Joy Ride Vol 4
Brainstorm Road’s Friday dose of fun, inspiration, and action
Joy Ride is Brainstorm Road’s Friday dose of fun, inspiration, and action.
This week we reflected on being a “good creative.” Many people reached out to share what their preconceived notion of a “good creative” was and how that held them back from doing work they wanted to do - or worse, kept them from enjoying the creative work they were doing.
We shared how poet Mary Oliver broke our brains when we learned she chain-smoked in old sweatshirts because we expected her to be stuffy and pretentious since she writes stunning lines like this:
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
People love this quote from Oliver, but they never seem to reference the answer to her question, even though she tells us in the lines that come before it:
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Oliver spent her one wild and precious life wandering around the woods with a notebook.
You do not need to be a good creative and your dream project does not need to save the world.
But it does need to exist.
You are enough for your idea. You don’t have to be any different than you are to start working on the projects you want to make.
Worth Your Time
Read: Austin Kleon’s book Steal Like an Artist
One Small Thing
There is great satisfaction in doing the things we set out to do. When we admit that we have a dream, the next step is to demonstrate to ourselves that we are the sort of people who can go after it.
What’s one small (tiny! microscopic!) thing you could do this week to bring alignment between intention and action?
Want to paint? Scrounge up art supplies and mark up a few sheets of paper.
Want to write a book? Get out one of those pretty notebooks that you bought but never used and write for 10 minutes about a memory from lunchtime in elementary school.
It doesn’t matter what you make. What matters is that you set aside 10 minutes and act on your desire to create.
Name the thing. Then, set a timer for 10 minutes. Go.
Happy Friday,
Margo + Kristin