Hello Creative Soul!

It’s fall y’all.

I woke up to a chilly 30 degrees. It was the first morning with temperatures this low. I hear we will wake to 20-degree windchills on Monday morning. That means I will pull out my long underwear for a morning walk.

I hope you are having an amazing creative week!

My goal with this newsletter is to share some highlights of my week, any finds I’ve discovered, and random thoughts about business and life. 

1. In case you missed it, here was our blog post from earlier in the week. Social media can sometimes seem like the bane of my existence. I have a love/hate relationship with it. How about you? This week I took a look back at finding the right social media platform for you. You can read the post here.

Welcome fellow creative! 

I hope you are having an amazing creative week!

My goal with this newsletter is to share some highlights of my week, any finds I’ve discovered, and random thoughts about business and life. 

1. Just in case you missed it, here was our blog post from earlier in the week. I caught myself thinking about how I was to fit in an art project and started down an “as soon as” path. It’s too easy to get trapped there and never make progress. You can read the post here.

2. This week, I got a note from my niece. She received her high school graduation quilt and loves it. It was to be the quilt to take to college. It will be when that happens, perhaps in January. I want to share pictures on the blog this week. For now, here’s one photo.

3. One of the artists I discovered in an article in the New York Times earlier this year is Bisa Butler. Her work features large-scale images of Black people created in bright African fabrics. It is rich and full of detail. Last Saturday I found that she was included in the Clarice Smith Virtual Lecture Series of the Smithsonian American Art Museum and Renwick Gallery, which is my favorite gallery here in DC. The lecture is free. You can get more details and sign up here.

4. What a difference a year or seven months makes. Any other year, I’d be in Houston at International Quilt Market. Facebook has a good way of reminding me with the memories posts. I do miss my friends and colleagues. I miss the energy of my students. And, I miss the creativity of the quilts. The quilts. I do miss the quilts. Right now, a virtual Quilt Market is scheduled for Jan. 26-28, 2021. Virtual Quilt Festival is scheduled for Dec. 3-5, 2020. You can sign up for additional information here.

Make it a creative weekend!

Do you find yourself saying, I’ll do it as soon as … ?

Yes, I’ve been there way too many times. Life is busy and it’s so easy to get stuck in as soon as land.

As soon as my day job slows down, I’ll work on my creative biz.
As soon as I get through my backlog emails, I can start thinking about this new project.
As soon as this pandemic is over, I can build my business.
As soon as my studio is clean, I can start on a new project.
As soon as I finish the stash of home-made cookies, I’ll pay better attention to my health.
As soon as the gym reopens, I’ll start exercising again.

While that sounds plausible to you, in reality, “as soon as” doesn’t ever come.

Because something else happens to stop you.

Every. Single. Time.

Welcome to my new weekly newsletter. 

I hope you are having an amazing creative week!

My goal with this newsletter is to share some highlights of my week, any finds I’ve discovered, and random thoughts about business and life. 

Today I woke up to 35 degrees. Daytime highs will be in the mid-60s and 70s so I can handle the chilly morning.

1. Just in case you missed it, here was our blog post on Wednesday. I focused on evening rituals. It was a follow-up to an earlier post on morning rituals. I’d love to hear about your rituals. They really make a difference.

2. “Creativity is there to help us explore who we are.” 

2. The scourge that is sugar!

Welcome to my new weekly newsletter. 

I hope you are having an amazing creative week!

My goal with this newsletter is to share some highlights of my week, any finds I’ve discovered, and random thoughts about business and life. 

1. Just in case you missed it, here was our blog post on Wednesday. I focused on 3 things you can do to make this last quarter great. 

2. Ruth Bader Ginsburg died on September 18. It’s hard to think of someone who championed women’s equality more.

As a textile fan, I loved how she made a fashion statement in her judicial robe. RBG and Sandra Day O’Connor, the first female justice, wanted to include something feminine with their attire. The jabot was the answer. Here’s a fun article in the New York Times about the different collars that Justice Ginsburg wore. 

Welcome to October!

You have 3 months left until we turn the calendar to 2021. That’s 13 weeks. It’s 92 days. Plenty of time to accomplish what you set out to do this year. 

Yes, I know it’s been the craziest year on record. What started out to be perhaps a short-lived inconvenience has turned into so much more.

Undoubtedly, your business was affected in ways you didn’t expect. Maybe you had to lay off employees or cut back on their hours. Maybe you applied for a loan or a grant to keep your business going. You likely had to learn a new way to deliver your product. So many people made the shift to offering more services online, whether that was teaching via zoom or delivering more marketing and selling online.

As you start this last quarter of 2020, here are three steps to taking you where you are now to ending your year in a better place than you expect.

Reflect

The first step is to reflect on where you are and how you got there.

You’ve spent the past three months either staying close to home, sheltering in place, or some variation of that. You’ve given yourself to others during this time. Perhaps you were unexpectedly homeschooling. Or caregiving in your home for someone who was sick. Or sharing your workspace with your spouse. Or just worrying about keeping your life and business going. 

Add to that the racial and political turbulence that came to a head in the past couple of weeks. Perhaps you were one of the many who participated in peaceful protests over the weekend. Or maybe you simply paused social media on #blackouttuesday. 

If you kept up with any of what has been going on in our world, you can see that it’s noisy. Emails, blog posts, podcasts, traditional news outlets.

I recently read that the “typical” person receives 120 emails a day. That same person spends 11 hours a day connecting online with media. On a daily basis, you can read 1,331 newspapers, listen to more than 550,000 podcasts, and read more than 2,000,000 blog posts.

It’s enough to give you a headache or more if you try to keep up.

This past week has been a heavy one. I’m horrified by the actions I see. I’m sad for where our country is. I’m sad for the lives that are lost. Lots is broken. Lots needs to be fixed. 

And, I’m uncomfortable.

I don’t feel right sending out our regular ezine this week. I do not feel like business as usual.

As a white woman, I cannot grasp the black experience. We all filter everything through our own lens. And one of my lenses is the white woman lens.

Sure I have good friends and colleagues who are black, friends whom I respect. I’ve dined with them. I’ve chatted at book clubs with them. Prayed with them at church. Shared experiences with them. Had them as overnight guests in my home. Had real conversations. But I can never know their experience, their lens.

Only 10 minutes to more creativity? That sounds doable, right? It is, and it’s as simple as sitting quietly and focusing on your breath.

For the past several years I have been recommending meditation to my private clients. It has been significant to most. 

At our Creative Arts Business Summit, I would lead a guided meditation. For some of my clients, this was a powerful exercise.

Today in our times of stress with the coronavirus, meditation can have a profound effect on us.

I also have my own meditation practice that is part of my morning ritual. I was around meditation for a long time before I started to practice. My sister has taught mindfulness meditation for more than 15 years after many more years of a personal practice, and my husband has also had a long-time practice.

Despite their encouragement, I could not think of myself as someone who meditated. After all, I couldn’t possibly sit still that long. The first time I tried, I stopped and looked at the clock and barely two minutes had passed. And, I could not shake the long-held idea that meditation somehow was for hippies or new-age types.

I somehow got over that.

Read, I stopped self-sabotaging myself.  And, I began a meditation practice. I have found that it has a positive impact on my life. I can see this in my everyday activities and in my own creativity.

Especially in today’s uncertain times, I find it grounding.

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