For the Birds: swift letters for busy people

#1: your creativity is an experience, not a product

Thanks for reading For the Birds! You’re feeling especially busy these days, right? Let’s cut to the chase.

---

On day three, I went for a walk.

Days one and two were hard. Day three was better, but I still felt groggy, emotionally hungover, and wobbly in my decision-making. Not better enough to dive into work or writing, but not bad enough to wallow.

What to do with oneself in such quietly uneven moments?

You walk.

I tried to come up with a question or topic beforehand, something to conjure a response to. I love walking as divinatory practice, as ritual, and I think that a short, contained meandering is one of the best ways to tap into creative thinking. But in terms of a question, I kept drawing a blank.

Who cares. I put my shoes on and left.

Right away I saw the moon, nearly full, and two ravens soaring in my line of vision. I knew I was on the right track.

I saw two Northern Flickers, even though they’d been being very quiet, which made me smile.

I saw up close a glowing tree I’d been admiring from far away for days.

I saw someone parachuting! It was 39° outside.

I saw pink and orange along the upper edge of the hills east of us, not even where the sun would soon be setting.

I saw piles and piles of leaves: wet, gross, muddy leaves, doing that thing they do this time of year, turning different colors in random patches outlined with sharp borders.

If you look closely enough, you see that some of them are actually peeling.

I looked closely enough.

I don’t know, technically, what this means about the tree’s health when the leaves peel like this, or if it’s a normal seasonal occurrence. I do know that I find it beautiful.

What I find, when I let myself be with it fully, is usually bigger than what I don’t know.

I came home answer-less, because I was question-less to begin with. I came home with my hands full of dirty leaves and one bright orange one I had to jump to reach, which left me quite pleased with myself.

There are two parts to our creativity. There’s the product-ness: the manuscripts, the deadlines (internal & external), the habits, the goals. The finality and rigidity of it all, things usually outlined with sharp borders. Are they always healthy? Are they sometimes not?

Then, there’s the experiences we create for ourselves. Our imagination, intuition, & artistic desire—our primal impulse to make—serve the purpose of enriching our days long before they serve the purpose of creating something that will sit still on a shelf or hang on a wall and maybe sell for money.

No matter what kind of writer or person you are, you have to tend both. You can’t care about the product more than the experience or you will lose track of your own terms. Your creativity will become a thing outside of you that you are constantly reaching for. Your will forget about the beingness of it all.

Your creativity doesn’t have to show up as a project, or as something shareable / sellable, or even make it to the page at all!

It can show up in the sharpness of your attention as you look through leaves and notice patterns, becoming more aware of their universality.

It can show up in how you engage with the world when you’re outside the comfort of your home, no keys or money or phone on you, and you’re just breathing, looking without agenda at a familiar place. Looking despite what you’ve already seen.

It can show up in the felt contradictions: your nose, hands, and ankles might be freezing, but your body, neck to knees, is almost too warm. You’re noticing the truth in contradictions. First the easier ones, like temperature, so you can move on to the harder ones, like faith.

Your creativity is the quality of your attention, the tone of your engagement with the world, and your pursuit of truth. Your truth. Nobody else will tune in to its frequencies for you.

Don’t prioritize the merit of what you do or don’t or supposedly couldn’t ever make even if you tried. Pour your energy instead into asking yourself: what kind of experience would you like to have today? With creativity always at your disposal, let yourself find the answer. Be with it fully.

---

An invitation

This work—the work of protecting or, in some cases, rediscovering our own creative terms—is hard work. Personally, I’ve not been able to get confident or clear on these things without help from a diverse network of support people: coaches, therapists, trustworthy friends, and various communities where I can show up as my full creative self, even as I continue to figure out who exactly she is.

If the idea of receiving guidance on your own similar journey lights you up (or makes you nervous in a good-nervous sort of way), let’s talk! I offer free consultations for anyone interested in a Creative Mentorship container with me, and I’ve now made it easy-peasy for you to snag & schedule yours:

Questions? They’re good ones, so please reach out. As I recently wrote in a short letter to my Founding Members¹, I love helping people brainstorm their way back to a primal sense of inspiration, where our most unwavering creative impulses reside. Whether it leads to working with me or not, I love helping people get to that place.

1. If you upgrade your subscription to For the Birds before the year is over, you can take advantage of my year-end 1:1 discounts!