Hey Creatives,
Our theme this week is finding the feeling.
What’s the feeling? You know the feeling. Presence, the muse, flow. It goes by all sorts of names.
If you have a name for it, what’s it called?
What does it feel like?
What does the absence of it feel like?
How do you get in touch with it?
At my day job, I’ve been working on rolling out an employee advocacy program (I lead social media at Wix). “Day job” and “advocacy program” might not sound like incredible sources of inspiration at first glance, but 1) everything is creative if you can get curious about it, and 2) as part of that, I’m having a lot of conversations with people to help them think about how to talk about their work and my inner anthropologist is fascinated.
Here’s what I’m finding: most people feel like they have nothing to say at first. It’s usually some combination of not having the dedicated time to think about their work because they’re so busy doing their work, feeling uncertain that other people will find value in it, or feeling icky about promoting themselves. But I keep prodding because that’s my job and that’s who I am and we almost always find something they feel excited to share.
Here’s the really great part: once they find the one thing, it snowballs into a dozen other things. “Oh if I’m sharing about this, then I can also talk about that.” What I’m getting at here is it can be hard to get that initial spark, but once the fire is lit it is on.
If your spark is feeling elusive, start to notice where you get a little glimmer. Or think back to when you felt it in the past and what the circumstances or qualities were that led to it. Sometimes it helps to have a sounding board, the way that I get to be a sounding board for my colleagues. Your sounding board doesn’t have to be a person! Nature, music, art. It’s about relating.
Speaking of – thanks so much to our guest contributor,
, for her posts last week on cultivating community. I hope they inspired you to seek out some online or IRL opportunities to connect with others over making. Finding the people and places that help you create is a big part of building a practice. You can subscribe to Melissa’s newsletter here and follow her here to keep up with her art.XO,
Lindsay
P.S. I’ve been making short videos for Instagram and TikTok, merging my interests at work with my interests in supporting creatives and entrepreneurs. Here’s one for those of you who feel icky about promoting your work:
I don't have a word for that feeling. All I know is that when I keep a sketchbook that doesn't have to be perfectly cohesive things roll out better. That would be my advice for creative people. Keep a private journal or sketchbook that has random bits of stuff, ideas, words, sketches, drawings. If it gets too precious it will not work. Also, have it handy so you can add things to it when you are waiting. Pull it out instead of your phone. If you use your phone too much you are getting to much input. You need output as a creative person, even if it turns out lousy sometimes. Often we think everything has to be perfectly rendered but maybe that's because we are fed so much high quality works online.