how creative practice is shaped like switchback
what it was like to go through a three month cycle of The Hikers Way
Before I get into the dispatch today, I would love for you to consider gifting my work this year to someone you love or to yourself. <3
Rather than doing a very short two-day duration of flash deals on my website, I’m doing a big studio sale now to give you more time to decide on things. I want to be compassionate to those of you shopping this season with our nervous systems all already so zapped right now. More info on discount codes + what’s in stock at the end of the dispatch for you to explore. Feel free to click around first here:
Two weeks ago, I was cleared to start hiking again, with one rule from my physical therapist: any significant hills need to be approached as a switchback. If you aren’t regularly out exploring nature preserves near you, this concept may be unfamiliar. A switchback is a wacky zig zag that trail builders will make over particularly steep and challenging sections. This switchback method takes longer, of course, but it makes the hike more accessible to humans with different abilities.
That is the key to the switchback, accessibility. How can we arrive at our destination of being more creative in a way that is compassionate to our bodies and minds? Can we build a connection to our creative practice, without layering on gobs of shame inherited from productivity advice and neurotypical habit systems?
I think it’s possible if we approach reconnecting to creativity like a switchback.
I have a quilt of disabilities. Some are related to neurodivergence, and others are physical. All of them have been integrated into how I show up as an educator, and in the world more generally. I injured my spine in March and honestly, not being able to hike at all for 7 months out of this year was a challenge. Yet, I made accommodations, walking a few feet on a flat road to a bench. Simply being in nature away from my home and screens was key.
You might have similar experiences to me, or you don’t necessarily relate to the concept of accommodations but you likely feel stuck in some areas in your life where taking the switchback approach could be more compassionate. Maybe it’s social media or AI use that keeping you glued to your phone. It could be a mountain of things you’ve committed to, and your schedule is overfilled.
Take a moment to think about what your creative practice or life more generally would be like if you approached it as a gentle meander rather than a climb up a steep grade. What would that look like for you? What changes might you need to make to your mindset, expectations, or approach?
For me, when I had to let go of my need to hike this year, I dove head first into my plein air painting practice because at least it got me outside. It was the gentler path, near enough to the trailheads to still be with nature and observe.
The switchback concept allowed me to adapt to my spinal injury and take compassionate care of my body. When I built The Hikers Way, I wanted to have a similar approach for the folks joining me in the program, to be adaptive rather than rigid. To see the concept of building a creative practice as something that was actually sustainable over the long term, rather than only within the container of a program or challenge.
Creative advice that doesn’t hold space for differences in responsibilities, time, obligations, and abilities often sounds like:
write three full pages every morning in an A5 journal
draw every day, it’s the only way to get good
if you want to be a real artist, you need to be filling sketchbooks constantly
wake up very early and do a specific practice the same way each day
Yet I have tried all of these things concepts and failed. I fell into the traps of following productivity advice on YouTube or in Self Help books that just didn’t work.
Attempting everything from bullet journaling to making digital habit trackers in Notion or TickTick(my to-do list app). None of it stuck. But then it dawned on me, a lot of this advice was coming from men or women in positions of power over in our culture. People whose lives I couldn’t fathom ever having. We can’t take creative advice as gospel from people whose lives look and feel fundamentally different to ours.
If you are feeling stuck by a system that isn’t working for you, lookup that person. What is their life like? Are you being fair to yourself by trying to match their path or pace?
Sure, another person on the trail might be able to hike a challenging section with confidence, walking straight up a steep slope. But their body isn’t my body, so what’s the point in comparison?
As I embarked on The Hikers Way myself, I took inventory around the creative practice I had abandoned and longed to reconnect with: making music. It was a creative act that my younger self saw as essential, but I let bad advice and productivity/overwork culture convince me that non-monetized hobbies were a waste of time. I couldn’t have been more wrong.
After listening back to the first few episodes I found myself called out by my own words. I was blocking myself by expecting showing up to music meant adding another thing to my small business. Or, in an even more toxic approach, that if I was going to waste the time, I needed to be creating something new, from scratch every day.
I would never expect these kinds of things from any of my students, but needing a destination or an ambitious goal is one of the traps that capitalism has put on our creativity. A thing I am working to unlearn in real time.
The guitar I started practicing on this fall was my first from 2004, a budget Fender Squier that’s fretboard has been reshaped by my hands. I regularly played and wrote music until my sophomore year of college. Then I stopped abruptly due to bad advice.
I picked it up music again out of a job obligation when working for Apple as I needed to teach GarageBand. That job became an important reconnection point for this practice. My curiosity came back, and I spent most of the early pandemic relearning music theory and my instruments.
Because I wasn’t a total beginner, I knew generally what kinds of challenges come up for me with music and where I tend to get stuck and give up. So I sorted my practice into five different “energy levels”:
0-1 listen to music I love and dance to it - feel the medium in my body
2 - play with GarageBand on my phone, don’t save anything. no outcome attached, just show up to play
3 - study other artists’ work, play covers, review chord patterns, try and decode different parts of songs
4 - improvise, play, and attempt to record sketches of new ideas (these days are my favorite & feel most in tune with creative intuition!)
5 - troubleshooting, technical issues, and learning new software. anything that tends to activate me gets saved for when I have the highest energy capacity.
If you are struggling to bring an old creative practice back to life, I really recommend this energy menu approach. Consider the things that activate your shame or frustration, and try to avoid those things for when you’re most resourced. Realign with play, release the destination or need for monetization. I promise you, a creative practice will feel far better than anything your phone wants to show you today.
As I went through the past 9 weeks, slowly reconnecting, I decided to write a micro-blog on my website and track each level 3 or higher day. Only holding myself accountable to document when I had enough energy to practice and post.
In Week/Cycle 1 of The Hikers Way, I have participants create an inventory of strategies to rest. Taking that switchback approach, I realized that there would be plenty of days where I needed to focus on leaning into the rest and digest, taking off the pressure to post and releasing the imaginary legend of consistent or perfect habits.
Here are the general observations I made looking back at the blog:
More than half of the days near the beginning were low energy. Frequency of medium energy days fluctuated but tended to be higher in recent weeks.
I needed to completely redesign the space I was creating in to make it more compassionate to play. Being on the floor, while not ergonomic felt more like play than a desk.
Some things came back automatically (chord shapes, strumming patterns, melodies) where other things felt like I was starting from square one (physical limitations like hand positions and a lack of calluses, relearning which record button to use in the software, how to route sound properly into an interface)
My impulse was to lean into the joy and interests of my teenage self. Lots of Postal Service and Broken Social Scene covers.
Playing music is a space where I cannot multitask and I must be 100% present, in the moment, in my body. Healing af.
Processing intense emotions like grief is easier when I take a break from trying to communicate in words. Often times the things I would come up with made me super emotional. Crying is good!
Taking a social media fast halfway through transformed the practice into my preferred way to wind down every night. I have completely ghosted scrolling or posting to Tiktok, seemingly for good.
The things that I saw as extremely difficult (level 5 energy) now require much less from me. They don’t activate shame anymore and instead make me feel curious.
Creativity is a magical and intuitive practice where we need to give ourselves full permission to play.
One of my favorite things I wrote on the blog was this:
“This is why the very idea of “ai music” or “ai art” is fundamentally so horrifying to me. Why would you give up feeling creativity through your body? For the sake of productivity or efficiency? To completely relinquish the sensations that make you human? fuck off.”
As we have less and less daylight, keeping us inside for longer through the winter, the pull of our phones and screens will get stronger and stronger. Some of us will be heading into the busiest and most intense work season of the year, while others will find ourselves with an abundance of time.
Here are some ways for you to spend that time inside:
Time to take inventory of your year. Have you done a Did List yet? I made this video at the end of last year to help you take stock your year before you start making plans for the next one. It’s compassionate, gentle, and fun. The opposite of a to-do list.
Go through your art/creative supply bin, box, closet, or room. What things are you longing to use? What things have you been holding onto but are feeling ready to let go of? Which things, when you hold them, light you up?!
For the things that excite you, make a plan to use them at some point during the winter. That might mean clearing off physical space or time on your calendar. It might mean inviting your friends and family to join you. It could even mean locating a DIY or no-spend gift option for this year.
For the things that you don’t need anymore, find a local makerspace, school, or creative reuse store to donate to.
I gave away all of my oil paints from art school with bad vibes to a budding artist coworker one year and he’s making super rad paintings with them. After my Grandma passed, I inherited her oil paints and those are the ones I still use to this day. You never know when materials will reenter your life if you are willing to let them go to a worthy recipient.
If you find yourself reaching for your phone, go through your photos on your phone and make them analog! Print out two photos for each month. Most places that do simple photo printing charge about $0.29 per 4x6 color print. Then thrift some frames or make a junk journal reviewing your favorite moments. I promise you, these prints will feel precious and special when compared to being locked in the digital clutter of your phone.
Invite people to do virtual or in person studio visits. Get people in front of your work and talk about theirs. These conversations will be so enriching.
I have tiptoed back on instagram once a week to see what people pop up on my stories feed and I have been reaching out to one person each week in order to reestablish connections and move my community off that app. Often times when you leave a social media platform, holes appear in your contact list that will pull you back in. Resist the scroll! Connect with good humans and ghost the apps!
That is all I have for you in this week’s dispatch. If you feel compelled to dive deep into the larger experience I shared here, The Hikers Way 2.0 with no live classes, entirely self-guided at your own pace) is on super sale with an extra 15% off (making it only $102) by using code ‘NATURE-TIME’ at checkout. Promo pricing ends at noon PST on November 29th.
What’s included in The Hikers Way 2.0?
14 podcast episodes (5-20 mins each) you can download to listen to anywhere
Password-protected website portals for each section with examples, summaries, and journaling prompts.
2 guided meditations to support difficult topics
Recordings of 2 previous live classes to go deeper
Human support, adaptation suggestions, and questions answered on Discord
A PDF worksheet to help you adapt the practices to a schedule that works for you.
I'm unable to do any holiday table markets with my spinal injury this year.
I still can’t really lift more than 5 pounds and my wooden setup is heavy. So here’s what I’m doing instead:
My online shop has all of my signed artist prints in stock and new original paintings ready to ship within the United States (sorry, no international shipping. tariffs scare me!!!)
If you are based in the Bay Area and want to avoid shipping fees, respond to this email and I’d love to workout a delivery meetup for you instead!
I restocked the second edition of my Go Bag Zine, a great gift for you and your family at a lower price.
I added a few of my favorite tiny originals from my “deals bin” that I normally have on my table at markets. I’m only planning to keep these listings up through the end of the year.
So with this big shop update, you can take 25% off select categories with code ‘STUDIO-SALE’ between now and 12PM on November 29th. Both the Studio Sale and Hikers Way promo codes can be used together at checkout. : )
Which things are included in the sale? Tutoring Sessions, Art Prints, Greeting Cards, Original Paintings (excluding deals), and Stickers. “Deals Bin” paintings, Downloads, and Zines aren’t included because those prices are all at such low margins I cannot afford to discount them.
Again, this goes through Saturday, November 29th at 12PM!
Until next time, stay creative and find your own ways to persistently bloom.
