The Creative Sense
Follow the Breadcrumbs: Finding Your Direction in Your Past Work
The tricky part is that when you’re in the middle of making, the trail is hard to see. It takes a pause, and a little honesty, to turn around and notice it. I’ll share how I started following mine six years ago, what I’m seeing now, and a simple exercise you can try today.
Marking the Moment: The Red Salamander
I was about a third of the way through my running route. It was one of those days when the sun was streaming through the trees, warming me just enough as the crisp air rushed by me. That point in the run where you feel so alive! My mind was always searching in those days, planning. Had I done the right thing? And what was next?
All Worlds Collide: Why Connection Fuels Your Creative Work
Making anything is an act of recombination — you're pulling together things you've absorbed, overheard, argued with, been surprised by — so the range of what you can make is bounded by the range of what you've taken in.
Why Brené Brown Writes With the TV On
The image of snacks, TV and a laptop was maybe less idyllic than the seaside writing retreat I had pictured, and yet sooo much more doable!
Start Where You Are: Learning Your Craft in Mid-Life
I’m about ¾ of the way through reading Florian Gadsby’s book By My Hands: A Potter’s Apprenticeship. I’ve burst out laughing, underlined passages, folded down page corners. It’s an enchanting trip through his educational journey, mostly as it pertains to learning his chosen craft of ceramics. It’s got me thinking about how to move forward.
Fill the Well by Living the Life You Chose
The well is everything you collect just by being awake inside your own life. Images, ideas, sensations, colors you didn't expect. A walk in the neighborhood. A museum visit. A dinner out with friends. A leaf you found, a comedian you saw, a cloud formation slowly passing by as you sit still. None of that is art yet; it's the raw material. It goes down into the well and mixes with everything else you've ever taken in, waiting for the day you reach for it.
Know Yourself to Make Your Best Work
Before you can shine your light, you need to find it, know it, and ignite it. And that's where I want to focus today: a simple, powerful way to know yourself more — not through a quiz or a book, but by looking inward and celebrating who you are before you ask anyone else to weigh in.
5 Things to Do Now If You're Considering a Full-Time Creative Career
Can’t you just picture it? You quit the day job, set up the dreamy studio, and get busy making anything and everything you want, with people buzzing in and out of your studio, buying your art and paying your bills! I love that story. But today I’ll be telling you the real one, because it’s realness actually makes it more encouraging. It is less magical at first, for sure – but making a living from your creative work is absolutely possible. It just rarely looks like you think it will.
The Power of Reflection: Why We Can’t Afford To Rush Past It
Join me in this real-time reflection — and see how even the brief pause of one morning can be the difference in living a meaningful life on your own terms, and reaching creative goals you might have rushed past if you hadn’t stopped to think.
Zoom In: The Underrated Art of Improving One Small Thing
Most of us spend our lives in a sort of production mode. We move from task to task, making the things, doing the things, and somewhere in all that churning we stop noticing the small mechanics underneath it all. We're too busy keeping the wheels turning to ask whether the wheels could turn a little better.
You Don't Have to Figure It Out Alone
I learned this the slow way. After college, I tried to keep my pottery skills up. I signed up for open studio time at a local community college to throw on the wheel, which was a great start. But I was rusty, and I was self-conscious about it. I didn't know anyone else in that studio, so I kept to myself, head down, quietly working.
Create for Yourself, From Yourself
Create for yourself, from yourself. Not as a destination you're working toward, but as a way of moving through every day — because that kind of creating is more honest, more alive, and so much gentler than the endless striving against what is.
Come Back Tomorrow: The Unglamorous Secret to Getting Better
There's a gap in the creative process that separates the people who get good from the people who give up — and almost nobody talks about it. You get inspired — something clicks, you can see what you want to make, your brain is buzzing. And then you sit down to actually make it. It turns out your brain and hands are not on the same page (yet), and reality sets in.
Two Questions That Help Me Refocus, Eat My Vegetables, and Create the Life I Want Most
I kept finding myself stuck in this murky realm of in-between — not quite enough energy or willpower to actually reach for it. Maybe next week, you know? What was holding me back from starting those things? Well…the fuel I was running on — chips, scrolling, inertia — wasn't exactly putting the pep in my step.
How Uncovering YOUR Brand of Creativity Can Change Everything
Instead of mapping out a big action plan or productivity overhaul, today I want to focus on the smallest mindset shift that cracks life wide open for me — when I remember to tune into it. It all comes back to creativity, and how we can channel it daily. And here's why that matters a lot more than it might sound.
Is the Quest for the Perfect Morning Routine Overrated?
When I start to feel brain fog, and a desire to avoid social events, I know it's time to re-center. And what better way to start fresh than to develop the perfect morning routine? Here's the thing, though. I've tried. Many times. The staples of health easily get squeezed out. The solution is designing a routine that protects your healthy habits so thoroughly that you naturally show up to your days in a clearer, more grounded state.
Start With the Problem: A Creative Strategy That Changes Everything
Here's a question I bet you've never asked yourself while making art: What problem am I solving?
Creativity is fundamentally about making connections between a problem and a solution. And when you start approaching your art that way, something shifts.
The One Thing My Body Knew (That My Brain Kept Ignoring)
I kept saying yes to everything until my body said no. Here's what a forced reboot taught me about priorities, boundaries, and The One Thing.
How to Use Other People's Reactions to Find Your Creative Signal
That's SO real, that’s what art should do. Transfer a feeling from me to you, through this beautiful thing, it came through. I’ll be chasing that moment for a long time.
And then - how DO we chase that moment? It’s not a linear thread, for sure. But in talking to that couple, I was gifted a few clues of how to use connection and sharing your work as a map forward.
Silly Art Is Still Art — But With One Condition
How do you know if you're having too much fun and not taking your art seriously enough? Is silly art still art? The easy answer is yes. But the gold in this question is a bit more nuanced — and it's something I think about a lot in my own studio practice. I am drawn to a certain level of freedom, playfulness, silliness — in art and in life. It wakes me up, makes me laugh. The freedom to exhale, to not cling so tightly to serious meaning and big stakes.