A look inside my creative project log
fall 2025
This Gentle Musings is a show-and-tell: here’s a look at what I’m making lately and what I’m looking forward to making soon.
I’d appreciate if you watch this short video first for some context. If you prefer to read, what I share is also written below.
Every day of the week, I help people reconnect with their creativity and live as the most creative, authentic version of themselves (more on that here). And… I only share a sliver of what I’m up to in my own creative life.
This is partly pragmatic: I’m living it! Documenting the creative process publicly takes extra time and care. And hey, it’s vulnerable…there are some things not included here for that reason.
Partly, I’m just a private person. I’m aware of projections, assumptions, and over-familiarity that gets normalized online. I believe in a right to opacity for everyone.
In general when it comes to sharing online in these ways: even if I shared as much as I could, with complete openness, the parts I can’t or don’t share would still contain the most essential context for what drives my action and non-action, my worldview, and what it feels like to be me.
There’s a tender part to all of this, too. I know it well in myself and I hear it from women every day: the moments when (creative) vulnerability is met with derision or a blank stare and you suddenly feel very alone and strange about what brings you delight and meaning. It’s not surprising to me when clients and course participants bring up a very specific memory of creative shaming that happened years or decades ago. From a teacher, a parent, the cool kids at school.
When you live with a mask on, the judgement can’t really reach what’s true in you. When the mask is off, there you are. Doing this, especially in your own inner world, is a gift of creative living.
The reason I can hit publish on anything online is because of dedicating myself to a creative life. And today’s share is vulnerable—another way to say: this is me being me, and this is what I care about.
These are all examples of projects I consider Creativity with a capital C, instead of everyday creativity. Most of my creativity in the day isn’t Creativity, and I bet it’s the same for you: creativity lives in your relationship to time, in how you take care of your home, how you express care to the people in your life. When, on the way to one of his patient’s, Oliver Sacks stopped at a flower shop and put a flower in his buttonhole—that’s the creativity I’m most interested in. But I also live for Creativity, too. Here’s some of what that looks like for me in this season:
i.
I’m making videos again!! This is very life-giving, especially because I am so uncomfortable on camera and such a beginner at editing. I’m especially looking forward to playing with collage elements like I did in this older video, below. It’s all about the most common regret of the dying and one I’m grateful to have made.
If you’re reading this and want to practice being on camera but feel weird about it, listen to the deeper desire! Whenever I start filming, I feel like an alien because it’s so out of my comfort zone… Here’s what what I mean: these are a couple outtakes of trying to say hi (yes, hi) and this is LEVEL 1 on the embarrassment scale of my outtakes every time I film.
ii.
A little cap I’m sewing beads onto! It’s too hard to capture on photo, but they form a subtle gradient of color from left to right. What kind of cap is this? I don’t know. Will I wear this when I get groceries? Yes.
iii.
ZINES. I’m at the very beginning of making The Harvesting Guide into a zine. The Harvesting Guide helps you design your own ritual for reviewing and organizing your personal archives: notebooks, diaries, scrap pages, messy documents… When you sit down to harvest a journal or a chaotic computer drive, you’re choosing to tap into your distinct body of knowledge, including all of your questions and uncertainties. It’s like a secret library that you get to visit whenever you want, might as well be able to find what you’re looking for.
I’ve been dreaming about making a harvesting zine for years now and I think it might be my creative assignment for the month in The Creative Lab.
The dream: to have gorgeous zines in your hands by Christmas. Very limited edition, hand-stitched binding, signed and numbered. Would you want that? As in: would you actually buy it? This info is important in my decision because of material costs. Let me know!
I’d also love to turn some old collages, and incorporate new ones, into a zine about creative dreams. I first made this in 2020 and I’d love to build on the idea knowing what I know now.
But really? Really, really—I want to make a zine about everyday creativity and creating a beautiful life with what you have. I imagine it to have collage elements too, like the inside of someone’s travel diary, and hand-lettering. I want it witty, filled with micro-guides and tips and quotes and food and flowers… ANALOG. Like a little treasure. Stay tuned, I guess :)
After a long and flowing conversation with Débora Figueiredo of Cartas/Letters (one of my favorite publications here), it looks like we might have a collaborative zine in the works, too!!
iv.
Inspired by Vanessa Bell’s painted lampshades (and walls and furniture and everything), I’m planning to paint a lampshade in my studio—saving this one for a blistery winter night.
v.
In September, in the company of some pretty wonderful people, I started working with fiber again. I made something weird that I love, you might catch a glimpse of it in an upcoming video. It’s based on mechanical automata toys, those little sculpture toys with wheels and cranks (like circus men or animals with moving joints). Not sure what it is about them, but I can’t get enough of those little toys. They remind me of my uncle who always appreciated eccentric folk art.