Category: Creating Art

A creator I follow sent a newsletter the other day that opened with, “How are you doing? What are you building? Hit reply and let me know. I’ll get back to you within few days.”

It was such a refreshing use of a space that’s usually devoted to ads, hyperbole, and clickbait.

So, I leaned in and opened a dialogue.

I told him about this blog, MoveMe Quotes, how I was doing, of course, and praised him on creating content that I’ve been consuming for years now.

I don’t usually compose or send these kinds of emails and what I noticed in myself was a sense of pride that swelled up as I briefly outlined the 14+ years I’ve been actively building MMQ and the (almost) 4 years I’ve been writing daily blogs.

I remember thinking to myself right after I hit reply that he could literally click to any post or page on either site—from any year—and I’d be happy with what he found.

…It felt like one of those moments where I was able to point him to the “pudding” and in it, he’d find the proof. No long-winded intros, pitches, or talking-some-kind-of-talk required.

And then just today, as I was curating quotes for MMQ, I stumbled on this nugget: “Your hard work is opening doors you can’t even see right now.”

…And I suddenly understood what that meant in a way I never had before.

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P.s. The creator I’m referring to above is Janis Ozolins. He does an incredible job of explaining ideas visually and always keeps it uplifting, educational, and concise. Check him out here.

I finished yesterday’s post thinking it still needed more editing… that it wasn’t done… that I could’ve done better.

But, the deadline hit and I ran out of energy.

So I published it anyway.

…Which, by the way, is like the sitcom of my life as it pertains to this blog.

As a perfectionist… it never feels done… I always feel like it could be better… I’ve been doing this daily for nearly 5 years and I *still* hesitate as my mouse hovers over that “Publish” button.

…But you know what gets me to publish anyway—even when I have energy and I’m not worried about the deadline…?

Two things:

1) The enemy of done is perfect; “Good enough” is done’s best friend. And done is what this daily blog requires… for no reason other than it’s what I’ve promised to myself and, by consequence, what I’ve promised to those who have subscribed to this journey.

2) Typos aren’t the end of me… As Catherine Toops pointed out once on X, “…your typos are just a trail of inspiration for writers who want to believe they can do what you’ve done.”

And it’s those two thoughts that give the perfectionist side of me the comfort it needs to be vulnerable… to publish something that’s possibly flawed… that exposes me in some way… that opens me up to critique and possible ridicule.

…But also all of the other incredible things that come with publishing daily for nearly five years that absolutely wouldn’t be possible with perfectionism as a pre-requisite.

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P.s. ICYMI, you can read the best of what I posted to MoveMe Quotes last week here.

Your creative yearnings… those artistic inclinations… are whispers from a higher power… they’re nudges, winks, hints… from somewhere deep… not just inside you… but from within a collective unconscious… an ocean of understanding that spans a millennia and includes countless living beings and experiences… that something inside you, in some mysterious way, miraculously taps into… maybe at just a straws capacity if it were used to drink from the ocean… but a sip of the ocean none-the-less… one that gives you a taste… not of salt and seaweed… but of how you might better live… one that’s filled with meaning and connection… growth and contribution… gifts to be given and received…

See… creative yearnings… artistic inclinations… in all of their manifested forms… are expressions of our consciousness at its highest level… they become statements of what makes us different… what makes us unique… what makes us authentically… us… they become cornerstones of meaning in our life that we talk about, identify with, and share proudly with others… they become some of the most fundamental components of our legacy… the things that get featured at our funeral… the puzzle pieces that others offer to help formulate a picture of how we lived… the things that get left behind and continue to create ripples into the ocean of this collective experience… ripples that one day might make their way into the life of another being… that just might manifest as a creative yearning… an artistic inclination… a whisper… that just might give clues into the possibility of living a better life themself…

…Which is all to say: listen.

Never ignore whispers from a higher power.

The other day, while spending time with my mom, she asked how my writing/creating journey has been going.

After telling her, I asked her the same.

And during her response she mentioned this idea of a clearing that’s been circling in my mind ever since.

She essentially said she hasn’t started any of her personal writing/creating projects because she still has a decent project workload that’s keeping her busy as is. And she said what she imagines herself doing to better honor her muse is create a clearing in her schedule where she can just sit and ruminate… uninterrupted and without obligation of any kind… maybe even for days at a time.

And with that clearing, she imagined not binge watching her favorite Ion TV episodes, but letting her creative juices flow and seeing what comes up.

And it reminded me of something Neil Gaiman said when he was asked how he found inspiration to create, to which he said something along the lines of: I get myself bored.

The problem in today’s world, he adds, is that it’s really hard to get bored. There are millions of people online just waiting to entertain us with a thumb tap or two…

But, if we can manage it, boredom is the springboard for ideas. It’s where our mind starts to daydream, drift, remix, and wander… it’s when it starts to actively try to entertain itself.

And so this is the insight I’m currently playing with in my life: how can I create more clearings in my schedule? How can I deliberately get myself into more states of boredom? How can I create a space where my muse will more frequently visit?

“If I can get to a place of pure love, I can tap into a channel where I become a medium… a sort of mouthpiece of stories, and voices, and ideas from all that I’ve ever seen and heard… I just need to get out of my own way.”

Sandra Cisneros

Last night, I attended a live talk given by bestselling author, Sandra Cisneros.

When discussing her creative process, she shared the absolute dime of a line above. And this is 100% what the creative process is about:

1. Getting out of your own way. This includes insulating your mind from the screens, dings, and distractions; taming it with proper routines in ideal environments and with focus enhancers; and investing in inner work that mitigates self-limiting beliefs, self-sabotaging behavior, and all of the natural human resistance that accompanies doing meaningful, creative work.

2. Becoming a medium. You’ll only ever be able to share a composition of what you’ve ever experienced. And when you can truly get out of your own way and open up that channel that taps into the ocean of life experiences that’s deep within, it’s almost as though the work expresses itself. This is the highest level of creation. Creation that’s free of ego… that isn’t concerned with what an audience thinks, what the ROI might be, how “good” or “bad” it might be… that’s simply flowing from somewhere deep within that is a pure manifestation of the Self.

3. And how do you tap into that channel…? By entering into a place of pure love. And anything that isn’t that, well, becomes something that falls into bullet point #1 from above and should be treated accordingly.

My aunt loves sewing.

She loves it so much that she bought a ~$10,000 sewing machine.

And she uses it for every penny she invested into it.

She’ll quilt. She’ll create apparel and gifts. She’ll even create quilted artwork.

When I asked her if she wanted to earn some side hustle money by helping sew patches onto students’ uniforms for the martial arts school I work at… she quickly (and graciously) turned the idea down.

“As soon as I start doing it as a job, I’m going to hate it.” She explained.

And so she doesn’t.

Instead, she follows her curiosities. She challenges herself with interesting projects. She even finds ways to use her unique set of skills to help better the world around her.

Just today, she gave me container with 20 hand made toiletry bags that she wants to fill with toiletries and give to those at local women’s shelters.

Here’s the thing: turning our skills and passion-projects into side hustles can be great… but it can also ruin the thing that lights you up.

Like my aunt, tread that line carefully and dutifully check in with yourself to ensure you’re always fanning the flames of your inner fire—never smothering them with dollar signs or anything else.

When it comes to building an online business, what comes first, the product or the audience?

…Which feels a lot like what came first, the chicken or the egg? And I have no idea how to answer that one.

But, when it comes to the former question, build your audience first, and you’ll more likely appeal to a general demographic that has a more broad taste in product. Plus, you’ll probably be more focused on trends, fads, and broad appeal (for virality probability) which, by definition, will only grow your more general following. And when you try to build a general product to appeal to that general audience, it’ll invariably blend in with the countless others.

Build your product first, and you’ll have a much better idea of who you want to target for your audience. Plus, when you build your product first, you get to build it for you. My opinion is that the internet is incomprehensibly massive and there’s undoubtedly a niche of people who would love your product—once you know what it is and invest the time and energy required to build it beautifully and pack it with value.

What we don’t need are more general products that appeal to general audiences. What we need are people who have done the inner work and have come alive inside to create a product that they themselves would be thrilled to buy, that they can then start telling their (specific) people about.

The product, in my opinion, should come first.

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P.s. These are the two products I’ve built so far. Number three is on its way. :)