Creative Prompts on Becoming a Resource for Others
Seeking Refuge & Retreat in Your Community
This week, like many of us, I am gearing up to head out of town and spend time with some of my chosen family. We are planning an epic “Friendsgiving” in my favorite landscape in the forest of Humboldt County. While typing this email to you, I have another tab open for the Google Sheet where are planning meals and snacks. Last week, we finished a group call to solidify arrivals and our plan for staying safe and healthy while spending time inside together.
The people I’ll be around are those I would love to be in a community with more closely. These are the folks I wish could all buy some land with to build a cooperative living space together. Maybe someday, that will come to fruition, but for now, we have holiday breaks to spend time together.
I know many of you are likely retreating to some gathering like this in the next few days, even to be with friends virtually. In moments of deep uncertainty, it is these moments of rest when we take refuge in one another when you and your people get nourished by both food and the time spent together.
Here’s what’s in this email:
The first is a set of free prompts to meander on in your journal and creative practice on the idea of being resourced. This is a crucial thing to focus on right now in this time of deep uncertainty.
The Zoom link for tomorrow’s Sketchbook/Creativity club. Come join us and spend time making/responding to the prompts/
Next up a bit on a new PDF resource I made for gathering with others and fortifying your bonds around creative persistence. Remember the DIY Creative Retreat I announced last month? I made something special inspired by it.
At the end, I’ll talk about my new art prints that are available now. I talk in great detail about all of them in my latest YouTube video Sketchbook Tour. All of my new prints on INPRNT are on sale for 20% off this weekend.
What does it mean to gather your resources or get resourced?
This week, we are going to explore that in our practices. I just finished re-reading Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler. I devoured the book in a span of a few days and am working my way through the sequel.
If you haven’t read it, it follows Lauren Olamina through her life in community at what feels like the end of the world. It traces through the experience of great loss and building entirely new communities. She navigates worst-case scenarios with beautiful resilience alongside her people.
All of this happens in the fictional year 2024 (The book was published in 1992), fraught with extreme climate change and political unrest. After the election, I picked this up because it is one of my favorites. It is also a reminder that things aren’t as bad as they could be at this moment.
One of my favorite scenes in the book is Lauren preparing a Go Bag, in case of emergencies. This concept got super real for me when I moved to California.
This state is contending daily with the impending danger of catastrophic earthquakes, landslides, and wildfires. Having a go bag, bug-out bag, or emergency kit, whatever you choose to call it, is just one aspect of getting resourced.
Another is finding and sustaining a community. Over on Discord, and more recently on Zoom, I have been hosting free sketchbook clubs to try and build a digital creative community. It’s starting to work! I am loving the habit of showing up, talking about these prompts, and making space for one another’s inspirations, sketches, and projects.
These digital communities feel so important to fellow disabled folks, to those who want robust relationships beyond geographical limitations, and for those who are wanting to just pop in and say hi in the middle of their work days. People share projects, ask questions, and genuinely support one another. This feels like such a resource.
You can join us tomorrow for Sketchbook/Creativity Club with this link here. Just make sure you have Zoom installed and headphones to reduce background noise at 6PM PST.
As we head into uncertain times, I want to provide both spaces like this and these prompts to you to try and be more like Lauren, and get resourced before you need to reach for them.
Journaling Prompts:
What would be in your Creative Emergency Kit? Can you bring it with you more often?
A set of colored pencils, crayons, and a sketchbook or coloring book with you for hard days, for stressful moments? How small would this need to be? Could you bring it to work with you?
Emotional reserves are also a resource. What are the things that help you feel the most resourced? Long phone calls with friends? A walk in the woods? A long, hot bath? Take note of these so you can draw on them in times of need.
Resources can also be actions or strategies. Are there certain things you are working on with your community to help support others or yourself? If there were to be moments when things got bad, what strategies would you want to have in your court?
What, resource feels most scarce to you right now? Connection? Community? Groceries? Access to the right tools? These are hard things to think about I know, but they directly impact our creative capacities. Consider that for the moment, now think of ways that pooling resources could help lower the individual burden of this scarcity?
For example, I am hosting community pot lucks, trying to buy in bulk WITH others to share, and find ways to provide for the people in my direct vicinity in need through the ways I feel personally resourced to.
Take note of why you might struggle to carve out time to be creative right now. How can you seek support from others in combatting these struggles?
Creative Prompts:
Can you make a Zine or drawings to help illustrate or teach something to others? This can be anything from drawing your gear or supplies to creating infographics to help understand complex topics.
Head out on a walk with your “Creative Emergency Kit” and go to a coffee shop, a library, or even your favorite local soup spot to sit and be with your materials away from home.
Think of the word “balm” When I am feeling under resourced, I come back to this word to consider what could function as a balm to my condition. Can you write a song that feels like a balm to you? Illustrate the different things that help pad your life with more joy and serenity?
Document and celebrate moments where you feel uniquely resourced. Romanticize the smallest moments that feel something like gratitude or peace. Can you take more photos of your morning walks? Of the coffee you savor from your favorite cafe? Of you and your friends playing DND or baking a loaf or bread together?
Zoom Link for Sketchbook Club:
Whoa! Hey there, if you are just scrolling through looking for the link for Tomorrow’s Sketchbook Club, here it is! See you at 6 PM PST.
A PDF Resource for Community Building:
I redesigned a section of my DIY creative retreat to focus specifically on community building and made it $5.
The goal of this snippet is for you and your community to get clear about each of your needs and goals: These can be related to who you are as creative people, in your day-to-day life, and how as a collective, you can support one another.
It will guide you through supplies, suggestions for meals and nature time together, and give you two big exercises. The first will guide you all to deeper clarity and connection, and the other will help you schedule time to stay accountable to your commitments.
I am excited to ask some of these questions to my community alongside you and share what we learn.
If you liked these prompts, you’ll probably resonate with my DIY Creative Retreat!
In addition to making that snippet, I am running a discount on the DIY Creative Retreat PDF too.
Instead of $33, the PDF will be $22
from Monday, November 25th through Monday, December 2nd, 2024 at 11:59 PST.
Just use code DIY-TRY at checkout.
I know this thing is very new and I am asking you all for a lot of trust. But, if you aren’t happy with the DIY Creative Retreat design and it doesn’t resonate, I’ll give you your money back! For real. Just email persistentbloom@gmail.com with your feedback!
New Sketchbook Tour & Prints
I finally finished my predominantly landscape watercolor sketchbook. I am so excited for all of you to take a look inside with me and see how my work grew and shifted in this video.
In the vid, I also talk about my struggle with my phone reeling me into the infinite scroll and the ways in which a sketchbooking practice has helped me use my phone less for things that get me hooked.
I finished the sketchbook in the video back in October but spent the past month on documentation and retouching the pages in Procreate to update my INPRNT store. As of this morning, my favorite sketches all went live on the shop.
With this weekend’s 20% off sale, you can snag these prints for as little as $15.
I’ll leave you with two awesome examples of what the prints look like in the INPRNT Frames! I am so happy with how these turned out. 🤗 (Clicking the frame will open the shop!)
Consider my work in your holiday gifting this year for adventurous friends who love to get out and explore in nature.
Thank you so much for being here, reading this email, and supporting my small business. Each order and new subscriber means so much! Y’all give me hope.
Until next time, stay creative and find your own way to persistently bloom!
🌸Mel