What Kind Do You Need? 🤓📝✅

Hey, Gorgeous, it’s nice to see you here in 2022! ✨

Let’s get this year started off right, unleashing our full creativity, which we will surely need if the past two years are any indication. 🤪

Yep, creativity is our word for this month. Yee-haw! 🙌🏽 And I think you’re gonna enjoy the homework. It’s not nearly as scary as you think “creativity homework” might be.

Housekeeping, Then Homework 🧹🤓✏️

I want to warmly welcome you back to heART❤️SCHOOL — a place for soul-building together, in service to the health of humanity and the planet. There are no admissions requirements (you’re in!), no tests, and while there is homework, it’s not graded. 😉

With January’s organizing energy, let’s sum up where we are in this heART❤️SCHOOL experiment.

• Agency was our first theme, starting in August 2021, then

• Rituals, and

• Transitions.

• Spaciousness came in with the holiday season, and now

• Creativity is where we find ourselves today.

Note for heART❤️SCHOOL nerds: The first letter of each word is spelling something out. I will leave it to your detective brains to unravel that mystery as we go along. Click on the highlighted words above if you’d like to review the material we covered. 🧐

Now, on to our creativity assignment.

Something I’ve Noticed

I’ve been closely monitoring this thing called creativity for decades. Here’s what I see tripping us up the most when it comes to embracing our own creativity:

We crave permission.

We wish that someone would notice how badly we want to do that thing (write that YA novel, form that band, start that business…) even though we never admit it out loud. Still, we wish an official person would tell us, “Yes, of course you should do it! You can totally do that! How can you not do that? You were positively born to do that.”

Ideally, we want to hear those things when we’re in our teens or twenties, as we’re starting to make our way in the world.

Just In Case It Didn’t Happen That Way For You

If you heard those words from someone you respect, who seemed like they had the authority to declare that you were qualified to follow your creative dream — and you listened and believed them — then bow down and give thanks, because it’s not what usually happens.

Regardless, there are two people who can bestow that encouragement on you, right here and right now: me and you.

I’ll go first.

I see your creative potential, Beautiful Blog Reader, and your desire to develop your unique imaginative flavors of genius. I hereby grant you permission to do it. Yes, start — or keep on — developing your gifts! The world is eagerly waiting for what you’re going to create. We need it, even if we don’t know that yet. And you’re the only one who can do it the way you do.

Love,
Pam

Now It’s Your Turn: Get Specific

I’m happy to give you general permission to unleash your creativity, and I mean it sincerely. I also believe it’ll stick better if you do it yourself. You’re a grown-up with agency, after all, qualified to be the boss of this.

Today’s homework assignment, designed to remove roadblocks, has two parts. Then some optional add-ons.

1. Decide what kind of permission you need. For example, which of these do you most want/need to hear?

   • You are allowed to make art.

   • You are allowed to make TIME to make art.

   • You are allowed to make time to make art, even when the house is not clean.

   • You’re allowed to make messes when you’re making art.

   • You are allowed to make “bad art,” since that is the only path toward making “better art.”

   • You’re allowed to make art for FUN and not for MONEY.

   • You’re allowed to make MONEY from your art.

   • You’re allowed to make a different kind of art than what people currently expect from you.

   • You’re allowed to make non-award-winning art; you can be satisfied with pretty good.

   • You’re allowed to shine and win accolades for your art; your art can be outstanding.

   • You’re allowed to make your own weird thing that others don’t understand (yet).

   • You’re allowed to love what you made and admit it out loud. And to sometimes not love what you made, because let’s be honest: You won’t love it all. But some of it you’ll probably really like.

   • You’re allowed to _____________________________________.

2. Create an actual written permission slip for yourself. On paper, with pens and pencils. Make it say what you most need to hear. Give it fancy borders and official-sounding language. Put the important things, like your name and your specific type of permission, in big letters. Draw a line for your signature, and sign it. Hang it somewhere where you (and maybe certain others) will see it every day.

Optional Follow-Ups to Your Homework

Now that that obstacle is out of the way, here are a few ideas to support your endeavors going forward.

Enlist a buddy for accountability. Creativity loves company! Who do you know that’s sort of stalled out on a creative project? Forward this message, have a conversation about your goals, and set up a calendar to keep each other on track.

Take a class. Skill-building is part of the process. Even seasoned artists are constantly learning from others. In the Portland Metro area, you can find me teaching reuse art workshops at the ReBuilding Center. And this coming Saturday I’ll be at Belle Flower Farm in Vancouver, WA for my first-ever Artful Journaling workshop there. ☺️ (I’ll be returning in June with a class called Where Mosaic Meets Collage.) Plus, here are in-person and virtual classes you can purchase in my online shop.

Dare yourself to be brave. Courage is absolutely required for creativity. You’re making something that didn’t exist before in just that way —your way — and it’s scary to put yourself out there. Frozen in fear? Write out your worst-case scenario and read it aloud to someone who can help talk you down from the proverbial ledge. Then go do your thing. You’ve got this! 💪🏽

Listen to our podcast. In December I recorded a conversation with my friend, fellow visual artist, and fellow flamenca, Rhiannon Leonard. We got real about failure, the wisdom of 3rd graders, the benefits of constraints, the magic of Bob Ross, and more. Listen here. I think you’ll feel encouraged to create.

Send me your photo. I love crowd-sourcing blog material. 🤩 For our PICTURES post on Jan. 13th 📸, please send me a photo of either: 1) the permission slip you made for yourself, or 2) your creative activity (preferably showing you in the act of doing it). Email your photo by Jan. 12 to make sure it can be included. Yes, I’m talking about yours!

Model it. Notice it. Spread the Joy.

Research shows that we humans are influenced by what we see each other doing, more than by statistics, or by what we read in books and (sadly for me) in blog posts. The more we witness those around us engaging in creative work — singing in a choir, writing poetry, inventing cupcake recipes, dancing in the improv circle, sewing sock monsters — the easier it is to give ourselves permission to do creative work, and vice-versa.

So join me in normalizing art-making, not so we can all be professionals and win awards, but so we can all become more healthy and human. Help me model everyday creativity for others, so we can build a more soulful society.

With my official permission to go out and make your thing 📜🖊,
Pam

P.S. Don’t forget to:
> check out the workshop I’m offering at Belle Flower Farm this Saturday.
> send me a photo of your Official Permission Slip and/or your creative endeavors, by January 12th. 🙏🏽📸 (Yeah, yours.)