Latest / Many Things with Steph Libby / Cultivating Creativity

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Cultivating Creativity · Many Things with Steph Libby

Let me paint a scenario for you that I have looked through a million times.
I'm sitting at my desk, fingers on my keyboard, ready to write, and nothing comes.
My mind is blank and all I can focus on is that stupid blinking cursor that's waiting for me to come up with something absolutely brilliant.
And of course, most of the time I come up short.
Forget brilliant.
I'm lucky if I can get a logical paragraph typed out.
I fret and overanalyze every word before I even let it out of my brain.
The only time I haven't encountered this problem was junior and senior year of undergrad.
I had been taking a lot of courses on surrealism and forms of fiction, and I was reading everything about surrealist poets and stream of consciousness and first thought, best thought, and all these games and mantras and writing styles that really embraced messiness and making mistakes and being okay with being uncomfortable that you just needed to keep the pen moving even if all you scribble is blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
A thousand times over.
Because the white noise of repetition just might clear the path for a new idea to burst through.
I've had the opposite problem at times.
Take the novel I'm working on.
For example, I can't stop creating new pages, which sounds like a really amazing problem to have until I start piecing those pages together only to realize that none of it actually fits together.
None of it works together.
It's just a bunch of disjointed vignettes that don't always read like they're part of the same story, which is a big problem.
But this episode isn't about writing specifically.
What I wanna talk about is creativity.
Writing is just my favorite creative outlet.
So when I think about creativity as a whole, that's where my brain lands first.
But whatever your creative medium is, I'm sure you've run into similar problems.
My relationship with creativity is a hot and cold one.
For some people, creativity may be.
Passive and omnipresent something that's always there flowing like a river for me, creativity has always been something else.
There was a time when I was younger, when it was just kind of there, and I kind of took it for granted.
But as I got older, it's something I have to actually be mindful of practicing and nurturing and cultivating.
I'm not really sure why that is.
But that's the way it is, and the why of it is maybe a topic for another time.
In my experience, there are three major things I'm always thinking about when it comes to creativity.
The first is how to unblock ourselves creatively.
Second is how to stretch ourselves creatively.
Third, how to invite creative energy into my daily life.
So I'm gonna talk about all three of those things today and how I'm trying to come up with a plan to navigate those three major points, and what it's meant for me and my creativity.
The first one, how to unblock ourselves creatively.
So the first step for me, and probably the biggest obstacle is quieting your inner critic.
I am not an expert on this by any means.
I struggle with my inner critic daily and my inner critic is what has kept me from writing even when I really want to be writing because mine is always there.
And who wants to do something they love alongside someone that's bullying them? Who's degrading them, who's telling them they can't do it, and there's no point to it.
It kind of takes the fun out of the thing that's supposed to be fun.
Now, can some people totally shut off that voice in their head? I'm sure some people can.
I just can't.
That is not my forte.
The voice is always still there, but sometimes I can stand up for myself more than other times.
But there's a mantra that I use when my inner critic shows up and I have it posted on my desk.
On my laptop and a couple of other places as a constant reminder, get the words out and you can make it better later.
And while I use that for my writing, I think it can apply to most things in people's lives.
Creative, you know, creative writing or not.
I am.
A perfectionist, and it's really easy for me to talk myself out of doing just about anything.
because I'm also a procrastinator.
I worry too much about making every sentence into magic, and that's just not realistic.
Art is messy, honestly.
That's part of the magic of the arts, the slow shaping of something, starting with something raw and ragged and smoothing it and refining it, and making it just so.
Art is about the process, and I need to remind myself constantly to trust the process, but it's really hard.
We live in a world of constant instant gratification.
We're doom scrolling through people who have these aesthetically pleasing, super branded videos and captions, and.
Graphics and it's hard not to compare yourself to it.
it's hard not to think that perfection and that end result is what we're aiming towards and what we're comparing ourselves to.
And we spend most of our free time getting lost in TV and movies that we think are masterpieces.
But they didn't just come out of thin air.
They didn't arrive into the universe as masterpieces.
They were crafted into masterpieces, into these things we love through a lot of labor and love and care and dedication and time, but it's easy to forget that even your favorite content creators probably started out making really bad, uninteresting, poorly lit, and poorly written videos and captions.
One of my favorite things to look at.
And one of the things I try to keep in mind when I'm repeating that mantra to myself, that mantra of, just get the words out.
You can make it better later.
Just focus on doing.
I love to read about, um, first drafts of famous novels.
'cause there's a lot of them flowing out there that have been, lovingly cared for at different museums and literary institutions and things like that.
It's really eyeopening to see these, to know where the, where the world and this book ends up and the final state of it, and to see where it started it, it's really humbling and it really captures that idea that like you just have to start somewhere.
You just have to start.
And if you dedicate enough time to it, if you make.
It a priority in your life.
If you really try and you really are committed to it, you can turn it into this beautiful thing, whatever it is it, we're talking about creativity here, but I think the.
Yeah, that's something that applies to everything in our life.
You can start a new job and it can be really scary, but eventually it will feel like second nature, maybe you're scared to go to the gym because you don't know how the equipment works, or you're free.
People are gonna look at you or whatever.
But it's something that you want and it's gonna take time for you to build up, to get to the place that you wanna be.
and the same thing with creativity, especially like it takes time.
It's like.
Think of like the first time you cooked a meal, like the first time, like legitimately, the first time you boiled water to make spaghetti.
It probably didn't come out quite right, but now you can do it.
Now it's second nature and I think it's easy to just like really lose sight of that, and it's such a simple idea.
But it's a hard one to remind ourselves of because of the world we live in.
Because of the things that we see every day because of how polished everything looks and how, um, envious we can feel about how something looks, but we have no idea what the backend work was in that thing.
We only see the end result.
And when you're only seeing the end result, it is very, very difficult to remind ourselves that like.
Whatever this great thing is that you love, whether it's a record, a book, a painting, whatever it is, a TV show, whatever it is, you have to remind yourself that it started off as a nugget of an idea.
At first, it didn't start out where it is now, I think we should make a pact to worry about making it better later.
Whatever it is you're making and just focus on doing it at first.
Can we do that? Can we just agree that from now on we're just going to get, just get started.
Just start, Just start and see where it takes you.
Just start and enjoy the process.
Just start and it will build on itself.
It will feel good.
It feels good just getting started, even if it's messy, even if it's bad.
Just starting is a great first step.
It's your only first step really.
whether you're trying to write that novel that's been GNA at you, or you just wanna take up an instrument, or you just want to.
Do something for yourself.
It doesn't even have to be creative, but just get started.
I feel like we don't give ourselves enough grace to fail and to start and to learn from our mistakes and to enjoy the process.
To trust, to trust the process.
We're whatever that process is and wherever it's supposed to take you.
And it's hard because we, no one likes to fail.
No one likes to feel.
Like, we put ourselves out there and we did a bad job, or we embarrassed ourselves, or people are going to laugh at us.
But I'm at the point now where I'm starting.
I don't know if it's like, I don't know if it's because, I'm 38 now, and I feel like as you get older you just kind of just don't give a fuck anymore.
Like I'm, I'm really starting to lose my, give a fucks and maybe that just comes with age, like maybe because I've struggled with this my whole life, but now I'm just talking about a point where it's like, who cares if I fail? You know? Like I threw myself out here.
I'm making this podcast and this is a high failure rate kind of situation.
It's super humbling, but I love it and I enjoy it, and I'm enjoying the.
Ride that I'm going on, and I know that there are things that I can do better, but like in the meantime, I'm still learning something new every day.
I'm still learning how to edit a little bit better.
I'm learning how to come up with ideas a little bit sooner.
I'm learning to hopefully at some point be better with my social media, but like I'm giving myself grace to be okay with not being okay at those things yet.
Because it's okay to just be a newbie.
It's okay to be a beginner.
It's okay to flounder a little bit, especially when you're getting started.
And if you flounder the whole time, that's fine too.
Like I think about the first time I played tennis and I was really, really awful, but I loved it.
I eventually got better because I loved doing that thing.
I loved playing tennis.
I loved being on the court.
I loved the sounds.
I loved the smell of the tennis balls.
I loved the feeling of the sweat on my body, so I just wanted to do it more and more and more.
And maybe because I was just doing it for fun.
I wasn't doing it for anything other than.
Just doing it.
And there was something really freeing about that because I just, I was just doing something for pure enjoyment and I wasn't thinking about an outcome.
I wasn't thinking about am I gonna make the varsity team? I didn't care about making the varsity team.
I just wanted to keep doing this thing that I liked and I wanted to push myself to get better at it.
And I think sometimes we lose sight of like the pleasure of challenging ourselves to do better and to make better and to evolve.
we just want to be at the end already.
But enjoying the journey is a big, big part of life, all of it starts by getting started.
So we just have to get better about starting.
That's one of the things I'm telling myself this year that I started telling myself last year was just start, who cares? Like just try.
Just try and, and.
You can always find a way through, you're never gonna get to the end if you just don't get started.
It's, it's impossible.
So we have to be okay with just getting started and being okay with.
Not being the best at something.
And I think that's a deeply personal journey for everyone, and I don't have all the answers, obviously, it's something I struggle with every single day of my life, but it's something that I think I feel better about being able to tackle and do and understand by just.
Trying.
I think it's just, it's the worst advice to give someone in the world, but it is literally just, you have to try.
You have to put yourself out there and find safe ways for yourself to fail.
Like find ways that make it feel like there's a little less pressure.
Find ways that make it feel like.
It's just for you for right now.
I think that's the easiest way to just get started is just like easing up on the pressure of like the final state and an audience and who's gonna see it and just find a way to make it private and a, and like for yourself, and at some point you just have to be okay with like.
You're not for everybody.
My writing is not for everybody.
This podcast is not for everybody.
And there are probably things that you are wanting to create for yourself that are not for everybody, and that's just the way it goes.
You're not gonna appeal to everybody.
This is gonna be kind of a weird example and maybe a dated example, but it's like Tom Cruise is still one of the biggest movie stars on the planet, right? I don't like Tom Cruise.
I don't really like his acting.
I have a hard time picking out any particular movie that I really love, that he's done.
so he's just not for me, but like he is the top actor for millions if not billions of people on the planet.
But he's just not for me, and that's fine.
I don't think Tom Cruise is losing any sleep over.
Um, Stephanie, Libby not being a big fan of his work.
You know what I mean? It's like, why am I losing sleep about whether or not some random person in some random city that I might never have heard of and will never meet in my life doesn't like what I'm doing? Like who fucking cares? I think letting go of that pressure and those expectations opens your.
Spirit up to letting yourself be more creative.
'cause it feels like you're creating a safe space for yourself.
I think that is something that I have struggled with is like, because I don't just get started and my inner critic is going, going, going, I don't wanna try, you know, I think what I've done is taken my own inner thoughts and like made them about somebody else.
So like, what would be like a negative thought about myself? Like, you're.
Your podcast sucks.
Like no one's gonna listen to it.
It's boring and it's stupid and it's self-indulgent.
That's obviously something I'm telling myself, but instead I kind of spin it to be like, oh, Some random person is gonna think that it's self-indulgent.
Some random person is gonna think it's stupid.
Some random person you've never met thinks that it's a waste of your time.
But I know that's just a story that like I'm telling myself, but I'm trying to like pawn it off on someone else I think to like make it feel outside of myself and therefore make the.
The antagonism feel more real, but it's just a story I've made up.
It really is.
It's just a story that I've made up and spun and it's interesting 'cause it's just like not really working on me anymore if I never make it.
If that no one ever hears these podcasts, if no one ever reads my novel, that would be a bummer for sure.
But at least I can say that I tried and I think.
As I've gotten older, that's been my mentality is just i'll, whether it's a relationship or a creative outlet or whatever it is.
I think a big philosophy in my life is like I'd rather know that I tried and failed than to leave my, than to like spend so much of my life wondering what if the, what if I think is way more painful and way more frustrating than failing? And I think.
The word failing is really harsh because I think when we think we're failing, I don't know that the rest of the world actually sees it as failure.
I think it feels like failure because we're just so close to it that it feels like an explosion of disappointment.
An explosion of failure, like that we have just like really, really hit like.
A 10 out of 10 on the failure scale.
But I think in reality when we think about failure, we're probably like at a two or a three if that, but it feels so much bigger and it feels so much difficult and so, so worse and so painful because, and and so embarrassing because we're so close to it because it's something we're passionate about because it's something we want for ourselves.
And I think we also.
Tell ourselves that it's like a 10 outta 10 epic fail when it most likely isn't.
Because we want a convenient excuse to stop putting ourselves in an uncomfortable position.
You know? If we tell ourselves we failed, it's such an easy out, failure is such a scapegoat I don't know.
I, I think it's just, maybe it is age.
Maybe, maybe something has opened up in my brain that I haven't been aware of, but I just kind of don't care anymore.
I would rather live with the failure and be able to say like, at least I tried, like at least I did it.
At least I did it.
It's an experience.
It's a story.
I, I learned something along the way.
I'd rather fail.
I'd rather, I guess I, I'll say I'd rather risk failing.
Then risk worrying that I didn't try the rest of my life, and I know that'll happen.
I know myself well enough to know that that's what's gonna happen.
So let's make a pact together.
Let's just get started.
Whatever is on your mind to today, I encourage you to just get started.
Take that first step.
Whatever the tiniest, tiniest first step you can make towards whatever the thing is that you wanna do, just do it.
Just do it.
You don't have to tell people you're doing it.
You don't have to make a big public display about it if you don't want to.
You don't have to call it a resolution.
You don't have to call it a goal.
It can just be something that you're trying for five minutes right now for today.
And if you don't like it, you don't have to go back.
It's funny 'cause like the other day I was laying in bed and I could not decide what to watch on TV and just kept, Scrolling through Netflix and then I was scrolling through HBO and I couldn't find anything and I think I wasted probably like 20, 30 minutes looking through stuff like by the time I was done looking through all the lists of possibilities, I could have watched a show, I could have started watching a movie.
And so I finally had finally was just like, just pick something.
Pick whatever thing seems mildly interesting, start watching it.
And if I don't like it, I can stop.
I think, and that seems so obvious, like I get that, that's probably very obvious, but like how many times have you done that? Really? Like how many times have you stood in a bookstore, not being able to make a decision, stood, uh, sat in bed trying to find something on TV and just like can't decide on anything.
That decision paralysis that happens, I think happens in a lot of places in our life, especially.
Creative outlets and especially if it's a creative outlet that we like want something to be, if you're like a creative person and you want it to be something, and it's not just a random thing, I kind of have taken that mindset of like, just, just start something and if you don't like it, you can stop.
Like I.
That's what's been freeing about trying different hobbies is like I started something.
I didn't like it, so I stopped.
And I don't need to make myself feel bad about it.
It's just not for me.
But you have to at least try.
You have to at least start, and I think if it's something that you really care about, if it's, if you're a painter, if you're a musician, if you are a writer and you start doing that artistic thing that you love, I doubt you're gonna be like, oh, I'm gonna walk away from this.
But.
It's all comes back to just like needing to get started.
You just have to take that first step and be okay with taking a first step.
Um, and giving yourself permission to take a first step, I think is a great thing we could all do for ourselves.
Give ourselves permission to fail.
Don't be hard on ourselves when we fail.
Realize that like everyone fails and that inner critic is just fear and your inner critic is just fear.
It's just.
A way that we've manifested this voice in our head to try to protect ourselves from embarrassing ourselves, from screwing up, from failing, from looking ridiculous.
But most of the time, you're not gonna embarrass yourself.
You're not gonna look ridiculous.
And if you do, it's only temporary and it's all part of the process.
Most people have.
I had to learn to trust that process that you're gonna start with a vomit draft, as I call it.
Like your first draft, you're gonna start with this disgusting vomit draft.
That barely makes sense.
That is more, that's not at all the voice I want it to be, and the characters aren't fleshed out, and I don't even know if I necessarily know what the plot is or what the point is, but trust myself that.
I am gonna get it to the level I want it to be, that I'm gonna dedicate the time that I'm capable of getting it to that next level.
And I think that that's where my inner critic comes in, is trying to, it's telling me I can't do that because it's trying to protect me from having to do all that hard work and maybe be disappointed in the end.
But again, I'd rather try and fail.
Then wonder, well, like what if I had sat down with that novel? What if I had dedicated the time to it? So I'm trying more.
I'm just trying.
I'm just trying to sit down and do it and see what comes and know that I can always make it better later.
In mo in most cases it can't get worse, right? Like this is your baseline.
Your starting point is your baseline.
It's probably just gonna go up.
So like.
Maybe be excited about what comes next instead of worrying about what comes next.
Be excited for the adventure.
Be excited for the journey.
Be excited to be in the here and now.
Be excited to spend time with this thing that you love.
Be excited to commit yourself to it.
Like change that narrative inside your head.
And I think that inner voice starts to not necessarily go away, but I do think that inner voice becomes easier to manage, easier to quiet.
And then it just becomes like a fly around your head versus this big monster looking over your shoulder.
So that's the first part, right? Just how to unlock ourselves.
Creativity.
Quieting that inner critic I think is big because I think when that inner critic is talking, you're, I think you're blocked creatively.
At least I am.
Like, maybe that's just me, but like if that inner critic is yammering.
And that fear is very much on the surface and on top of my mind.
I'm blocked, like I'm not going to be able to do anything.
It is just a roadblock.
But the other important thing that I've been thinking about a lot is like how to stretch ourselves creatively.
As a writer, I'm pushing myself to read outside my normal genre or styles of writing.
I love fiction, but maybe I need to read more memoir, nonfiction.
Maybe I should read some graphic novels.
I read a lot of literary and contemporary fiction, but maybe I should try some horror or sci-fi, like something a little bit different.
You know, read writers from different backgrounds.
If I'm reading a lot of minimalism, maybe I should swish it up with some more verbose writers.
The more I narrow what I'm feeding my brain and my soul and my artistic spirit.
The more homogenous and and narrow my own writing becomes.
And I guess this is, and I guess this kind of blurs the lines with unblocking creativity as well, but the more I expose myself to different types of writing, the more I wanna explore those styles myself and the more unique my writing voice becomes.
Let me tell you a story.
Several years ago, I went to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts with my boyfriend at the time.
Obviously it's a huge museum.
It's like three, maybe it's four floors.
I can't remember.
So it's kind of impossible to see everything in one day if you're really wanting to take in the art mindfully and sit down with some of it.
So you do have to prioritize.
He was into.
Abstract painting himself.
And so he was the set ongoing to see that exhibit, which I think was part of the modern and contemporary section.
Anyway, the only problem is that it was on a different floor and on the complete opposite side of the museum from the other new exhibits that we really wanted to see.
So we went to our other exhibits first, and then after a few hours beelined it for the modern section.
So.
We're walking quickly through a lot of the museum and we have got our blinders up so we can make it to abstract exhibit before we need to leave.
And we get there and the exhibit is really small compared to some of the others, and it's overcrowded at that point.
And there are some immersive pieces and video pieces that only allow so many people in at a time.
And there's a line for it.
And we finally get into them.
Into these immersive experiences and it's not quite what we were expecting.
And you're kind of getting rushed through 'cause they're trying to keep the line moving and you know, things are backing up.
And so like you, you couldn't really sit with anything.
We didn't really get the experience we were wanted.
We didn't get to take it in.
I think what my boyfriend wanted was to get to stand with some of these works that really resonated with him personally for the kind of art he was making.
So those are the pieces you really wanna take time with.
You really are trying to like, feel the emotion, trying to, to have your own experience with the art.
Anyway, so feeling a little defeated.
We decided to leave that exhibit and we have a little bit more time to kill, so we'll meander through some of the other exhibits on our way back downstairs.
Finally, our time management blinders were off and we wanted to regroup after the overcrowding and overstimulation of the modernness section as we find ourselves in the small exhibit.
Where no one really is.
And so we scoot in mostly to like catch our breath and to kind of recenter ourselves and figure out like, okay, what, what things do we want to look at on our way out of the museum? And we spent the next 40 minutes wrapped up in the work of Hyman Bloom.
I'm probably mispronouncing that, but um, but he's created some of the most exquisite.
And haunting paintings I've ever seen, and he's now one of my favorite painters.
And I had never heard of him, and I never would've seen his work if we hadn't taken our blinders off and just lived in that moment and been open to something different, something expected, something unexplained.
And I think about that work constantly.
And that honestly is the exhibit I remember the most.
I can't even tell you.
What paintings and what exhibits were in the abstract section that we went there specifically to See.
I can't name a single one.
Like I'm assuming they had like a Pollock, you know, but like, I don't remember.
I don't remember a single painting that was there.
I don't remember a single art piece that was there, but I remember almost the entire exhibit.
I can visualize it in my head.
Of Bloom's work, but I didn't even know he existed.
And so it was, it's something I think about a lot because I think that is the power of just like letting go and being okay with doing something a little bit different because that made the museum experience for me and we were, when we drove home from Boston, which was probably like an hour ride at the time.
We were just talking about these paintings.
We didn't talk about the abstract work.
We didn't talk about this thing that we went there specifically to see.
We were talking about this other painter who we had never heard of before.
And I think that I felt so inspired by that work.
I felt invigorated by that work.
I felt, um, it was fun to see something new.
It was fun to.
Be open to something unexpected.
And I think that that is how we stretch ourselves creatively by creatively, by like exposing ourselves to all these different things, to being open to different ways of writing or different music genres or doing something that's like out of our norm, I think is one of the best ways you can construct yourselves.
And I think all of that leads into.
My third point, which is how to invite creative energy into your daily life.
Like I have come to believe that creativity is a state of mind, and the more CRE creativity we open ourselves up to, the more easily creativity comes to us.
But I've also never been able to force my creativity.
I've always been someone who has to kind of.
Wait for the muse to show up.
So doing this podcast has definitely been one way to push me out of my comfort zone, but I still feel in large part, like I have to feel inspiration, um, in order to sit down and like do writing or even come up with like, some ideas for this podcast.
And for a long time, this equated to waiting, waiting for inspiration, waiting to feel like it, waiting, waiting, waiting.
And so it's no surprise that I would then go months without writing.
What I'm now realizing is that there are ways to invite that inspiration into my life every single day.
There's ways to cultivate it and, and maybe that seems obvious to some people, but it was a revelation to me.
I didn't think you could.
Solicit and cultivate inspiration.
Like when I was in college day to day, I didn't necessarily feel inspired every single day even though I was surrounded by other writers.
But when I was opening up to things that really resonated with me, like the surrealists that I mentioned in the beginning and the beatniks I felt a jolt in myself, but also.
I do think that like being around everybody who was working on different things and maybe it wasn't on the surface so much and I wasn't fully aware that I was being inspired, but it was inspiring to be around people.
That were writers and artists.
It was fun to go to their senior shows.
It was fun to see people's works up in the hallway.
It was fun to go to student readings.
It was fun to go to a poetry night and, but I think everything felt like a competition though at the same time it felt like everyone was just trying to like show everyone else that they kind of belonged there.
So I think that's why maybe I wasn't as aware of how much of a creative inspiring environment I was actually in.
But rereading certain books gets my creative juices going.
And this is a new thing for me too, like reading has.
Become a source of joy again.
It used to feel like work.
It used to bu me out.
Maybe it's because all of all the years I spent analyzing fiction and writing papers about them and doing lit critique, like critiques of other people's work and picking apart the writing and trying to understand exactly how or why the writer was able to like create this prose the way they did.
It kind of took the pleasure out of reading.
I knew at some point while reading all these wonderful words.
That I'd start criticizing myself.
Either I tell myself I could do this, I could write something like this if I was just more consistent and focused or whatever.
Or I tell myself that I'd never be as good as what I'm reading and I should just stop trying.
But through a lot of hard work and hard consistent work, I'm able to enjoy writing again.
So reading is now one way I invite the music in, which is strange for me because.
For a long time, it was not the thing I leaned on to, um, get inspiration.
It was honestly something that I kind of stayed away from when I wanted to feel inspired because of how, again, how that inner critic would pop up.
But now it's not, and that's, that's really fun for me because, um, and a big victory for me like that is a, a, a victory that like, I don't know if I've really acknowledged to myself.
Is a victory, but that is huge.
Listening to certain albums gets me feeling creative.
Um, especially Taylor Swift's tortured poets department and folklore and evermore albums are some of the biggest ones that I turn to when I wanna feel creative, but also listening to nineties alternative has been really helpful.
Also, jazz is a new one that I discovered this fall.
I can't just listen to anything and write to it.
Only certain albums really spark inspiration for me, and I think because Taylor Swift is such a great songwriter and some of her songs truly feel like poems, that it really does put me in, in that mindset, and especially like her more melancholy to help put me in that melancholy mindset, which I think a lot of my writing tends to feel.
Very sad.
Um, it's also why I'm trying to explore different hobbies and why I wanna open myself up to more experiences this year and take those day trips to the museum again, and to break up the monotony of my regular day to day, to see new things, taste new things, inspiration and different areas of my life all converged together and compound.
I know this and I've avoided that truth for a really long time because I'm an introvert, so I'm, I don't wanna do anything wild and crazy.
But there are still tiny, small ways to jol me out of the monotony and to create this feeling of inspiration, this feeling of newness, um, that I think helps push me into a creative mindset.
My larger point is that I've become really aware of my environment and how I can foster creativity in small and big ways.
How I can quiet that inner critic and, and how I can.
Be more, take more of an active role with my creativity instead of feeling like a passenger to it.
That it's something that's just sort of like we're two ships passing in the night that I, that I can own a part of it.
I can't always force it still, but there are ways that I can guide it and, and manifest it and pull it into my life so it feels a little bit closer.
More days of the week.
Um.
And it might not be instantaneous, but it helped me feel that spark more consistently and continually instead of going months and months without it.
Speaking of inviting creativity in, I think that brings us to recommendation corner.
Um.
So one thing I've been really obsessed with this week is Lily Allen's new album, west End Girl.
I know so many people are talking about this album and her breakup with David Harbor and how this album, basically from start to finish is, A scathing breakup album.
I have always been a huge Lily Allen fan.
I remember she was, this is really gonna date me, but I remember she was my first ringtone back in college when I finally had a phone where you could do ringtones on, and that was like a big deal when we were in college, everyone had to like, have a song as a ringtone.
So anyway, I was excited that she had a new album.
I love how she always juxtaposes raw, sad, biting lyrics with upbeat melodies.
And this album is no exception.
I've loved it so far.
I'm listening to it on repeat.
Um, it's just also like the.
She's not a, I wouldn't say she's like a poet.
In the same way that like I, I could consider Taylor Swift a poet, modern Taylor Swift, a poet.
Lily Allen to me is not really necessarily a poet, but she's a great storyteller.
She tells a great story and releasing an album that completely obliterates her ex is just so her.
Um, it's a very cathartic, listen.
There are definitely some songs that make me wanna cry.
There are some songs that make me wanna dance, even though the lyrics probably should make me cry.
Um, so I highly recommend I'm giving it all the stars.
If you haven't listened to it, it's definitely worth the hype.
And it's even just for like the cultural moment of it.
I definitely think you should listen to it and just see what she's saying because these lyrics are bonkers and this breakup.
He sounds like a nightmare.
And so, um, I would listen to it.
Um, I've also started reading a couple books.
If you wanna follow, uh, follow along with me.
I'm not sure if I'll do an episode on them or not, but they are, the universe has your back by Gabby Bernstein and Cleopatra and Frankenstein by Coco Millers.
Um.
Is it Millers or Melos? Anyway, you guy, anyone who's listened to more than one episode by now should know that I am horrible at pronouncing names.
And, um, I do try to look them up, but I feel like other people are also equally bad at pronouncing names, so then I'm getting like, mixed information.
But anyway, those are the two books I'm reading.
I'm really trying to do this thing where, um, one of my goals for January is to read two books, um, one fiction, one nonfiction.
Um, so.
Gabby Bernsteins is obviously nonfiction and it's about manifestation and your mindset and, and honestly it's a good fit for like what we're talking about today 'cause it's about trusting the process.
Like obviously she's talking about the process in a bigger way, not necessarily the creative process per se, but um, and actually kind of ties in really well.
And then Cleopatra and Frankenstein is a book that I had started.
Only got a few pages into, not because I didn't love it, but because I just got sidetracked by a lot of stuff and over the summer, so I never finished it, but it was like a huge book, I think a couple years ago, huge debut.
It was like on all of the lists, all of the end of year list.
So I'm really excited to read it.
It's definitely a thick, she's a thick girl, that book.
I hope you follow along with me on those books.
I'm excited to talk about them, hopefully in a future episode, even if I just touch on them very quickly, even if it's not like a whole dedicated episode.
Before I go, this is going to feel like a very big left turn, but it's something that I really wanna talk about.
Um, we made it through 20, 25 guys, and that is a big deal because I think regardless of where you lay politically, it was probably a tumultuous year for you.
Um, because.
In America, obviously we have two parties and both are very much at conflict with each other.
No one is on the same page, even though I think, what would serve the greater good is the antithesis of what the, our current administration is doing.
But before we wrap up, um, you know, 2025 was chaos and.
With the news this past week, especially 2026 isn't off too much of a different start.
Unfortunately, it feels like we have leapt from one dumpster fire to another, even though I think a lot of people were really riding high off of like the clean slate vibes of the end of year and the start of a new one, but.
The world very much feels like it's on fire and filled with animosity and hate and bigotry.
Monsters are claiming to be victims and the people who are actually trying to make the world better for everyone, not just themselves and their wallets are getting getting called the bad guys, and it's stressful and it's sad and it's overwhelming.
The news is confusing.
There's always two sides to a story and they always seem completely apart, and that's very frustrating it can make us want to creep into bed, curl up into a ball and hide.
And some days self-improvement and thinking about creativity can feel really frivolous.
Like I feel that, I'm sure there are parts of you that are like, why are we even talking about creativity? The world is on fire, but.
What I've been encouraging myself to think about and what I would highly encourage you to think about if you're anything like me, is that in order to show up and serve others and help the world and contribute to the world and do my small part to make the world a better place, I have to show up for myself first.
Is that classic saying of, you know, put your own oxygen mask on first.
You're no good to anybody if you're no good to yourself.
You can't create change and show up for others and fight back.
If you can't manage stress, if you can't manage to quiet your mind for a few minutes a day because you have to, that is just survival.
You have to be able to disconnect for a few minutes, not to put your head in the sand.
That's not the goal, but it can't be a consuming thought.
24 7.
You're going to exhaust yourself.
You're going to frustrate yourself.
You're going to make yourself sick with worry and grief and fear.
You can't fight injustice on an empty tank.
And we need everyone to be working at full capacity because we are up against a big Sisyphean task and we need to overcome it, and we need to overcome it together, and we need to find a way through together.
So.
It is essential to take care of yourself.
It is essential to give yourself some self-love and some grace.
It's essential to show yourself some comfort and consideration.
It's essential to work on yourself, to better understand your own principles, to solidify your values and priorities, and to understand the change you wanna see in the world.
So I personally have been really struggling.
The last few weeks, and I, and I honestly struggled through part of last year.
It just felt like this project is frivolous and ultimately meaningless.
But I think those kinds of thoughts are shortsighted, and I think those are the kind of thoughts that, the monsters of the world want us to think and believe because.
If we believe those things, it makes us weaker and I think we're all stronger together if we all have a better understanding and connection of ourselves and to ourselves.
And I think.
The kinder we are to ourselves allows us to be kinder to the other people around us.
And I think the world just really needs more kindness in it.
Simply put, regardless of your politics, your beliefs, we all just need to be kinder to each other.
And I think that starts by being kind to ourselves.
So I'm sorry that that is kind of a bummer note to end on, but I feel like it needed to be said so, I hope you all are giving yourselves that grace and that time and, maybe listening to this podcast is, is one of those ways to help us feel a little bit more connected to each other and know that at the end of the day, we're just people trying to get through life, trying to make sense of it, trying to make sense of ourselves, and that's a very human experience and I wish we could all just understand and appreciate that we are all just humans on this earth, trying to make sense.
Of what it means to be human.
And um, with that I will say thank you for joining me and I will catch you in the next episode.
Alright, thanks.
Bye.