundred percent, sure, but it's looking like it's gonna be the word creativity. And before you turn off this podcast, I want you to know that I think I'm gonna blow the lid off creativity for you. I think that you're gonna find out some things about living creative, about thinking you're not creative. I think you're gonna find out some things that change your perspective and actually make your year 2024 be a really, really incredible year. And yes, I do carry that expectation Marijanel the show and for all the upcoming podcast episodes and, you know, things that we do together in community. I have that expectation that it can be really incredible and it's gonna involve the word creativity. So I really just want to touch on a few of the things that I had felt very passionately about in 2023 that I brought forward on the Mary Janelle show and that might have seemed to fall flat to you or might have seemed to be conversations that we never entirely finished and they might have been mysterious. Okay, so I'm going to just rewind to and then journey through the year a little bit, keeping it quick and keeping it as interesting as I can, so that, because I know this coffee time is a one sided conversation, I'm doing all the talking and you're hopefully taking a walk, getting some exercising, going for a drive or just sitting on your couch or relaxing, or something where you're just able to really enjoy this little recap Now in the year of 2023, in the spring, I should say I got very passionate about for a period of time, about talking about what mentorship meant to me, because I was moving more into the mentor role and working on some mentorship programs which are I'm going to go ahead and do that which are, I'm going to say, still in development.

Marijanel: 3:47

Now, to some degree, I'm exercising those, those dreams and ideas, but not all the way. And what became clear to me as I moved through, like being really passionate about mentorship and sharing a lot about, like my insights with you all. And then, moving into the journaling space, where I have really shared with you my passion for journaling. I invested in the beginnings of a journaling resource this summer, did a lot of filming, which is still in production, and was like kind of ready to launch this thing Meanwhile. Okay, so we got those pieces and then meanwhile, I shared with you an episode where I was totally burnt out because I had a really intense beginning of the summer. In June, my son got married and we had like tons of family visit and I like over exerted myself with like work and wedding and everything and pretty much found myself in bed and I did an episode sharing with you all the different like ways that I began to like nurse myself out of burnout. And then meanwhile, while that was happening, I was also I had previously been working really hard at losing the 15 pounds that I gained in 2022.

Marijanel: 5:00

I was on Weight Watchers and going to the gym and remember the whole drama of like my mother of the groom dress didn't zip up. Well, I found that. Well, first of all little update I'm no longer on Weight Watchers. I am doing some intermittent fasting way way, way more suitable for my lifestyle currently, but in the gym I hurt my shoulder and that shoulder injury overlapped with the burnout and so I was burnt out and I was hurting, not sleeping, and I'm not telling you this for a woe is me. I'm telling you the or a pity party.

Marijanel: 5:36

I'm telling you this because I want you to know, in the backstory of everything that I was feeling passionate about doing in my life and business and creative world, I was experiencing setback after setback after setback, which is why you began to hear me speak differently, where I began to come forward with shows about being in the current season, about fostering your dreams even when you don't see them coming to fruition, and how to take care of yourself. And you heard an entirely different message come forward, because in the beginning of the year I came forward strong and I was like in a really strong season in my life, and then I went through these hardships and kind of needed to readjust and come forward saying, hey, you guys were in this together and sometimes it's really hard, but there's seasons and seasons don't last forever. And that's what was going on in the backstory of my message development. But meanwhile there was something else going on. There was this stirring, stirring, stirring inside of me where I felt like, even though I was harnessing all of this great content messages about purpose, destiny, mentorship, being accountable, growing forward, finding our big dreams and this is all great stuff I was having a personal setback in the fact that I didn't feel like I was really really releasing my full potential the Marijanel Show.

Marijanel: 7:18

And that's when you heard me come forward with an episode where I shared like I need to start talking about my creativity here, and I didn't even know what that meant. I didn't know if it meant that I'd share parts of myself as an artist. I didn't know if it would mean that I would develop a creativity teaching of some sort, like share my philosophies. I just really didn't know. I just knew that that piece of my life was really missing. And then I shared with you my God-sized dream.

Marijanel: 7:50

I was encouraging you to find your GSD, which is God-sized dream. It's got like a big, hairy, audacious goal or something so humongous that you can't even imagine how you're going to fit it in or do it all in your lifetime. And I shared with you. I'm going to call it a God-sized dream. I'm going to say it's the God-sized dream of my life, but it's one of them, and it's where I revealed what seems insignificant, what seems to be something little. It was a little hedgehog puppet that I had a friend commissioned to create for me on my birthday, the year of 2021. That hedgehog puppet is a 3D rendering, essentially, of an illustration that I created called Missy May Hedgehog, and she started out as cards and illustrations that were part of my business, really, and she was popular and I saw this world coming to life for her and I saw how much joy she brought, not only to kids but to people, and I was like this little character needs to come to life. And that's when that whole story I'm not going to recap that story right now, but that whole story where I was in a business group and they wanted us to write down our big dreams, and I didn't have any big dreams for my business, but I did have a big dream for Missy May Hedgehog.

Marijanel: 9:10

Well, long story short, this is where all began to accumulate and I saw that I needed to bring pieces of my life together here. I needed to not be being disjointed where I was expressing over here this way and expressing over there that way, which in best business practices having a niche, having a really clear message. Those things are really important. But in the context of the marriage and health show, I was like I could do whatever I want here, because my whole, entire drive is to live whole and creative, but to not just do that for myself, to encourage you to do that, and the best way to do that is to demonstrate being whole and creative. And so I was challenging myself can you bring all these pieces together? Marijanel and shine I've talked about the place of shine, where your voice is the clearest and the strongest. And I have an aspect of my life which is in children's content, creation in children's entertainment. That is an entire facet of myself that I've never even truly talked about here on the Mary Janelle show. And don't worry, I'm not going to dive in. It's not going to become like a show about how to make a kid's show or something like that. But all this to say that I've known and challenged myself that I have to bring pieces of myself together here. And how am I going to do that? Well, in just a minute I'm going to share with you my first step that I'm going to take in January here on the show. But before that, I want to rewind. And now for those of you who are new on board to the Mary Janelle show and you haven't listened to like all my episodes which I don't expect you to, but I'll do a little quick recap. But those of you who've been here through the whole journey, you're going to know exactly what I mean.

Marijanel: 10:58

But my first 50 episodes of this show was called Curiosity's Apprentice and it was a memoir cast of my life. So I had had the, the dream to podcast. For about six years I'd been fostering this little seed of an idea, but I didn't actually know what to make my podcast about, because I do have so many diverse interests in anything arts or entertainment, really in the realm of talent, you could pretty much name anything and Mary Janelle could have a podcast about it. And so I was like what do I actually make my podcast about and what am I going to focus on? Well, something that I've been very near and dear to my heart for many years was to write a memoir. But I felt really stuck writing the memoir and I thought, hey, what would happen if I began to speak out slivers of my story on an audio show and share these bits of myself and be able to take the transcripts and use the transcripts to create my memoir, which is still a plan in progress. But that's how, at the in November if we were right, two years ago, in November 2021, I began to record the episodes of Curiosity's Apprentice and I published them in the new year of 2022.

Marijanel: 12:15

You all pretty much woke up and I had a podcast. People were like what? And at the time it was an audio podcast. It was before I went on to YouTube and my whole first 50 episodes were about the stories of my life, but I left out one big story. The reason that I know for sure that I left out a story that maybe could eventually be included in that collection is because last year at this time so rewind, one year ago when I was considering rebranding to the Marijanel show, pivoting my message to be more like, to pick out the pieces of my life story and talk about more of like, my heartbeat and my message on the show, which is living, whole and creative, I began to ask myself, like, have you truly finished this series? Like, are you done? Is there anything else in there?

Marijanel: 13:10

Marijanel, and you all know I'm an avid journaler, I've taken you on the journaling journey and I do have journaling resources coming up, but I was journaling this, getting out the answers, and the answer was like yes, there is one really big story of my life that I had intentionally but kind of non intentionally little bit of both left out of that collection and that was a huge failure I had experienced in my twenties, related to being a children's content creator. At the time I was a singer-songwriter and I developed an entire really cool musical curriculum and I had had a series of CDs it was like way back in the CDs day that went national through department stores and I had a few really big rubs with, like the corporate world, that this little organic soul, this little 20-something-year-old who had a two-year-old who was just like this little mom making music. She just wasn't ready for the corporate sting of like people not paying huge invoices and like big demands in contracts and I got very, very overwhelmed. In a nutshell Now I haven't told you the whole story because someday I do want to tell you the whole story, but in a nutshell, I experienced this failure related to all of these precious gifts I had poured out into the world and I literally took them and locked them all in a vault, along with the talent that particularly was attached to that experience, and I locked that vault and I moved forward. Now, it didn't mean I didn't make music, it didn't mean I didn't work in the arts. I've done all of that and I've succeeded at all of that in various ways.

Marijanel: 15:03

But what there was was this sort of like shutdown in the woundedness of that experience where I didn't let myself ever fully go back into children's content creation, and it is an area of my life that I really, really shined. So this past autumn as you know, because I talk about it all the time on the show I've released a children's book and I illustrated an author to children's book called Weight, darling Weight. You'll find it on Amazon, the links are below. It's adorable, it's wonderful. But it also unlocked my vault, so to speak. Like I felt it like something inside me literally cracked open and I was like peering inside at my past and realizing.

Marijanel: 15:51

Number one there was a reason I left that story out of Curiosity's Apprentice because I was only 99.99% healed. I needed to heal a little bit more and the healing had to do with re-acknowledging that talent and using it again, which has happened now and it's been amazing. And then the other thing that I saw when peering into the vault was like, wow, if I actually begin to unpack this, who knows what my future will look like, because now that I've built and experienced so many talents in like other realms than what I had when I closed that vault back in my 20s, if I merge it all together, it's just going to be like this. I don't know. I just saw puzzle pieces of my life coming together. It's been huge. It's been pivotal for me.

Marijanel: 16:46

It's been also very hard to explain on the Marijanel show, because you this year, in 2023, you've seen me having puzzle pieces everywhere, like I have this mentorship piece and this journaling piece and this I'm passionate about. You finding your purpose piece, and then creativity, intuition, faith and growing yourself in the foundation of love in order to know yourself worth. Like have all of these components and you're like whoa ping pong ball. This Marijanel is all over the place. But I'm not. I'm not. I'm very clear that all of these pieces make sense and the pieces that I've been leaving out because I didn't want to acknowledge have been creativity and the passion of raising up our next generation, our children, in and using creativity as a tool to do so really.

Marijanel: 17:40

And so all this to say that I've been bringing together pieces of my life over the last little while. So you know you might have left off with me thinking, okay, this girl's totally burnt out. I have been. I have had the shoulder injury that I'm nursing and been in sort of a rehab state like literally only walking around the block and lifting these tiny little weights to like rehabilitate my shoulder, and my soul has been in rehab at the same time. It's like my whole life kind of went like from burnout mode into this beautiful kind of sacred rehab space where I've been just like regenerating and in this new rebirth I've been seeing so much clearer things and pieces that I need to bring out to the world in my lifetime, which is all going to sort of make sense in 2024 with the new episodes of the show, starting with creativity.

Marijanel: 18:36

So, as I shared with you in last podcast about the God size dream and Missy May Hedgehog, I know that it's tempting sometimes, when we have a big dream, to just let it be that and it is okay. I've said multiple times, it's okay to just let a dream be a dream. But I've known that in order to like, reactivate and regenerate these pieces of myself. I had to take some action, and the best way to start taking action really is in little steps. But I had to sit down and get really real with, like, what are the little steps that I could take here that make sense to move towards a big dream? And so I did something because, you all know, Marijanel's always got something on the go.

Marijanel: 19:17

I started a children's YouTube channel called MJ and Missy May, and MJ and Missy May is me, mj, with my hedgehog puppet, missy May Hedgehog, and we are creating a safe space online for children to learn, grow, explore their imagination and really just have fun with MJ and Missy May. And I don't know all of it yet. I don't know everything that MJ and Missy May are going to discover together, but I did take the step to do this, and so if you have little ones in your life, if you know someone who does, please go, hop off this YouTube channel, find the other one, follow along that journey. But all of that to say that I had these, all of these pieces come together. I was really challenged to take action steps and I'm also really challenged to pull together the bigness and the fullness that I'm feeling in my life right now into the Mary Janelle show to make an impact for you, to demonstrate, to encourage, to inspire you to live your fullest, your whole and creative, full life. And so that's a little bit of an update recap for you here on the Marijanel show what's been going on behind the scenes, what 2023 is meant to me and what we think we can see coming up in 2024, starting off with some really really thought provoking creativity and, of course, lots of entertainment from me and my wild God size dreams.

Marijanel: 20:52

My new YouTube channel and the fact that I really, really, really want to support parents in parents and caregivers in raising creative kids. That's something I've been thinking a lot about. There's a lot. There's a lot to unpack from that vault and someday I'll tell you that full story. Thank you for being here on the show with me. You know all my links are below everything I mentioned. As much as I can, I try to link it all below and you can follow along my journey that way. I don't know if you've been to my website, Marijanel. com, but I got a blog there, got a lot going on my Instagram at Marijanel. You can also support the show through the Buy Me a coffee link. So much to say at the end. Hit subscribe like the notification bell. Thanks for joining me everyone. Until next time, live whole and creative.