Category: Creating Art

I uploaded a quote today to MoveMe Quotes that read, “Art is a safe place to explore and express all emotions. No feeling is taboo. It’s about being sensitive to what your body is telling you, then using your art to set the emotion free.”

Without some form of an outlet… our emotions continue to pour into a type of static, stale, toxicity-prone pond within.

Art is an incredibly powerful means of creating an outlet for that pond.

And slowly, slowly… as you explore and express your art… your emotions converge into more of a river and flow through your body and out into the medium of that chosen art.

Without this type of outlet, don’t you see how the emotions can swell within? Don’t you see how all of the grief, anger, frustration, loneliness, and sadness can intermix into a type of toxic stew… contaminating the whole vessel carrying it? Don’t you see how most passive entertainment and social media and news outlets only exacerbate that toxic stew…?

…Don’t you see how important it is to have an outlet?

…Don’t you see that’s what this daily blog is for me?

…Don’t you see that it’s about time you create an outlet for the inner pond within you?

Most people live reactively to their emotions.

They go about their day, have their interactions, make their choices, and then feel the feelings consequentially arise while trying to maintain the scheduled busyness of their day.

Which leads to bottling, pressurizing, and exacerbating.

And of course, once you’re all the way in your feels, you’re usually clouded, spiraling, irrational, overthinking, and knee-jerking—and it isn’t usually until much later… after you’ve said and done things you regret… that you realize you actually were any of those things.

The solution to this frustrating reality is to simply add something proactively creative or inward focused into your day.

That’s it.

It can literally make all the difference in the world.

Simply block some journaling into your morning routine. Or some drawing into your lunch breaks. Or some music creation or dancing into your evening routine. Or some martial arts into your after work schedule. Or some unplugged outdoor walks into your before work schedule.

The problem isn’t the emotions. The emotions are what make us human.

The problem is the bottling of the emotions—it’s in their restricted flow and continued compression.

Creative work/ inner work time allows those feelings to flow. And feelings are something you should expect daily (to expect otherwise is silly).

…It’s in this one simple act that we can reclaim our emotional calm within even our craziest of days. Don’t underestimate it.

P.s. I write these daily as a free gift to the world. If you’d like to support my ongoing work, you can buy me a cup of joe, here (you can also make it monthly now). Thanks for reading :)

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.

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.

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.