Creative Prompts on Recovery
+ Donation Reciepts from Go Bag Zine Sales!
If someone told me my hike on March 8th might be my last for the foreseeable future, I would’ve been in a fit of obstinate rage. But there is a chance it might well have been. Even with all of my talk about slowing down, being gentle and deliberate when it comes to creativity, I have been doing the exact opposite when it comes to my approach to hiking.
In order to deal with the stress, instability, chaos, ambiguity, and quite frankly trauma of the current moment living in the U.S., I was hiking nonstop and hiking hard.
Mornings had a clear routine: getting up early, having a quick snack, and rushing out to the trailhead to search for mushrooms along the creekbed. Taking breaks to sit and listen to the Mockingbird go through its many attempts at mimicking other birdsong. I was hiking between 3-4 miles a day on average. It made my brain feel clear, calm, and focused despite the absolute sewer spew of new horrors trying to pull me under.
Hiking started to feel like the best thing I could do for my body and it became what I can only describe as a spirutual experience — one that could align me most coherently with my intuition and my inner creative. I am in love with every folder of photos I shot on the trail with my camera. I am enamored watching each wildflower bunch spring from sprout to blossom.
I kept going harder, craving the endorphins and their effects, opting for more elevation gain, more challenging routes, and longer durations. BUT, I forgot that I am not an athlete. I have a disability. A bad thyroid and Long COVID that lead to episodes of mysterious chronic inflammation. On top of that. I wasn’t cross-training correctly or wearing proper supports in my shoes, and midway through my last hike, my feet went numb. They still aren’t back online, now it feels more like pins and needles endlessly. This injury is painful and evolving.
Despite it being my favorite time of year to hike, I currently cannot walk on anything but flat surfaces without excruciating pain. Even then, I don’t really know what’s wrong or when I will get back to “normal”. I am bracing myself for the inevitable medical bills and the challenging quest of navigating the American medical system with a disability (it’s a nightmare.)
This whole injury is such a major lesson for me to reflect on as an adventure artist: my body and mind need to be cared for in equal measure. I can’t abuse one for the sake of the other. I can’t ignore pain and push through, I need to listen, to stretch, to rest. I am reminded that I am not in my twenties anymore with a resilient laffy-taffy body.
I need to recognize that walking is not a sport. Instead, it is a gentle and calming spiritual practice that is more about getting out and being in nature than it is pushing for big ego-centric mile counts.
Instead of no-pain no-gain type outlooks on hiking, I am going to shift my perspective by creating achievements like: How many things can I stop to notice with intention?
I encourage you to try that one this week.
New ONLINE Classes in the Works
While I have been at home and encouraged to rest, I have been imagining exciting new classes to offer online. I developed a new creative curriculum called The Hikers Way that I will facilitate later this year once I recover. It is my own adaptation and interpretation of The Artists Way that is way more gentle, compassionate, and adaptive to different brains, bodies, spiritual experiences, and work-life expectations. We are going to walk really gently in that one, I promise.
I will also be offering my most popular in-person class, Beginner Watercolor Painting from Photos over Zoom in early June. In addition, I am collaborating with one of my lifelong friend, Maret Miller, who is a yoga instructor, artist, designer, and musician, to offer monthly yoga classes inspired by the Creative Prompts I write here each month
Through this link, you can sign up to be notified first for any of these courses and get additional educational updates.
I am trying to experiment with having a separate educational newsletter from what comes out monthly here on Substack.
Creative Prompts on Recovery
Now for the best part of this email, creative prompts! These are inspired by my own path toward both creative recovery and physical recovery from my hiking injury.
Tiny Reps:
I fear that sometimes, when we start on a journey towards being more creative we feel a deep sense of obligation around having to set aside a generous amount of time for making things. What I want to challenge you to do is to consider tiny reps.
Reps are a term used in the world of exercise to talk about repeating something a few times. Try asking yourself what thing can I do creatively that only takes five or ten minutes today? Consider what supplies would require little to no cleanup (markers, colored pencils, the synth you already have hooked up, an acoustic guitar, some air dry clay, your digital camera) and commit to taking short breaks twice in your day to doodle or create for a short burst.
When you do these tiny reps, take note of how they make you feel in your journal. Remember that this is not time to be productive, but time to just play and see what happens. With reps, focus on the quantity of how often you can make time for doing them rather than the quality of what you make.
Stretches:
This is something that will likely make you a little uncomfortable, but remember, the space where we encounter the tiniest amounts of discomfort in our creativity is where we can often learn new things. Don’t make yourself feel bad or ignore signs from your body that you need to stop.
I’ll give you a quick example. I have been avoiding singing and vocals for years when it comes to playing music, even covers. Why? because my own perception of my singing voice feels particularly dysphoric. It’s really feminine and it feels almost out of body when I hear it back.
Last night, I challenged myself to play with this thing in Ableton called Auto-Shift that allows me to create vocoder-style harmonies with my voice as an instrument. IT IS SO COOL. If you aren’t a musician, think of the song Hide and Seek by Imogen Heap. I can finally do that kind of thing with my voice! While I am not very good at it yet, it is a euphoric feeling to uncover this new thing I can do outside of my comfort zone.
Ask yourself what techniques or practices feel like a stretch. Maybe it is an ambitious way to use paint, a playful way to test out marker layering, a filter for your camera, or a new grog you can add to your clay to help your sculptural ceramic pieces reach new heights.
Set aside some time between 2-4 hours to 1, define what your stretch/challenge is. 2, research how to do it, maybe with YouTube or with a book from the library. 3, give yourself at least an hour to try the technique. 4, take notes on what you learn and if you want to keep going.
Last bit on Recovery, remember to stop making every so often to take breaks. Our bodies are important tools that need us to listen. Drink some water, take note of your posture and stretch, and have a snack. Shrimping for 14 hours straight is bad for us creative humans!
If you try either of these this month, join me on Discord to let me know how it went, or leave me a comment here on Substack. Feel free to share this post with members of your community who can benefit from these ideas!
There is one more creative prompt about Adaptation I am sending exclusively to my paid subscribers here on Substack tonight. If you want access to more monthly creative prompts, consider supporting me and joining my awesome group of paid subscribers! These folks are helping me be more selective with what I say yes to this year and it truly means the world to have such incredible support.
Go Bag Zine — Donation Transparency!
As promised, I want to share numbers and receipts around Go Bag Zine Purchases and the donations I have made to go along with them. I am really happy with the slow, sustainable roll-in of orders and have so much gratitude for every single person who has purchased a zine, digital or physical. If you still want one, I made another batch of physical Zines, and PDFs are instant downloads.
So far I have sold 4 PDF Zines and 8 Physical Zines! That means I was able to donate a total of $96 this morning.
Here are the receipts:
If you have any questions about this process, check out my other post all about the Zine and why I am donating proceeds to each cause:
my new Go Bag Zine is FINALLY here!
My new zine How to Build a Go Bag - Lessons and Checklists from the Parable of the Sower is officially here!
Gentle Note on Shipping: Because of my current injury/disability flare up, shipping is taking between 3-4 business days to get things packed and over to the post office. I have so much gratitude for the members of my community driving me around and supporting me through this. Thank you for your patience alongside your monetary support.
As a reminder, there are great digital products on my website like the DIY Retreat PDF and the Host Your Own Micro-Retreat with Friends PDF that are available for instant download.
That is it for this email. Until next time, stay creative and find your own way to persistently bloom
