This episode is about art, music, movies, writing that feels like home. It’s about the work that has made you feel less alone in this world and felt like a true reflection of your deep you-ness. I offer up a practice and my hope is that you try it out and return to it whenever you want to feel the comfort and truth of life-changing creativity. Click above to listen or read the transcript below 💿
Welcome to Gentle Musings, if you’re new here my name is Maggy. This is a podcast where I share about living out loud—living life as your imperfect, wonderful creative self from the inside out.
If you consider yourself creative to your core, a deep-feeling or sensitive person, if you’re someone who carries creative longing with you and creative resistance—creative resistance as significant as your creative longing—you’re in the right place!
I’m feeling very grateful to be recording right now. It has been a minute. I was definitely holding my breath like, oh my gosh, has it been too long? But no, the last month was intense for a lot of reasons. And I've also been teaching. Complete honesty here: there's a lot of resistance to getting on and recording. I have been very open about that, but it feels good to find my way.
Also, just for a visual so that you can kind of imagine what's happening right now: If you have seen 13 going on 30, the scene where she, I think she's having a meltdown and I want to say it's ice water. She's holding a pillow though against her stomach and hugging the pillow. That’s what I’m doing right now to cut down on the noise in this room.
Right now I’m in the middle of teaching Pivoting Toward Wholeness—this is six weeks of easing up on self-critical thoughts, willpower, and unmovable resistance and toward directing your attention and energy, in small and creative ways, into deeper authenticity and presence…
I am very lucky to teach this course. I am very lucky to take this course with the people that I am teaching (I always take it as I'm teach it). And I just feel, well, this is about gratitude. I feel enormous gratitude to steward this project and see how it’s unfolding and how it impacts peoples lives in a very special way.
And it’s really keeping me going. We are living through very particular times and the last month especially has reached levels of devastation that I don't even have the words for. I tried recording this before and I kept weeping and I'm trying right now just to speak matter-of-factually about the pure despair that I feel around what the people of Gaza are facing right now and the pure level of helplessness… and the futility of it seems like actions and even what I've been feeling of prayer… just absolutely incomprehensible severity.
And so that is heavy on my heart. And I am just only imagining that it's heavy on yours as well. My ongoing prayer has been may humanity urgently move towards shared safety. May it be so.
Not in spite of this heavy heart but alongside it, I’m paying special attention to what is beautiful right now. Naming what is beautiful and pausing and giving it my attention… and trying in all of the ways that I can to create intentionally more beauty in my day-to-day, in the small ways. Not skipping over these things that are actually sacred: how I plate food, how I place a scarf on my shoulders, how I set down an object that serves no purpose other than to look beautiful… Prioritizing my sitting practice, taking my breakfast seriously… small, small.
And I’ve been on rose patrol. I mean, c’mon:
In one of his letters to Theo, Van Gogh wrote:
Instead of giving way to despair, I took the way of active melancholy as long as I had strength for activity, or in other words, I preferred the melancholy that hopes and aspires and searches to the one that despairs, mournful and stagnant.
On the best days, it is the season of active melancholy. I return to the small, next, kind, doable, creative choice. This doesn’t always involve outer action.
Speaking of beauty, I had the privilege of seeing Van Gogh’s box of yarns—he had a beautiful red wooden box filled with yarn that he would combine into different color combinations so that he could see what it looked like before painting:
I think of the care he took in examining the interplay of colors—holding the ball up and tilting his head.
I saw an iridescent green spider on my pink sandal the other day, and that's also on my mind. A cute bunny on their hind legs chomping on a leaf! Noticing fallen bees, carrying elixir for them. I can confirm the bees love the elixir and it's just one of these tiny things that we can do.
I’ve been deepening in the practice of easing up on internet/screen use since sharing about it a couple months ago. The less I scroll, the more my energy returns to me. The less scattered I feel, the less I struggle with low motivation, the more capable I feel. Feeling this and directing it in useful ways—tangible ways—has been pretty astounding… I’m still gathering my thoughts on it all… That’s a little teeny snapshot of what’s on my mind.
But I have something to share with you today and it asks of your participation, if you’re up for it. In Pivoting Toward Wholeness we start each session with a micro gratitude practice. I’m talking under four minutes, and we do this as a way of dropping into our time together. Since it’s 2 hours and it’s so easy for the mind to get pulled into different directions of ‘I need to do this, or ah I’m behind on this’—having a micro grounding/settling practice really helps to drop into this time like a retreat—like a weekly retreat.
Why gratitude? Because gratitude is a practice of connection. It's the opposite of apathy and distance and numbing. Gratitude says: I’m noticing. There’s grief and I’m noticing that my stomach is fed. I’m holding my breath and I’m nodding to the tree. This is really hard right now, and I’m choosing to take in the goodness of this glass of water.
I have a ton to say on gratitude, and together in the calls during Pivoting we talked about gratitude and feeling guilty, gratitude and feeling grief, gratitude and feeling like it’s just a matter of going through the motions because we should, or when gratitude is used as a way of pulling away from raw, messy experiences—it’s like when you tell yourself, well I should be grateful for this thing even though right now I’m pissed about (I think it’s clear that I don’t encourage this approach! Gratitude gets to be simply freeing).
So the way we do it is just having those few minutes and if gratitude doesn’t feel available, we let that be ok. No forced gratitude. It’s just about having the intention to open to an honest experience of appreciation, however that looks and feels like that day.
Every week I offer a direction for gratitude, like a prompt. And I want to share this one with you with the hope that you will share what brings up for you with me - or with all of us, since when you leave a comment it can inspire other people, too.
Here’s the invitation: Think about a creative work that has widened your perspective or informed your life or sense of self.
It’s something that maybe really helped you get through a certain chapter or tap into a certain part of yourself that you didn’t know about. Maybe something that has helped you feel less alone at or more understood.
Think: a book, movie, song, album, artwork, or any creative experience that moves you. Or: artist, musician, comedian, performer, writer, director, poet...
Here’s how it goes (and you can do this in under a few minutes)
Get a piece of paper and a pen and start by making a list of creative works you LOVE
Look around your space! I really encourage you to write this down instead of type it. Start writing ideas to help you remember...
Then notice which ones naturally stir a sense of gratitude in you.
Maybe circle them or draw a heart or star. Pick 1-2. Spend some time considering what it has meant for you and your life. This can happen while you’re driving, walking, doing the dishes… If you’re in your space and let’s say you feel appreciation for a book, hold it as you do this (Marie Kondo style).
What about that creative work—or of the creator—are you grateful for?
Write about why you love it in a list *or* write a thank you note to the creative piece. This isn’t a project of big to-do, it can happen in a few minutes if you like.
Soak up that cherishment as long as you need.
I’d love to hear if you do this. Even if you’re seeing this days/weeks/months after I first shared it, please try this out and share what came up for you! Sharing about the creativity that moves us is powerful.
Here is one of mine for today: I adore Daniel Johnston (and have written about his creativity here before). Actually, his music is very much active melancholy…
Through a freak series of events, I’m lucky enough to have one of his early prints from a 90s punk magazine framed in my dining room.
Here are a couple favorites:
That’s my share! I’d love to hear yours.
Thank you for being here.
Take care,
Maggy
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I help highly creative people get out of their own way.
My approach is rooted in curiosity, shame resilience, a love for deep knowledge and craft, and unwavering trust in your creative callings.
If you have creative resistance as big as your creative longings and you're done with staying stuck, let's talk about 1:1 creative support.
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