Their characters and ideas, however, were very much alive inside me and other readers. And, to my young mind, I believed this to be magic.

I still do. The magic of genuine, human storytelling = nothing short of traveling across time and connecting with others in the quietest of moments in profound and unparalleled ways.

I read Zora Neale Hurston for the first time when I was a teenager.

By then, I was disillusioned; consumed by how imperfect and unspecial I felt, books had become more of an escape to me than a study. I sometimes took them for granted, ducking into worlds just to be out of my own.

The reasons we read vary. I still read to escape at times. But as a writer, I’ve become as fascinated by the author journeys as the writing itself. The stories behind the story, if you will.

Zora Neale Hurston believed that she was worth investing in and that what she loved was more important than comfort and ease. She believed in her mission and purpose to observe, as an anthropologist who received recognition as a folklorist during her life but Their Eyes Were Watching God, the work she’s synonymous with now, was largely ignored.

Many brilliant works are ignored. Many brilliant people are ignored in thier lifetimes for their best work. At least by the masses.

It seems to me, and did seem even when I was a kid, that every book I was meant to read found me. But I also can’t help but thinking what I might have missed.

It was a mysterious thing that we end up reading certain blogs, certain books, connecting with certain others across time.

I was so incredibly grateful for all the authors who reached me. Books shaped me as much as my parents and friends and location. Books gave me depth and perspective and reminded me how similar yet unique we all are.

This is a foundational revelation, nothing new, but it’s one I associate with Hurston and her story of not receiving recognition during her lifetime.

Perhaps she would have enjoyed seeing how much impact her writing had traveled into minds beyond her life, but I doubt that was what her work was truly about.

It seems she was genuinely curious about the world and the way people interacted across the communities she observed. She was curious about the everyday and the mundane as well as the dreams.

Being genuinely curious and finding our own agency seems often at odds with wanting acceptance or accolades.

I’m curious about why certain people connect across time and space, but my assumption is that it comes from this place of agency and genuine curiosity about others.

We don’t always see the full reach of our impact, but writers like Hurston make me think asking the right questions can keep us going.

Writing Prompt: Write about you or a character who is searching for agency and finds it. Write only that scene—the scene of finding agency. And write it with all your heart. What is sacrificed? Does it matter?

A special meditation on slowing down creative observation/appreciation is below.

The downloadable version is available to paid subscribers. Our next Creative Resiliency circle is Friday, June 19. Join us here. And in the meantime, check out (and add to) the Creative Resilience playlist we made last time.

Thank you to again to @Tiffany S. , @Sara Jane Moginot, @Christina Larsen , @The Door Between Worlds, @Sara Castaneda, @Amanda Woodruff & others who are kicking this off.

I’ve always been fascinated by people who sacrifice convention and its de facto safety in exchange for an unrelenting devotion to vision and creative integrity. Such people are often said to be ahead of their time.

This fascination is what led me to write about Victoria C. Woodhull, a social radical in her time, and I believe it will lead me to my next work.

I am fascinated by how unconventional thinkers, artists and writers trust(ed) their vision. How do they keep going when they’re repeatedly told no? How do they find the courage to buck convention?

Should we do the same? Is it worth it?

When we’re always working to try to find the largest audience, it’s easy to become stuck in patterns and seeking to answer to generic expectations. I like to think of it as trying to win at a losing game. When we play by others’ rules, it’s easier to succumb to competition and an endless quest for fulfillment.

As most artists and writers know, however, when we listen to the work, something more powerful happens.

One of my favorite examples of an artist exploring creative prowess, despite convention or “market trends,” despite being dismissed or ridiculed, is Yoko Ono. Often vilified for her supposed influence on breakup of The Beatles and repeatedly minimized as an artist in her own right (not only in the sixties but up until recently), she remained committed to experimenting and exploring her true artistic voice.

She commentated and questioned convention in myriad ways, exploring the topics that pique her curiosity at the time.

In her 1964 “Cut Piece,” she sat on a stage with a pair of scissors and invited people to cut pieces of her dress away. This kind of performance art was not typical or conventional. It was equal parts prescient and ignored. While her very famous husband had enjoyed commercial success, she created what may have been the least commercial art of the time.

Vanessa Thorpe wrote an article a few years ago admitting that she could have never predicted Ono’s art would one day find a notable audience on its own; meanwhile, in her nineties, Ono is still true to her vision and perhaps more respected than ever.

The beauty of it is that I doubt she cares about acceptance and accolades. She sees her works as a gift, and she owns that.

I believe we deny our creative energy when we outsource it or dim it to make it more palatable.

Honoring our own creativity and individual vision helps us to be more generous and kind.

I just returned from a writing residency in Vermont, where I met many of the kindest people I’ve ever encountered—all creatives who delighted in seeing each other’s work and sharing processes. I think part of the magic was the diversity of art represented.

The creative community is not without competition, but the essence of pure expression is generosity (a gift), and getting back to that is freeing. It is only from a place of generosity that we can create something brave enough to be true.

Over the next few weeks, as I plan new projects, I will be profiling more writers, artists, and thinkers who were ignored, dismissed, or misrecognized in their times and examine what kept them going. Not to copy or offer formulas (there are none), but from a place of creative inquiry and delight. The next profile I’m working on is inspiring an interesting question.

In the meantime, let’s explore the larger question together with a prompt and exercise about creative courage.

Prompt: Who or what has told you that you cannot or should not create your art? Your writing?

Without naming this person or people, explore their belief system as inspiration to create a piece that begins conventional and safe, then goes off the rails.

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A meditation on creative courage

A downloadable verstion of the meditation for paid subscribers is here.

Thank you, thank you, thank you!

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While I was in Vermont, I didn’t want to think about social media or my website. Well, at least not at first. But after I met an artist who asked if I’d help her navigate my website so she could read my work, I wondered if I should take a look. (If someone is asking you to help them navigate your website, your site needs help.)

When I found myself embarking on 12 hours of travel back to the Midwest, a pattern of scattered energy surfaced. It started with fixing my website and led all around the internet. News, social posts, hot takes, my own posts, checking my own posts, back to news …

I recognized it as both familiar and addictive as I stared at my phone, then computer, then phone.

Scattered energy means more mistakes, less focus, and quite a bit of wonkiness. While I lean toward wonky as it is, I know I’m not alone in feeling this lack of cohesion, creatively and otherwise. Part of it is because there’s a desire to know what’s going on at all times. The other part is simply being a writer in 2026.

As writers, we’re regularly told we need to have a “platform,” which is a word that I find about as attractive as a “networking” or a breakfast menu item I found in Barre, Vermont: “Spam omelet.”

“No, thank you,” I say, as I look from ad to post to project to photo to video to my own site.

Authors aren’t alone. Visual artists are pressured to post to Instagram to find their audience and investors. Entrepreneurs are nudged toward LinkedIn. And we’re all told to be everywhere, to pay attention to all the things, lest we miss something and the entire world falls apart without our knowing (valid concern).

I’d like to say that my attention is more focused than most folks because I meditate. I eat well (for the most part) and exercise daily. I like to think I’m rather disciplined and do most of the recommended things.

But no. The recommended, peer-reviewed, science-based advice isn’t working.

Despite my best efforts, I have watched more YouTube videos, scrolled Instagram more often, found myself in internet loops, and even occasionally checked Facebook; oh, and I feel compelled to post everything I write here, at Substack, to BlueSky and other platforms.

Then, somehow, I still find time to ask search engines about random things.

I mean, don’t we all need to know how various birds dream? Do they achieve REM?

The online world is currently designed to be time-consuming and endlessly entertaining, and for someone whose attention is already easily consumed by the smallest things (did you know that chickens have REM sleep and often dream of relational dynamics, whereas pigeons primarily dream of flying?), the increased pace and expectations are exhausting.

Part of me wants to move to a sturdy cabin in rural Vermont and go off the grid, communing only with a small and eclectic group of writers for good (OK, most of me), but a small part enjoys some of this digital madness. I mean, I’m here after all. Writing about it.

As a writer and human, what I recently realized is that I’m not craving solitude so much as a semblance of cohesion. Where does everything connect for me, in my life?

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My goal is consistent unifying connection.

What are the things that consistently call you back? Not the branding, not the persona, but the things that you are curious about. And who are the people you genuinely want to connect to?

These are the questions I’ve been asking myself as I simplify my online presence.

As we move forward here, I will be offering all the same things I always have: human ramblings, meditations, prompts. But I plan to also use this “platform” (gag) to connect deeper to the things I care about. I hope they are of value to you.

Please look out for my next post on what it means to be a radical in the world of creativity. What it means when the world doesn’t seem receptive or ready for our art? How do we move forward regardless?

I believe conscious connection is the creative call to action, folks. This is true creative resilience. Till then …

Writing Prompt: Use fragmentation to your benefit. Write three opening lines to new stories (essays or poems) based on the last things that piqued your interest online. When you’re done, find a way to connect them in a single piece. Find the thoroughline.

Paid subscribers: Enjoy a downloadable breathing practice for focus and balance here & a 20-minute moving meditation/qigong class here.

Life Prompt: Is your attention fragmented in any way? If not, brilliant! Share your secrets.

If so, what brings you back to center? Make a list. Include everything that slows you down (qigong, gardening, journaling, dance…) Now, go do something on that list.

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I have been doing all the things. Maybe to avoid the news. Maybe to avoid my own emotions. Maybe to feel as though I’m doing something of value in the world. Or maybe, just maybe, to avoid what means the most to me.

So long as we don’t do the thing, we can still dream. Besides, if we do 100 things, at least one of them will be of value, right?

Here’s what I’ve been doing since the beginning of 2026: Teaching and managing a program in academia, hanging with friends and family, teaching writing workshops in the evenings, communicating with Unleash authors and supporting their work, sharing my own tips and tricks here, and revising my novel. Recycling and protesting. Teaching meditation.

Here’s what I have not been doing: writing.

I was finding ways to reset through meditation and somatic movement, but before I arrived where I am today, at the Vermont Studio Center, I was worn down, tired and having trouble remembering everywhere I need to be, even as I instruct others to relax, trust their flow. This wariness was a result of giving more than I was allowing myself to receive.

Creatively and otherwise.

Because I’ve been so deep in revision, I have been giving myself a pass. Aside from this blog and a gratitude journal I keep, I recently realized the pile of notebooks around my house has not grown, but I told myself—eh, it’s okay because I need to focus my attention on getting publisher notes integrated and evaluating beta reader feedback.

I don’t know about you, but when I don’t write, I feel off. And I’ve felt “off” lately.

A little distracted and tired and sad. Not due to anything diagnosable so much as from a persistent confusion about the world and not enought time cathartically exploring it with my art: the expansive possibility found in words, sentences, and story.

I feel as though I should be doing more in the world and taking in less of it at the same time, but sometimes the opposite is true.

Such disconnects are often the questions that we (writers) work out on the page, in whatever genre, through whatever depth of metaphor.

So what’s a woman to do?

Busy or no, you guessed it, I started a new notebook. And while I worked during my residency, I also WROTE. New work.

Not with a plan or an aim, only with the invitation to return to the creation portion of my work. It began with a letter to my own writing. This reminds us why we do this thing, it loosens the grip external circumstances can place on our expression. It reminds us.

I invite you to try this. Over the next two weeks, write not one but two letters. One to your writing and what it offers. Another as your writing responding.

See what happens.

Prompt: Write a letter to your own writing, your own art. See what comes up. Allow your writing/art to reply. What does it have to say?

Practice and invite for paid subscribers:

Creative Potluck (rescheduled): https://luma.com/4sjqt6yz

Reflection on expectations:

A year ago, I heard someone say on a podcast that to be “burnt out” didn’t mean being overworked so much as it meant not doing the right work. This sounded good (sounds like something AI might advise), but I didn’t agree then, and I don’t agree now.

Sometimes when we don’t have satisfaction in one area of our lives, we open up new channels. Sometimes things don’t sit right because WE are not right. Being in integrity doesn’t mean the perfect circumstance. And being in integrity usually means feeling flow, even in impossible times.

Sometimes, it seems nothing happens. Sometimes, it seems everything does. Neither is true.

A talented and wise friend I met some years ago told me about the superblooms that sometimes grace California's deserts. While it doesn’t happen every year, what makes the poppy and bluebell blooms “super” is their suddenness, unpredictability, and expansiveness. A staggering number of these flowers arrive at once and blanket fields in color and soft beauty that change the very appearance of our planet from space.

When I lived in San Antonio, I remember a smaller version of this delight when people would drive to the Hill Country to see the bluebonnets explode across arid fields in late March or April. For weeks or months, the flowers were “on it,” as though they’d been waiting for the opportunity to emerge wholly, to reach up toward the sun.

Creatives can relate.

We wait, we think, we plan, we take steps, and then there is the moment that everything seems to bloom. To think we can have balance in day-to-day life can mean putting undue pressure on ourselves during dormant times.

So much of nature holds back, waiting for the right time, taking time to transform or delay development until the conditions are right. Nature responds in a way that is not sentimental or worried about fulfillment.

Meanwhile, so many of us go in two (or more) directions at once, hoping we’ll increase our odds of blooming quickly, intensely … but science class taught us that potential energy is about an object or organism’s inputs and position.

And maybe potential builds when we do not feel like we have to always be blooming.

If we allow the energy we need to build, we may find ourselves blooming—surging ahead—and creating something more magnificent than we can imagine while grinding away.

A year ago, I began taking blackout periods in my day, where I refused to answer emails. I’m returning to this practice, slowly, ever-so-slowly, to till the soil.

To me, to be burnt out doesn’t mean to do too much or the wrong thing. (We’re always doing, even when we’re resting.) It means to try to hurry along what needs time to build.

We can’t force a flower to bloom, and that’s why it’s so shockingly beautiful.

Prompt: Before I had words for it, I knew…

Here is a meditation with context. We will root down and reconnect with the body and its stories in this opening meditation. Please have a notebook handy.

Paid Subscribers: You are invited to a Creative Resilience Circle in April (rescheduled due to No Kings). Sign up here. Also, as a thanks, a downloadable version of the above is available to you below.

“We understand reality in terms of interaction … how we interact with one another.” —Carlo Rovelli

We are the sum of our relational exchanges.

Carlo Rovelli is a theoretical physicist who believes our human reality boils down to interactivity. We exist, Rovelli says, as the sum of our interactions. I love this idea and have thought about it often since I discovered him.

If we are the sum of our interactions, that is a call to interact mindfully, in writing and in person, understanding that everything we do to truly connect (rather than impress, posture, tick boxes, etc) is amplifying our personal and relational power.

How we initiate and react to those we love, those we admire as well as those who try to drag us down or dismiss us matters. To me, this idea is a call to get out there and initiate conversations and connections with those we are aligned with.

If we think about life like this, we are no longer worried about limiting our time with people who are toxic or better understand how to guard ourselves against absorbing that but, instead, holding fast to who we are no matter who crosses our path.

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Tall call to action. And what does this have to do with writing? I’ll get there in a few paragraphs. First, I’ve been immersed in the 19th century these last two years, so let’s go back there.

Victoria Woodhull ran for the U.S. Presidency almost fifty years before women could legally vote. Some say she positioned herself to do so through manipulation; others say she did so through connections.

For the last two years, I’ve been better understanding the politics of the time (it’s helping me to answer quite a few Jeopardy questions, actually), and I’m realizing how similar the 1870s were to today.

Manipulative governments. The wealthiest and most powerful steering crime and keeping the masses in check by colluding with said corrupt government (or competing with it, in some cases).

Most humans were treated as means to ends, rather than citizens, or even people. The definition of “persons” who could vote at the time did not include women of any race or Native Americans.

Woodhull blamed the “despots” for most problems and called for people to have freedoms and be defined by their humanness. But she also lived at a time when she herself had few rights, and she scrambled to find ways to envision a better future.

How does one navigate such terrain?

Leveraging what resiliency research now proves a viable course of action, Woodhull sought to deepen relationships with anyone and everyone she looked up to intellectually. She sought out mentors and allies alike. Ultimately, these interactions led her to the stage—a place where she could share her views with others in her unique way.

Her story is complex, far more complex than only reaching out to those she admired, but for the purpose of this topic, let’s explore what it means to align yourself with those who share values or speak in different ways about things you believe in.

Woodhull educated herself by reaching out to the great thinkers of her time: Walt Whitman, Karl Marx, Mark Twain, Stephen Pearl Andrews (whose writings have been buried but is someone I’m currently fascinated by), and Harriet Beecher Stowe (who later became an adversary, but for more on that … RADICALS will be out late this year).

I share this to say that while this story is complex, Victoria Woodhull saw a network of minds that she wanted to exchange ideas and correspondence with in order to best understand how to do anything in the world.

Of course, back then, she had an advantage. Letters. Letters allowed people to take their time and personalize correspondence in a way that AI and fast publications are he antithesis to. She connected with great minds by capturing their attention across time and space. In letters, she offered her radical and impassioned ideas with intelligence and grace and care.

They were often received well, and this, perhaps, led her to tease out the impossible riddle of how to move forward and find doors most believed to be walls.

Prompt: Write a letter to someone you admire, reachable or not.

You can explain why you are fascinated with this person, admire this person’s ideas or bravery or creativity or mastery of language; but more than that, just write to them as a person. Human to human.

Write to them and recognize how each correspondence, mindful or no, is a deposit into your own, ever-changing reality.

A connectivity practice for those who dig it.

And here’s one for kids. Or humans like me, who have trouble settling in and like simple imagery.

Subscribers! You are invited to a Creative Resilience Circle in March. Sign up here.

Dear Readers, After hearing from a few of you that you are enjoying the posts and prompts but find yourself scrambling to keep up, I have decided to change the cadence of this blog to every two weeks. I am including audio or some other offering with each post, so the content will be more robust. I hope you are amiable to this update. Please email me or write in the comments if you have feedback or miss weekly posts. I am here for community and to offer whatever insights I have with you, but I am also interested in YOU and your perspectives. I’ll be jotting notes daily regardless, but the way I package things is for YOU. xo Jen

Prompt:

1. How many times do we have to hear something before we remember it?

2. How many times do we have to hear something before we remember it in the moment?

3. How many times do we have to hear something before it loses meaning?

I have little to say. Instead, I created a meditation on compassion fatigue for artists, teachers, healers, and other humans who give until they are numb or in need of support themselves.

I believe the people we need most right now are tired. Let’s take a few weeks to recharge and remember the meaning behind the words.

Again, perhaps instead of taking a break or hiding out, we can recommit.

But first we have to process.

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“Until one is committed, there is always hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative and creation, there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising to one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance which no one could have dreamed would come her way. Whatever you can do or dream you can begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.”

—Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Subscribers! You are invited to a Creative Resilience Circle in March. Sign up here.

The perfomance art movement was influenced by surrealism, conceptualism, the anti-art of Dada after World War I, and action painting in which one throws or drips or sprays paint in a way that is as much the art as the painting itself.

Conceptual art is about an idea. Performance art is about an action that represents an idea.

The act of ... the embodiment of purpose.

If you’ve been following my blog since the beginning of the year, I’ve asked you to get a dedicated notebook, to find the question behind your work. I’ve also asked you to get embodied.

Today’s concept (my current obsession) is where these things converge.

Performance art is the willingness to expose something, which often requires the appearance of absurdity or extreme vulnerability. It is becoming one with the message more so than the method or the words to communicate that message.

A genre distinct from acting or the “performing” arts, performance art is about the concept, rather than a narrative. Often, a societal question about life drives the thing. Performance art engages the audience in a literal way, asking them to interact with the live work, not just think about it and clap.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this genre because I’m writing a novel whose protagonist is a performance artist from the 90s. Over the last few months, I’ve been studying Marina Abramović, Adrian Piper and Joan Jonas. But why this topic?

Performance art might be on my mind because it seems to surface during difficult times. It exposes the emotional aspects of human nature, the injustices and frailties, and it does so both completely transparently and completely subversively.

It’s a way of asking the questions that are too difficult to put into words that people will actually listen to (or that are censored, so people don’t have a chance).

Truly beautiful storytelling does this too, taking a simple concept that no one wants to discuss and turning it on its side with metaphor and framing that allows it to be explored without glaring discomfort, an overt reflection of self.

Week 7: What would the performance art version of your story look like?

For instance, let’s say you are writing about a person standing up to inhumane treatment. The question driving your work might be: Why do people sacrifice truth for ease? What might this look like in a performance piece?

Perhaps a whistle blows incessently in the ear of a dummy whose plastic ears vibrate with the sound but never hear it. Perhaps a woman is being told to tell the truth by one person, while a soundtrack of laughter or threatening language plays in the background.

This is a strange post for some of you, I know.

But I’d love for you to play with the idea. Create a performance art piece in your mind, draft it out on the page.

What enactment could represent your concept, and, then, how can this inform your scenes, your storytelling, your ability to deliver (powerfully) what seems too obvious to say?

Subscribers! You are invited to a Creative Resilience Circle in March. Sign up here.

It started with emails here and there, then articles he wrote. Then, quickly, any digital correspondence from him sounded nice but flat. Online, he wasn’t the person I knew. There was an odd formality. A lot of generalizing and recommendations. Less heart.

I get it.

He is trying to save time. We are all told to hurry and amass all we can. The more content, the better.

But for what?

This person, kind-hearted, has disappeared behind words that are not his own and only reflect now a muted version of his light and an even more muted version of the words of others across history.

He may be more productive in the short-term, but at what cost?

I’m not saying writers should never use artificial intelligence at all—we can’t not when it’s built into every piece of software, including basic word processing systems. But to bravely sidestep generative AI when expressing ourselves to other humans and in our art is a self-preserving act.

And a self-preserving for the planet.

“Art was made to connect us with our reality … The human experience is the key factor that separates it from ever coming close to human creativity.” —George Saunders

Yes, AI can sound nice and hit algorithms (though it does have tells), but using it as a replacement to express ourselves or gain followers is playing someone else’s game.

The joy of creativity and the gifts it offers are stripped of us when we outsource our autonomy and experience. The gift of connection turns immediately into a transaction.

So this week, I want to dive into our humanness. I hope you’ll try this prompt.

“I am a writer and my faith in the world of art is intense but not irrational or naïve. Art invites us to take the journey beyond price, beyond costs into bearing witness to the world as it is and as it should be. Art invites us to know beauty and to solicit it from even the most tragic of circumstances. Art reminds us that we belong here.” —Toni Morrison

Week 6 prompt (it’s week 6!)

The body speaks, if we listen.

This week is less about writing a lot of words and more about writing a few from a different source.

Every day: Take a walk. (If you’re near me, break out the heated clothing or bundle up.) Anywhere will do. If you can get to a park, great. If you’re limited to your block, great. If you’re limited to your house, pace or move your body in another way (dance, sway, stretch).

10 minutes minimum. Just 10. But as you move for these particular 10 minutes, do so with no tech. No instruction.

Feel into all of your senses as you move: what do you smell, hear, see, taste, touch? What is your body telling you?

When you return, write one sentence on a piece of paper with a pen or pencil. At least a single sentence that reflects where you are and what messages are moving through your body. For the rest of the week, add to that sentence (or sentences). Write in your notebook in longhand. At least a sentence every day. See where this slowing down of process takes you. See how it becomes a conversation with self.

There is a walking meditation I recorded from Insight Timer at the end of this post.

It is my belief that muting individual voices is the goal of AI.

There are few, positionally and financially powerful people, who do not want argument. And, for many of us, it’s working. But relying on the external alone for creative expression deprives us of so much. It deprives those who use it (don’t believe the hype).

Yes, it’s faster. Yes, it’s fun to see what we’d look like a 19th century duke. And yes, it’s a competitive edge in our still-teetering Capitalist society.

But finding touchpoints to return to who we are, encompassing all the perils, pains, joys and loves alike is a way to not only feed ourselves but stay visible in a world that so desperately needs humanity.

I think harmonious human creation is the long game (a very long game), but I think it’s worth it.

Patience is confidence. Patience teaches us how to grow.

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“He allowed himself to be swayed by his conviction that human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, but that life obliges them over and over again to give birth to themselves.”

― Gabriel García Márquez, Love in the Time of Cholera

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“Let the quiet put things where they are supposed to be.”― Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower

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Butler was prolific in many ways, and she predicted what has been too often predictable: the way an inquenchable hunger for power by some …

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Friends, I’m headed back to campus, and I’m both excited to meet new students and not excited to sit in my closet-office beneath flurocent lights.

The thing that’s beautiful and laborious about academia is…

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Sometimes the holidays can feel lonely, even when we’re surrounded by people (sometimes especially when we are). If this is the case for you, even in the smallest way, please press play.

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As we close out the year, we are often asked to reflect on accomplishments, but this is not always what feeds us. Whether you are celebrating this season or finding yourself in a space of change and transition, I wanted to invite you to think instead about something sacred to creativity…

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If you say yes, please share your playlists or recommendations below. I would be ever-so grateful. I’m fond of Ludovico Einaudi, but I generally write without any background music. The taps of the keys can create their own natural rhythm, and it’s beautiful.

The sounds coming from a writing session are the heartbeat of our creative energy.

It’s fun to think about rhythm and how it shows up in our lives. There are meditation tracks that promise emotional resonance based on frequency. Hertz (Hz) is the measurement of cycles per second that occur in a sound wave, and you might see things like 639 Hz helps with inflammation or 285 Hz helps with stress. The idea is that the vibrational rhythm to the Hz cycle shifts the rhythm in our body and brain.

Recently, I have been experimenting with the metronome when I walk or exercise, which measures beats per minute (BPM), just to test my own rhythm and what feels comfortable (can you tell the semester is over?).

The cool thing is that complex or simple, rhythms are powerful and influential regarding the way we feel, and how we feel dictates what we create.

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Our heart rate, breathing rhythm, and pulse are all unique to us. While they fall into certain “normal” ranges, we are all going at different speeds each day. I find this fascinating and wonder how it plays into the way we move and create in the world, move in our writing.

If we can tune into our own personal rhythms, perhaps we can find more harmony in our creations. And what harm can a little experimentation do?

Prompt: Try writing for 10 minutes to music. You can try my fav here (listen, and tell me you feel the same after). Then write without, focusing on the rhythm created by the keystrokes or sound of pen/pencil on paper.

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