For the Birds: A full moon offering

Creative Vitality: 4 small, digestible "seeds" to help you keep the channel open. Plus some strategies for keeping a project going when your time is limited.

Thanks for being here! Paid readers directly fund my film habit, making For the Birds a more visually engaging experience.

Consider upgrading to an annual subscription this week and receive 25% off! You’ll get a full year of attending The Resiliency Circle, plus monthly creative prompts.

grainy, watery, happy: how I feel when writing to you (film photo by M)

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This winter, I’ve been revamping my website. It’s part of the strange, ongoing task of accurately describing the tender / magical / emotional-but-tangible work I do with other humans through creative mentorship.

Side note: I’ve been told by a number of people that my website is beautiful, and I’m really grateful to hear that feedback. The visual signature you find in my work is one of my most beloved creative expressions, and it’s the result of a 20-ish-year-long special interest in film photography, lomography, and instant & toy cameras. (Big warm shoutout to my pals Violeta & Jeff, whose friendship was instant and remains timeless <3)

Are ya’ll interested in a Resiliency Circle where we talk about visuals? The art of putting word and image together? Do you have question or curiosities on this topic? Let me know all your thoughts on the matter…

Circa 2010, on cross-processed Ektachrome…

…and last fall, same camera: Canon AE-1

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A by-product of all that website work was last month’s essay about the cost of letting creativity go dormant, which showed up as I clarified my messaging.

And today, I’m bringing you the third piece of the triptych:

Built for busy humans with limited spoons, “Creative Vitality” is a short, digestible, and free email series designed to help you expand your relationship to your own creative capacities.

Over the course of about a week, you’ll receive four small strategies—or “seeds”—that carry guidance & prompting in the following areas:

• How to hone your authentic impulses

• How to clarify what success looks and feels like on your own terms

• How to protect and amplify your sense of creative worth

• And how to regard your creativity through a more seasonal (read: accurate) lens

→ You can sign up for “Creative Vitality” here:

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All this winter work has me thinking about time: How we use it, and the ways in which we feel crushed by its presence and bereft in its absence. At least half of my clients lament about their schedules and obligations and free time (or lack thereof) as one of their core creative challenges.

With that in mind, I wanted “Creative Vitality” to be something you could easily absorb, something you could open, spend a few minutes with, and then continue on with your day, while small-but-potent ideas take root in the background of your mind. Most importantly, I wanted to make something genuinely helpful that would not become *a whole big additional thing* on your to-do list.

What I’m trying to say is that we can keep the channel open in so many different ways, and yes, sometimes that looks like carving out long, ideal mornings where we do nothing but write. But sometimes we just need to percolate, letting our inspirations steep privately for a little longer.

Do not underestimate the good creative work that can take place beneath soil that appears to be “doing nothing.”

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How to keep a project going when your time is limited

Look: The last thing I want to do is pretend it doesn’t suck to be too busy. I’m not interested in forcing a silver lining around the real complications of trying to balance employment and care-taking and self-care-taking, and the whole slew of obligations and needs that any one of us are saddled with each day. Add to this the reality that for many of us—including ND folks and highly sensitive souls—our slower processing times and wavering or limited capacities can mean we genuinely need more time to do certain things.

But I’m also aware of the tendency to slip into black-and-white, all-or-nothing thinking around this kind of stuff. Let me put my hand up first and confess that quite often, I let perfect get in the way of good enough, especially when it comes to my creative routines.

I’ve got a project I’m working on right now, a deeply tender and strange poetic manuscript, and nothing feels as good and right as blocking off whole days at a time to give it my full attention.

But those days aren’t common ones, both for legitimate and silly reasons—I’m too busy, or I’m too tired, or priorities are feeling hard, or my attention is elsewhere, or I just feel like playing Zelda, or I’m sick, or my brain is foggy, or I’m too grumpy be inspired, etc. etc.

Here are a few ways I keep a project alive when I’m short on time and/or energy:

• Literally: I open the document, skim it, pause on a random line or two, and close the document. That’s it. I take a moment to put my eyeballs directly on the thing and remind my brain that it exists, and that I have worked on it at least once.

• I edit one page. One!! Maybe I duplicate that page and quickly dramatically change the formatting on the 2nd version. When I come back to it days or weeks later, I’ll be able to greet my new options from a refreshed and distant perspective.

• I assign a set of books to the project, usually a mix of poetry, non-fiction, and philosophy. Whether in content or in style, these are the books I find my current writing to be in most direct dialogue with, and they’re crucial sources of inspiration and prompting. When I can’t even bring myself to open my project document, I snag a book and read a couple of pages instead. OK, so maybe I’m not out there planting seeds, but I am fertilizing the soil.

• I share a page (or two) (or 30) with a trusted friend / colleague / writer. (Dear early readers of the ~thing~ I’m currently working on: You know who you are: Thank you, thank you, thank you.) Kind, enthusiastic, and strengths-based engagement can help reinforce that this thing we are making, no matter how slowly, is real.

If there’s a thread running through all these suggestions, it’s this one: All of it counts. There are lots of ways to attend to a project, to keep it active even in the periphery of your attention, and to remind yourself that your creativity, in any amount, is worthwhile, and real.

Dear birds,

• How do you keep a project going when your energy / time / inspiration isn’t at full capacity?

• How do you remember that you are always an artist?

• How do you remind yourself that your creativity is not conditional?

→ Let me know in the comments or by email!

→ Then sign up for “Creative Vitality” here.